A Conversation with Poh Lin Lee

Poh Lin is my first name. It’s a Chinese name, chosen by my Ah Kong (grandfather). Poh means precious and Lin means lotus flower. In Australia, whenever I would say my name, it was always followed up with  “How do you spell that?”, or  “Can you say that again?”.  I used to find that really difficult until a very dear friend and colleague shared with me a quote by *Warsan Shire that connected me with the idea of what it means to give daughters a name that’s hard to get your mouth around, hard to pronounce or hard to spell – that it brings a complexity of identity. I’m very fond of that idea now.

*“give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.” Warsan Shire

Coming from Western Australia, I have the experience of grappling with what it means to be born on stolen land and I have histories of displacement through my lineages.  With this, moving to different places throughout my life has not been in the search of home, but more a sense of moving towards places where I can be a part of conversations or communities for a certain period of time in intentional ways – moments of belonging. Home for me lies in the relational exchange, the relationships that are precious is where my sense of home lives.

Yes, I have three children. My partner is an anthropologist amongst other things, we share a curious traveling spirit. We’ve just been living in France with the intention for our children to get to know the French side of the family, the language, the culture, before coming here. Through my partner’s heart connection with Quebec we have the chance to be here now.

I was in Kiev in 2014, the end of 2014. I was working with a group of people made up of lawyers, social workers, therapists, who were responding to people who were internally displaced in Ukraine at the time.

And now with the state sanctioned violence in Ukraine, I wanted to find a way to offer anything that I have from the co-produced knowledges through conversation with people and communities. But displacement for me goes back quite some way. In fact, it intersects with how I got to know about narrative therapy, because when I was studying social work in Australia, I started to work at women’s shelters around family and domestic violence.

At that time I was also part of therapeutic groups with men, predominantly men in the Australian context, who were using violence in the family home. The organization was offering a psychoeducational model in a long term group with 10 guys, two facilitators. I remember thinking, “I’m not going to last, I’m not actually going to be of much help here.” What the men were expressing was not a matter of noticing a behavior and then putting in a strategy. They wanted different kinds of conversations. Narrative practice started to open up that space for those sorts of conversations. We started to have thoughtful conversations, deconstructing people’s experience and position in the culture of male violence in Australia.

Around that time, I also had the chance to work in Mongolia in the area of family and domestic violence. There were political concerns at the time. And in one situation there was state inflicted violence affecting a group of young people who came to the local Mongolian organization I was working at.  if you translate it into English, it is literally “the center against violence.” And so these young people were like, “All right, help us now.” And so their request continued to shape my practice and I got very interested in the link between those different forms of violence, whether in the wider public realm down into the intimacy of family and home and how they are interrelated.

Displacement has become a significant word for me when I think about responding to trauma. All these different types of displacement that can occur for people such as from particular members of our body, identity, relationships, land, home and status. I’ve been very interested in co-researching with people counter practices to the effects of displacement. And what is our individual and collective participation in practices that contribute to displacement or alternatively contributing to connection and ‘staying with’.

I was working on Christmas Island with people who were arriving by boat in order to seek asylum. According to Australian policy, they’re placed in mandatory detention.  I was part of a small service on the island providing torture and trauma counselling. While the number of arrivals was increasing, immigration policy became very intense and strict and the direction taking can be seen within a very specific history of white Australian policy influencing how we understand our borders. At the time there was a lot of global conflict happening that was causing rising numbers of people experiencing displacement. The people that I was working with in detention had gone from having their process for refugee status going quite smoothly – maybe three to six months, and then being able to be resettled in Australia – to literally, almost overnight, indefinite detention as a way of deterring people from arriving, but obviously with catastrophic consequences for people living that reality day by day. Together we were attempting to shape practices that could attend to the effects of multiple, ongoing trauma and indefinite liminal experience. It was in this context that I brought sandplay and narrative therapy together as a response to people’s experience. 

Gabrielle Brady, the director of the film, is a very dear friend of mine. She came to spend some time with me on Christmas Island. There was never any prior talk of a film until Gabrielle was hearing about my experience and it emerged out of our conversations as we grappled with what could be done in response.  I introduced her to some of the people that I was in conversation with and many of them really wanted to participate. Gabrielle, as a young female filmmaker, went beyond herself to secure funding and support despite her refusals to make an ‘expected’ type of film about this theme. I witnessed her advocate tirelessly for the film to sit in a hybrid genre neither documentary or fiction but somewhere in between creating a unique space for experimental and relational storysharing to come to life. My experience was that we were able to co-design a process that felt non extractive and brought so many lives and stories together…on and off the screen.

For further interest:

An article in the Guardian about the short film

I think I cherish most the chance to have been able to co-research with people seeking asylum to see what is possible when we invite ‘audiences’ into the therapeutic space in non extractive ways. And the chance to engage in multiple storytelling that is not restricted or limited to human over more than human experience – resisting the notion of a single human protagonist. And the chance to collaborate with Gabrielle to see whether it is possible to both privilege therapeutic processes and her creative vision in a non-competitive but more so inclusive ethic.

 For example, in the film the scenes that are therapeutic conversations are fragments that came from maybe 30 hours plus and was an ongoing process with the person at the center of the conversation around what was to be shared or not. There were people not included at all in the film, because their circumstances changed, or when they projected themselves 10 years ahead, they thought, ” I might have concerns 10 years later that I was represented in the film.” This meant the film did not rest on the shoulders of one or two people but was a moving fluid collective process where people had more possibility to choose for themselves and not feel they might ‘let down’ the director or the therapist or the film. 

This is certainly central to the way I come into conversations and collaborations now – with a gaze on process and a refusal to participate in notions of outcome/end-goals/achievements – I can trust that what emerges out of intentional, collaborative processes is significant in it’s contextual location to that particular moment in time. 

For further interest:

Consultation for Creative Projects

Storying Experience Cards

Yes. And recognize it, or see it.

Yes!

That’s a really lovely question, and a big question. I’ve noticed that there was an idea present that we do some work and then we move on. But every time I think, “oh, I need to move on and create something new”, it seems to circle back around….I think a new understanding is emerging from your email requesting people to step forward to offer assistance in any way to people impacted by the war in Ukraine. It’s significant for me to know that those ideas and practices co-produced with people I’ve been in conversation with continue to circulate.

I think when you ask that question, arriving here in Quebec, for me it’s about responding to what is around me. I get curious about where people might be saying, “Hey, hang on, you’ve got some skill or experience in that, let’s have a conversation”. So for me, it emerges through relationships.

I don’t have a fixed idea around career, or “This is my passion” I am happy moving fluidly across diverse fields in my practice and continually rethinking and reshaping practice in response to what people are sharing with me. I’m very fortunate that the work could go online during COVID, but I’m starting to miss that magic that happens in groups and gatherings.

What about you Peggy? What are you looking forward to in your Reauthoring Teaching work?

Attending to our bodies in conversation is a great delight to me. 

I’ve been shaping a practice, Our Multi-storied body, for a number of years. I come to this practice with many diverse ideas and fields of practice but it centers around a community metaphor that invites us to resist the notions that our body is a single entity. By inviting the different members of the community of our body to meaningfully participate in the conversation we have the chance to make visible and experience polyvocal expressions in circulation through our body moment by moment. This can have us witnessing how members of the body contribute to one another or disagree, debate and take their own unique positions. You asked me what I’m passionate about – here we go!

Thank you.

Yes! Slow narrative practice is a treasure. I do still want to circle back around to my intention, which is if there’s any way that I can contribute to any practitioners or current conversations about responding to present displacement, present multiple ongoing trauma that’s occurring, not only in Ukraine, but also inclusive of our Russian colleagues, inclusive of anyone currently affected. 

Thank you for the welcome.