Remember when NASA announced that we were saying goodbye to the little Mars rover named Opportunity? And how the whole world mourned, sang songs, and started a whole hashtag for the little robot, a whole planet away?
Vancouver poet Natalie Lim remembers, and she wrote poems for the little rover that lived past its life expectancy. Her debut collection, published by Wolsak and Wynn and launching on April 8, is titled Elegy for Opportunity.
“There were so many beautiful comics, people were trying art, there were all these moving elegies basically, to this robot,” Lim says to Pancouver over Zoom. “And I’m interested in probing more into why are we all so sad? What is the grief that’s come up around this specific incident? And so when it came time to write the collection, I just felt like Oppy had to be the beating heart of it.”
The elegies are a series of conversations with the beloved Oppy. The speaker confesses anxieties and guilt, as if seeking comfort at the end of times. Despite all this raw honesty, there is no way of knowing if Oppy is even listening.
Lim tries to answer some of these questions through poetry: “What is it about Opportunity that has brought us all together in this way? What does it say about humans and what we choose to collectively grieve and what we choose to not grieve, or what’s deemed worthy of grief? What does it say about us—this robot did exactly what it was programmed to do, which was go out in space and die… There was no way of getting her back.”
Love Poems Don’t Win Contests
In 2018, Lim won the CBC Poetry Prize for Arrhythmia. The poem captures the complexities of growing up as an Asian diasporic individual, including how language loss may affect family dynamics. It is a poem that resonated with many people, and one that she is very proud of. But because of the poem’s success, Lim struggled with writing for a while.
“That was my only real published work out in the world,” Lim says. “I started to worry that this was the kind of subject matter and poetry that people would expect from me.”
Some racialized artists find success and catharsis in creating works that examine diasporic trauma or the lived experiences as visible minorities. For others, however, it can be limiting instead of liberating. These subject matters can take an emotional toll to explore, especially when it comes from a personal place. In the current media landscape of Canada, the lack of diverse representation for Asian Canadians remains an issue that needs to be addressed. Lim did not want her worth as a writer to only be measured by what she can write about her heritage.
“A lot of what I put into Arrhythmia,” Lim explains, “that was like my whole heart on this topic. I put it all there, I don’t know if I have that much more to say.”
The first poem in Elegy for Opportunity is titled “Love Poems Don’t Win Contests.” Lim shares that this poem is a reminder to herself that she does not have to write what she thinks other people will want to read.
“My heritage will always be in my poetry,” Lim says, “because it’s a part of me.”
She reveals that she was particularly moved by Jen Sookfong Lee’s advice to aspiring Asian Canadian writers, which she heard at a virtual book launch during the pandemic lockdown era: “Write what brings you joy.”
Poetry about the struggles and resilience of Asian Canadians is important. But so is the poetry about the small joys of Asian Canadians—even if it’s about Pixar movies or Dungeons and Dragons.
Lim found inspiration writing about the everyday things in life. The collection includes many free verse poems filled with references to pop culture spanning from the mid-2010s to the present. They are conversations addressed to family, to a lover, to society at large. They are love poems, and poems about love. Each an intimate glimpse into a single moment—reminding us that no matter how brief, it is a moment that is well-lived.
The core of Lim’s poetry is tenderness. As humans, we make mistakes and hold onto regret; we also imprint on robots light-years away and sing them to sleep. In Lim’s writing, forgiveness is sought and compassion is celebrated. The collection is a testament to that soft ache of the human condition, from the unspoken fears to the clinging of hope. Each line carries empathy for not only the speaker of the poem but for all the readers, too.
Elegy for Opportunity
Lim is also a spoken word artist. She is often simultaneously thinking about the spoken cadence and rhythm of words as she is putting them onto the page. In her debut collection, readers may notice the peculiar spacing of certain poems. Lim reveals that she worked together with her editor to experiment with formatting. Her editor was also the one to suggest she lean into the specificity of the pop culture references without worrying how they would “date” her poetry.
“I don’t think this collection is timeless. And I don’t think it’s meant to be,” Lim says. “I wrote this book for the moment we’re living in now. And for my fellow twenty-somethings, who are trying to figure out who they are, and falling in love and watching movies and playing video games, and also living in a world on fire.”
Lim hopes that Elegy for Opportunity allows readers to feel seen. The collection immortalizes the collective grief people across the interweb felt, while also confronting the fact that we as humans were the ones who put Opportunity on Mars without the intention of bringing her home. She wants this book to offer comfort, while also providing a bit of a challenge.
“I hope that there’s a sense of ‘We can be better than this,’” Lim says. “‘How can we be better than this?’”
Stay updated on Natalie Lim’s writing on her website. Find Elegy for Opportunity on Wolsak & Wynn here. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
