We were lucky enough to interview the winner of our Spring Contest, Emily Tong. Read on to hear her take on inspiration, environmentalism, viewing the world as a poet, and more!

Your piece “BREAKING NEWS: UNIVERSE, DEAD AT 13.8 BILLION YEARS OLD” is inspired by Franny Choi. What aspects of her work did you draw from? How do you find inspiration more broadly?

Franny Choi is, and will always be, one of my favorite poets. "BREAKING NEWS: UNIVERSE, DEAD AT 13.8 BILLION YEARS OLD” is most directly inherited from Choi's "How to Let Go of the World", a poem I continually return to for its beautiful imagery and breathtaking non-linear narrative. Both poems similarly discuss environmental harm and its influence on domestic life. I think you can see this inspiration most directly in certain lines, such as the correlation between colors (in particular, orange) between our poems, as well as the general form. There's a line from her poem I love a lot: "But the wind won’t stop coming. / Orange and exoskeleton against our little shore." The description of this mundanity struck me deeply, and was something I hoped to incorporate in my own poem. Regarding how I find inspiration more broadly, there are a few writers I continually return to (Ada Limon, Richard Siken, Danez Smith, etc.) for advice through reading their abundances of poems, but oftentimes my writing is influenced by what I've just recently read, or recently experienced; I've written poems about a guy who sat next to me on a flight, a deer I saw on the highway. Topically, you'll see me return to themes of inheritance, memory, cultural belonging, and family. I think if you threw a dart at a dartboard of my work, nine times out of ten you'd hit something that at the very least mentions my mother. 

The theme of our contest—which you won!—was “current.” How did you approach this theme? What did you aim to say about the current moment?

At its core, "BREAKING NEWS: UNIVERSE, DEAD AT 13.8 BILLION YEARS OLD” is a meditation on environmentalism and its manifestation in the everyday life of youth. This, I think, is more relevant than ever today, when the continued existence and advancement—though that word is debatable—of humanity comes at an immeasurable cost to the world. Climate change is often presented through towering statistics and images of places that many people will never see (typically on a screen), and while that is undoubtedly tragic, I wanted to focus more on how catastrophe pervades the intimate and domestic: a house's floorboards, a rowboat. A conversation with a mother. I approached “current” both as the present political and environmental moment and through the lens of time. The speaker inherits ecological grief alongside familial memory, and in the process, environmental destruction becomes inseparable from illness, adolescence, and the existential fear of loss. I think all poetry is about love, in its many forms and many absences. In this case, the speaker's love for a world that is repeatedly told it's ending also serves as a point of reflection on their own internal conflict. Is the speaker's individual decay reflective of the small despairs they see occurring around them, or is one directly facilitating the other? Through this poem, I really wanted to capture that almost-existential dread you feel when you notice the days are getting warmer, or there aren't as many squirrels around your yard anymore. That type of thing.

One of the reasons we were drawn to your piece was your mix of flowery and lyrical imagery (“Chemtrails’ thousand hands the / milky veins of a clementine in summer”) and simple truths (“Every apocalypse starts and ends with hurt”). How do you balance beauty and directness in your writing? 

What a great question! I'm sure every writer approaches it differently, but I look to emphasize directness not only through sentence length and structure, but also its position in the text. The excerpt you mentioned functions to provide descriptive exposition, or essentially "set the mood"; when writing, I think there's a lot of power in comparing grand or abstract phenomena to mundane things, such that it actually leads to much more unique imagery. Evan Wang describes this as actively viewing the world through the eyes of a poet, such that "two car bumpers touching each other" is actually "two cars kissing". I could spend more time within the poem explaining the arcing paths of the chemtrails, or the exact shade of the sky, but how well can a reader actually picture those things? For this poem in particular, the mundanity is one of its key aspects, so I think it works here by giving the reader something tactile to reference. I also believe it is important for young writers to remember that every metaphor does not need to carry an immense hidden meaning, but it should serve a purpose. Beauty should not obscure the poem’s emotional stakes; ideally, it guides the reader toward them.

How did you get started writing poetry? Was there a poem you read that left a strong impact on yourself as a writer, or was there a first poem you wrote that launched you into the genre?

I have been a big reader and writer for as long as I can remember, but I began pursuing poetry seriously during my freshman year of high school. Ironically, I cannot describe the beginning very eloquently—I think I simply fell in love with it. I am very introverted, so poetry became a kind of concession between the world and me: a way of expressing things I might otherwise be unable to say aloud. One of the first poems a writing mentor recommended to me was Danez Smith’s “summer, somewhere.” In particular, I have the lines “you are not welcome here. trust / the trip will kill you. go home.” taped above my desk. The poem’s combination of grief, imagination, tenderness, and formal ambition showed me how expansive poetry could be. It has stayed with me for a long time, both as a reader and as a writer.

Finally, since we’re Marmalade Lit, do you have a favorite bread, pastry, or jam?

Whenever I need a midnight snack, I'll usually eat a baguette with jam (any flavor will do) and melted cheese!