I tried to write poems in rhyme. I tried writing songs. Sometimes I jotted down a thought. I would keep a log of spontaneous thoughts.

I'd like to do more collaborations because collaboration creates different viewpoints.

Even if you look in the dictionary you know the meaning of the word or phrase, but there's still the feeling of it.

If I were really fluent and born into the English language, I would probably become a greater writer.

I'm doing a collaborative project with another artist, Mary Hamill. My project is to gather the oral history of war widows, starting with the women of my village, Kop Nymit.

I have some advantages of viewing from the two lenses, the two perspectives. I think that a lot of visual artists who come back here from the United States and are Cambodian also write from their American references - looking inside the old culture, and looking at themselves as an American looking into the country where they were born.

The family I grew up in had three generations of widows.