Art by Rana Roosevelt
Interview Questions by Claire Tang, Chelsea Zhu, and Mirabelle Jiang
Interview Answers by Ela Kini, Brian Chan, Emmanuella Chung, Amanda Yu, and Riona Nanzeeba
Polyphony Lit's Volume 20 Fall Issue is now live, and for this issue, we're offering an exclusive behind-the-scenes look! Join our editors for conversations with Ela Kini (the author of "in the chinatown fish market") Brian Chan (the author of "my mother cries in a chinese restaurant that echoes a name most cannot pronounce—"), Emmanuella Chung (the author of "关계"), Amanda Yu (the author of "inheritance as porcelain elegies"), and Riona Nanzeeba, (the author of "বর্ষাকাল / borshakal / rainy season").
Interview with Ela Kini
Author of "in the chinatown fish market"
Claire: Tell us how you came to write. Do you have a memory of the first time you engaged in writing poetry?
Ela: I became more enamored with writing during the pandemic. I must’ve been only around eleven when I ran through a longish draft of a typical YA novel. It was, more than anything, a way to fill time outside the confines of lockdown. Poetry came to me more subtly. It was a more prolonged effort to reach for the form. It really happened just by finding litmags online, becoming more entranced with their writers and my own growing interest in metaphor.
Claire: “in the chinatown fish market” embodies a dynamic form, with every other duplet of lines being indented toward the right of the page. What’s your process in determining the form and shape of your poems? Particularly the one of “in the chinatown fish market”? Do you have any advice on how to effectively use a poem’s form, shape, and line enjambment to convey and enhance certain ideas within the piece?
Ela: I’ll admit that I don’t think much about form when writing, or at least, when writing this poem in particular, it wasn’t on my mind. That said, I think form comes naturally to a piece; it’s a sort of built rhythm. Particularly working with the written word, rhythm becomes much harder to convey if you aren’t working with form at all, even subconsciously. On form, I’ll refer back to the advice that someone gave me, lifted off Siken, which sums up to, in my mind: pushing in text lifts it off the page a bit, removes it from the rest of the piece, from the grounding of the margin. That means different things for different poets, has different value in different works. Advice-wise, I’d say let the words tell you what to do. The language will always guide the other elements of the work, if you let it. I prefer to let it.
Claire: I loved the line describing the father as “a landmine and trigger point.” What do you think it means for someone to be both of those things? How did you come to include this line within your poem?
Ela: Thank you! I appreciate it. It’s interesting, because this piece doesn’t really mention myself at all but when I was writing it, and going back to read it now, it’s something of a conversation. I say this because that element of generationality is really what brings this line to the poem—a landmine being able to take many, a trigger point so singular. Ultimately, both end in destruction. The line is ultimately trying to say we are more than our own destruction. But maybe we are also only our only destruction. It’s the kind of story that reads differently for everyone.
Claire: The imagery here is so sharp and vivid: the fish spasming, the throat blinking, the blood the color of drought. What is your favorite image from this poem? Or rather, which piece of imagery do you feel is the most necessary?
Ela: Ironically, the image that is most important to me in this poem is less clearly important in the final product. Rereading this, I come back, again and again, to “from this deep down, the waves only slip / between themselves.” That was one of the lines I first knew I would keep in the poem, one of the first lines that directed the piece—the concept of it, the man as a fish, the desperation of that. For me, imagery is as much about the surprise, the beautiful shock of it I admire in so many poets’ works, as the ability to make someone see. Waves slipping is something so visually apparent for me; in my eyes, it is the clearest way to convey drowning and emptiness and loss all at once, in a way that fits this piece. That power, even though it can come off only vaguely contextual in the overall whole of the piece, always draws me to it.
Ela Kini is a student based in New York. She loves poetry, prose, and coffee.
Interview with Brian Chan
Author of "my mother cries in a chinese restaurant that echoes a name most cannot pronounce—"
Claire: Tell us how you came to write! How did you begin to dabble in poetry?
Brian: As a child, I started out writing prose in English and writing classes at school. Eventually, I found poetry—and soon fell in love with it. It became a personal form of confession, and there was a distinct subtext—and self-identity—in poetry that I couldn’t quite find in most prose. Writing poetry was my way to subvert every law of writing I was taught as a student; I could place words how I wanted, and where I wanted. And yeah, even if the first many poems I wrote weren’t good (and I mean actually pretty close to horrible), at least the work felt like progress, and an experience I could claim as my own.
I’m also guilty of wanting to live in the “subtext” of words, meaning I hate expressing myself directly and openly. I think as children of immigrants, we’re used to communicating with our parents, who are often the closest people in our lives, through a diluted linguistic and cultural barrier. As a result, we’re conditioned to speak about love and hurt indirectly, hiding some desperately true intentions.
I still wonder if I write poetry simply because I hate journaling: because I feel the overwhelming urge to beautify pain, as if that’s the only way I can face it. With that, I’m also still trying to discern if I create poems to be confrontational, or ignorant, of my true thoughts and emotions. Luckily, this is also how I know I’m still growing as a writer.
Claire: The phrase “错不在你” in your poem is so poignantly powerful, and I love that it has the potential to be addressed toward both a mother and a child. How did you come to use this phrase? And what does this phrase mean to you personally?
Brian: As crazy and stupid as it sounds, I took this phrase right out of 魔道祖师 (Mo Dao Zu Shi), a Chinese donghua I watched years ago! And contrary to what my own poem suggests, this phrase doesn’t come up in regular Chinese conversations often, if any at all. Still, I gravitated to that expression as soon as I heard it in the show, because there’s something inherently poetic about the phrase, “错不在你.” As I wrote in the footnotes of my poem, the direct translation, “the wrong is not on / at / to you,” implies that the person a subject is speaking to is a place; that a body is a harbor for something metaphysical. That phrase was incredibly impactful to me, so even years before writing this poem, I knew I was going to use it eventually in my writing.
Claire: I love the subtle ways you draw together the mother and the killdeer throughout your poem. What drew them together in the first place? Is there a particular reason you chose killdeer as a recurring symbol?
Brian: I’ve always loved using birds in poems; observing how something so small can be so free, and still trapped by humankind at the same time. The killdeer is an especially fascinating and tragic species to me: Often the parent bird, when believing its offspring or eggs are in danger from an intruder, will willingly pretend to have broken wings or limbs to make itself seem like an easier target, distracting the intruder.
When deciding on the theme of maternal sacrifice for my poem, I chose to tie in the killdeer as the representation of a mother, who so often surrenders herself for the sake of her children. The explicit parallels between flight and immigration were thought of only after I had placed the killdeer and the mother beside each other in the poem.
Claire: The line “We beckon the American Dream only / with rattling tongues, our hungry shadows imprinted / on the sun ” is particularly breathtaking for me. Here, you are conveying so much to the reader about the complexity of the narrator and their place in the world. What made you decide to include this specific line?
Brian: I’ve always leaned towards the belief that urbanization, especially in foreign land, traps the immigrant. It’s the reason why even in a Chinese restaurant, the mother of this poem is still crying. It’s why the killdeer’s shattered eggs become skylines. Although immigrants flock to the United States in search of the American Dream, they’re simultaneously reduced to fuel for the economy. Even their bodies are not exempt from the grasps of materialism. I wanted to use “rattling tongues” as a symbol of both desperation and of the way we revert to animalistic instincts for this “Dream.”
Beyond our materialism, which I want to say is restrained to our economic systems on Earth (but with the advancement of space technology, it really isn’t anymore!), our ambitions are boundless.
I see the sun as a symbol of our own immensity: We are born out of stardust, and even as humans, we have the power to reclaim the stars that gave us life.
Brian is a Chinese-American writer from New York. You can find his poems published or forthcoming in The Emerson Review, Beaver Magazine, SUNHOUSE Literary, and more. He is the editor-in-chief of House of Poetry.
Interview with Emmanuella Chung
Author of "my mother cries in a chinese restaurant that echoes a name most cannot pronounce—"
Claire: 关계 feels so authentic and alive in all its details; it’s a memoir you really bring to life. How did you become interested in creative nonfiction? How did you choose the particular subject for this piece?
Emmanuella: I only became interested in creative nonfiction earlier this year. While taking dual-enrollment creative writing, I read On Writing Well by the masterful William Zinsser. Previously, I had pictured creative nonfiction as a limp extension of textbook writing, but Zinsser’s ability to find throbbing human pulses in subjects as varied as salt caravans to mechanical baseball games enamored me with the genre. During class, I also wrote my first memoir, the motor-neuron disorder piece referenced in 关계. Writing that memoir was an act of reclamation. For the first time since my recovery, I was able to think and feel deeply through the pain of losing control over my body, the glorious mundanity of scrubbing dishes. Probing the past forced me to honor the beauty of life that my thirteen-year-old self had stared down death to embody.
For creative writing class, I had initially wanted to write about my relationship with my grandmother, yet switched topics at the last moment. I stumbled upon Polyphony Lit’s Asian and Pacific Islander Language Contest a few days before the deadline. At that time, my family was touring Europe with my grandparents. I began there.
Claire: I would love to hear about more ways Korean and Chinese culture diverge and intersect within your life; how does that shape your writing?
Emmanuella: East Asian generalities shared by Chinese and Korean cultures peppered my earlier stories: service as love, respect for elders. When it came to characters of Korean vs Chinese descent, I split the difference. However, 关계 was my first ode to being a mosaic: containing both Korean and Chinese shards. Inevitably, I was inspired by my first visit to Korea. At first, I rued my awkward American hugs, the way I pronounced the Korean “rl” consonant like truck tires caressing broken glass. However, my relatives promptly enfolded me into their lives. Many of them had last seen me as a toddler whose pink spectacles needed to be strapped on. Yet, without reserve, they introduced me to Korean circle games about bunnies descending from heaven and Korean fads like smothering food in melted cheese. On New Year’s Eve, many Chinese families eat Nian Ye Fan, a celebratory feast where they save a seat for family members who couldn’t return home. As I joked and ate with my relatives in Korea, I felt like they had saved my seat since I first tasted oxygen in a Philadelphia hospital.
Differences in the intensity of Korean and Chinese culture exist as well. My mom once mused how she felt no tension of conformity strolling around in China, unlike in Korea or Japan, where she lived briefly as a college student. That may also stem from differences in our regional Chinese culture. Our tourist town stretches into fields, unlike Beijing or Shanghai. Tractors bellow down the street. The nag to look nice at grocery stores simply doesn’t stick.
However, the Korean/Chinese immigrant experience reflects that of many minority groups in China. As kids pour into schools built for and by Han Chinese, they lose their old language and customs. Local schools are almost always in Han instead of minority tongues, and there is no push to honor differences and diversity, unlike in America.
Claire: Each vignette within 关계 seems to explore a different moment within your life, with the first two vignettes being titled in Chinese and Korean respectively, and the third vignette then being a sort of combination between the first two titles. I’m curious as to why you chose to structure your story in this way and how you chose the title of each vignette. What does the merging of the phrases 关系 and 관계 into 关계 mean to you in the third vignette?
Emmanuella: As soon as I read the prompt, I knew the heart of my story would be a phrase shared by Chinese and Korean. I also knew I wanted Chinese to represent the challenges from my move. Korean would embody my grandmother’s immigrant story and introduce our “core relationship.” When the second section ballooned to twice the size of the first, I added a third section—a middleman—to embody our continued agency. Although I had first used the Chinese number for one (yī), the Korean number for two (yi), and the universal number “3,” I dislike the clunkiness of my original title, “关系/관계.” I played around and was saved by synthesis. Similarly to my previous memoir, 关계 meant reclaiming my fractured Asian-ness into a testimony to the resilience of love across language and cultural barriers, to the shattering and fusing of the wonderful pan-Asian myth.
Claire: The phrase “contended myself with knowing your edges” is heartbreakingly relatable. What does this phrase mean to you on a personal level?
Emmanuella: Edges poke out. They’re potent, obvious. My grandmother’s surface-level personality is especially edges, as 关계 details: love and scolding like twin lightning bolts. Ironically, I only began to understand her edges once I learned some Korean three years ago. I had always loved my grandmother with vague recognition, but I finally understood that she wasn’t exactly a nice person. Knowing her edges meant taking damage, yet also steeping in her love. Even that was a revelation for me.
A year passed. I tried reaching out again in Europe, but we talked in circles and half-chewed phrases. One day, I just gave up. Because of the previous year’s revelation, I felt as though I had checked off my familial duty, absolved my guilt, and soothed my ache for connection, at least partially. I shrugged off the beauty of knowing someone beyond how they cut me because I was “tired,” because binging Walking Dead at the hotel is always the solution.
Claire: 关계 beautifully explores multilingualism and culture across time and generations. Are there any other themes you find yourself gravitating towards in your writing? If so, what are they?
Emmanuella: Inevitably, I write about connection. As an expat forced to split from many friends, I love exploring the inevitability and impossibility of connection. It’s difficult not to grow fond of people you’ve known for years. Sometimes, it also feels impossible to know them beyond their edges. My writings explores that paradox with friends both local and abroad. I’m also very Gen-Z in that I write compulsively about teenage malaise and seeking truth. Those subjects entwine with my faith, as well as my doubts.
Emmanuella Chung is a Third-Culture Kid who lives in East Asia. Inspired by the ability of words to connect people across the globe, Emma has collaborated with young writers from Mali to North Macedonia. In her spare time, she loves to write, paint, and indulge in YA fantasy. She also co-edits the student journal New Wineskins.
Interview with Amanda Yu
Author of "inheritance as porcelain elegies"
Chelsea: What themes do you explore or what patterns do you notice in your writing? How does your writing style influence your greater life, identity, and role in society?
Amanda: I notice that my writing is influenced a lot by exploring identity. I often return to the themes of family, gender, and culture for inspiration, because they are topics that I feel deeply and passionately about. As for my writing style, I really enjoy experimenting with the structure and the shape of my poems. I like repositioning lines and words around the page, as well as trying out indents and spacing in different places across poems because I think spatiality and how a poem is physically formatted is another way to convey meaning. I think of my words as a way not only to communicate my personal feelings and identity (I think that writing is my form of catharsis), but also a way to connect with others in society who share similar feelings.
Chelsea: What are some stories, quotes, conversations, or sentences that have stuck with you? How do these memories and meaningful relationships shape your narrative voice?
Amanda: Some stories and conversations that have stuck with me are the ones passed down to me by my family. When I was growing up, storytelling was a big part of how my family taught me about our history and culture. My grandparents would narrate to me their own lived experiences (stories about heavier topics like serving in the military, going to labor camps, and coming to America with nothing, but also lighter stories of favorite meals, mishaps with a motorcycle, or mischief while in school), the cultural customs and traditions we have, our family’s stories, and old folk tales. The practice of storytelling has contributed a lot to my narrative voice. My grandparents immigrated to America with my parents, and their stories gave me an anchor back to our family in Taiwan and China. My family’s stories and the experiences they have endured are things I am reminded of when I think and write about my own identity and my family lineage.
Chelsea: What is something you would like to ask readers before or after they read your poem? What is a topic you can talk about for hours?
Amanda: I’d like to ask readers after they read my poem what they think about the interjections in Mandarin! I’m curious if they think it added anything to the poem, and how they processed the addition of a foreign language. That was something I was experimenting with when writing this poem, and I’m curious about how it reads or how it makes people feel. One (sort of random) topic I could talk about for hours is the utilization of the imagery about food in poetry. I think that food is something that connects people, whether that’s sitting down to share a meal, sharing a drink, or splitting a fruit. I am admittedly a huge foodie, and love to think about and describe food in my writing.
Chelsea: I am fascinated by your use of repetition, translation, and shape in “inheritance as porcelain elegies” - I was wondering more about the writing process behind your poem and how you used all of these individual elements to craft something so resonating and fascinating for the reader.
Amanda: When I started writing this poem, I remember knowing what structural aspects I wanted to incorporate in it before actually knowing what I specifically wanted the poem to be about. I wanted the shape of the poem to reflect a stream of consciousness (almost like a conversational confession shared between myself and the reader), so I envisioned the poem taking on a very free structure with many indents and spaces between the lines. I also knew that I wanted to incorporate phrases or words in Mandarin. Mandarin was the first language I learned, and I think that speaking and writing in Mandarin is an important part of my identity. Knowing I wanted to include those things, I circled back to the general question of identity for the topic of the poem. I am proud of my Chinese heritage, but there are also moments in which I feel confusion and vulnerability when it comes to navigating cultural norms and ideas, particularly those around gender. I think that the repetition in the poem emerged as a result of wanting to hammer in the idea of how complex and emotional traversing girlhood against the backdrop of my culture felt.
Amanda Yu is a rising senior from California. When she’s not writing, she enjoys watching horror movies, baking cookies, and playing with her Maltese Boba.
Interview with Riona Nanzeeba
Author of "বর্ষাকাল / borshakal / rainy season"
Mirabelle: I’d love to know how you came to write. What inspires your writing, and which writers do you look up to in your journey?
Riona: Good writing is contagious! Well-written stories inspire me to author my own. Some stories are such outpours of raw emotion that you can’t help but get caught in the tide, and the sea is my favorite place to be for this reason.
I have my favorite traditional authors like anyone else (Jen Silverman, Haruki Murakami, and Jhumpa Lahiri if you’re curious), but the writers that inspire me the most are my friends, those I’ve met both face to face and online. I can’t thank them all enough. All my love always to Cressie and Amber, and Ro, if you’re reading this, I owe you my pen. :)
Mirabelle: As writers, we often draw from our lives in our pieces. How much of your poem is based in personal experiences, and what parts of your life inspired you to write this poem?
Riona: borshakal is entirely about the country I’m from. Bangladesh’s identity has always been rooted in resilience and I find my ancestors’ reluctance to give up to be a source of personal strength. My grandparents lived through the Language Movement and my mother fought to keep my ability to speak Bangla as a testament to their struggle. I wrote borshakal as a tribute to my people whose language and spirit can never be snuffed out, and in light of the recent student protests, I’m overjoyed to say that this fact has not changed..
Mirabelle: You end the first stanza with the phrase, “the war won’t leave us alone,” which seems quite an abrupt shift from the idyllic imagery that precedes it. Could you provide more context to the war that you’re referring to and why you chose to address it in your poem? Does it have any relation to the nation of “fragmented hearts” in the previous line?
Riona: Bangladesh has always been a paradise of greenery and culture. I wanted to make the ancestral connection between the land and its people clear before delving into the conflicts that also make up my country’s identity, especially the Language Movement from 1948 to 1971. To me, the use of such sudden phrasing was the best way to represent the pervasive nature of Bangladesh’s turbulent past even in peacetime. “Fragmented hearts” once again refers to the Language Liberation war and the martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the peace that remains from their sacrifice.
Mirabelle: Your poem seems to juxtapose despair and tragedy in lines like “the sun seethes in jealousy over our sempiternal hope.” How do you balance these complex emotions in your writing, and what do you hope readers take away from this interplay?
Riona: I juxtaposed these conflicting feelings because they’re a way of life for many, not just in Bangladesh, but for many third-world countries around the world still dealing with the effects of post-colonization. The line you’re referring to is both literal (Bangladesh gets hot and humid!) and hyperbolic in the way that I believe not even the sun could outlast Bangladeshis commitment to the preservation of our identity. I hope my writing expresses to readers the beauty that crystallizes from struggle, the tragedy of a tradition of fine arts and poets plagued by poverty, and the fact that hope will always exist in a place like this. It has to.
Riona Nanzeeba is an 18-year old biomedical sciences student at Arizona State University. The walls in her house are thin, so she sings through her pen (but mostly her keyboard) instead.
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