What ideas and themes do you explore in your writing?
My first Chapbook was very concerned with otherness, the self, and identity, and the speaker in the poems was voicing them as if they were part of a collection in a museum. Mad Diva, my latest collection, is more about putting yourself on display, being a performer, and the collection also reimagines characters from the past. I think I’m seeking an understanding of why people are treated as “others” and I would look at that through both a personal, as well as a historical, perspective.
For example, in Mad Diva, the poems have titles which use the names of historical characters: Carmen, Delilah, Salome, but they are written in the first person, effectively in my voice. I am using external characters and stories to examine things that I have been thinking about. In one of my poems, Salome doesn’t want her boyfriend, Jonathan, to break up with her while he sits there plugging his phone in. It seems like a very mundane moment, but also a very modern one. So there is a sense being conveyed of a moment, quite a small moment, creating quite substantial, quite intense, feelings.
You use historical figures to investigate modern situations?
Yes, in a way. I am looking at these female figures, I could say even Orientalist depictions of some of these figures, if I am looking from the perspective of my Chinese heritage, and I am reimagining their stories, and inserting myself into their stories. At the same time I am updating those stories to offer exploration of both the history and what is happening now.
Where to Now?
I am working on setting poetry to music. I am making my own version of “Shéhérazade” inspired by the song cycle of Ravel, and that is going to be for mezzo-soprano and orchestra.
I am performing in a lot of operas at the moment so we will see what happens with that.
In terms of poetry, I am not writing another collection, but I have written bits and pieces. I don’t really know what I am going to be writing about but there will always be more writing.
If you would like to see more of the work of Cadence Chung go to the link below
