Passion of X Poet Profiles: Ren L[i]u (If Light Travels Faster Than Sound)

As a (very!) recent graduate of Brown University, Ren L[i]u (they/he/他) was brimming with excitement, thoughtfulness, and optimism throughout our entire conversation. Even amidst their anxieties about graduation, it was clear to me that Ren was the sort of person who’d make their own way through the next few years of their life just fine–and with a poetic flourish, no less. 

Ren spent most of their early life moving from place to place, raised predominantly by their beloved grandparents, before eventually settling in the Los Angeles area for middle and high school. During that time, they became acquainted with spoken-word poetry groups that highlighted marginalized voices. In particular, Ren was taken with the poems of Sarah Kay, author of the beloved (and “Ted”-approved) poem “If I Should Have a Daughter.” So, when they were accepted into Brown, they immediately and automatically gravitated towards WORD!, a BIPOC-oriented performance and spoken word poetry group.

For the next four years, Ren became a staple within both WORD! and the local poetry scene in Providence. To Ren, poetry was neither exclusively, nor inherently “high literature”: it was instead a means of communicating and expressing oneself in ways that transcended normative language, with the goal of ultimately finding community through shared expression. Indeed, communal sustainability is incredibly important to Ren, who has gone to great lengths to ensure they don’t become yet another “transitory elite college alum.” Alongside poetry groups, they also engage in community facilitation, crisis prevention, and transformative justice methods that are meant to heal, not punish. They even made sure to pay those who provided oral histories for their senior thesis, titled “Towards a Trans Crip of Color Erotics: Poetic Practices in ‘Imagining a Totally Inverted World’ reading the poetry of disabled, trans artists of color as both evidence of the bodymind and a way to inhabit our Sick and Disabled QTBIPOC Liberation dreams within our material context.” 

In relation to their thesis, Ren’s relationship to their own identity has been nurtured over the years through the communities they’ve found themself in, and how they’ve reclaimed their own narrative through poetry, friendship, and intense reflection. The bracketing in their last name, for instance, is reflective of their attempt to reclaim their own familial narrative. Whereas this process of becoming once made their poetry go down darker avenues, lately they’ve begun to revel in the joys and abundance of embodying who they are, in large part thanks to how interwoven their art and sense of community has become. 

This ultimately ties to their section in Passion of X, where they perform an original poem titled, “If Light Travels Faster Than Sound.” The poem will examine how children experience gender, and how they often “get it” better than most adults do. The name itself stemmed from a funny conversation about gender with a young child: when the kid asked what Ren’s gender was, Ren asked in turn what they thought. In response, the child said, “I think you don’t know have an answer for that. When adults don’t know what to say, they don’t know either.” In a poignant parallel, the poem will then go on to examine how, in their transition, Ren has begun to resemble their child self more closely: full of life and lightness, with a genuine smile and brighter eyes. 

Ren plans to spend their first post-grad year in Providence, so they can further involve themself in the local poetry scene as well as figure out what comes next. No matter what, they intend on continuing to build upon whatever community they find themself in, as well as nurture their poetry even further. While they aren’t quite sure how far they want to take their poems, I have no doubt that they’ll only continue to positively impact the people they choose to share them with. 

Passion of X has been accepted to the Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival, Out on Film (Atlanta, GA), and the Seattle Queer Film Festival.