Drawn to writing

Comparative Literature student Gabrielle Mei Ying Tse has had her first poetry pamphlet, Rustlings, published by Verve Poetry Press.

Gabrielle’s PhD is about three contemporary female writers whose autobiographical or life writing narratives are not in their mother tongue (translingualism). She is interested in how and why her subjects chose to move away from their first languages: “what new, strange pathways to self-refashioning does translingual writing offer these women?”.

Asked how she came to this topic, she cites life experience – growing up with a Chinese dad and Filipina mum (“both passionate readers who passed the affliction onto me”) who only shared one language, English, but over decades of marriage have developed “their own funny trading-post language of English sentences enriched by Cantonese inflections and Tagalog words”. 

While languages intermixed freely at home, in Hong Kong (where she grew up) Mei Ying sometimes felt like “a cultural and linguistic outsider” who had to work hard to learn Cantonese, saying “it pushed me to think a lot about what it really means to “have” a language, to “have” a self.” 

Throughout her studies at Edinburgh (and before, at school in Hong Kong), Gabrielle has always written. Describing her friends and family as “such a patient, forgiving audience”, she also credits staff in Comparative Literature with being “very supportive of my different intellectual and creative pursuits, which is how I knew I wanted to continue my studies here”. 

“I write in little pockets whenever the inspiration catches me, then I block time out to edit the finished pieces. It doesn’t feel like a chore at all to take the time to write - I feel so drawn to writing, and time goes by very quickly when I’m in the right frame of mind.”

“I’m now working on my first full collection. I’m really enjoying the process: the new poems are already so different, in direction and voice, from those in my first pamphlet. I can feel the change happening, which is exciting, but it also gives me a slight sense of anxiety. I want to do a good job and make something beautiful, and I have many ideas, many plans.”  

Asked about any crossover between her PhD topic and her poetry, Gabrielle says that she consciously wanted to separate the two; to maintain an “academic self” and a “creative self” and ensure the two don’t meet. 

“They take shifts!” she says, “but of course, the idea that I can separate my academic writing from my creative writing is silly”. 

“In the end, they both come from something fundamental inside me, a well of desires, insistences, uncertainties, and beliefs that make up my core. So my academic writing and creative writing are, by essence, interlinked.”

“My poetry plays with multilingualism and explores liminal linguistic and cultural identities; while my research delves into the different creative strategies used by translingual female writers; in that sense, my research and creative practices feed into each other thematically.” 

As the first UNESCO World City of Literature, and a major cultural hub, Edinburgh is the ideal place for the comparative study of literature. 

With expertise spanning the globe, we offer taught courses and supervise research comparing a wide range of literary themes, genres and historical periods, exploring critical theory and translation, and looking at the relationship of the written word to other arts. 

• Find out more about our MSc in Comparative Literature
• Find out more about our PhD in Comparative Literature

• Meet our graduates: Eduard Gafton
• Meet our graduates: Iskandar Sattibaev
• Meet our Graduates: Cristina Sandu

• Find out more about Rustlings [Verve Poetry Press website]