Interview
Scifaiku, Dark Fairytales, and Poetry
Interview with Christina Sng, Author of The Gravity of Existence
“How we define monster is terribly subjective. I always get upset watching giant monster movies where humans feel compelled to destroy them even when the monsters have done no harm to us.” — Christina Sng
Christina Sng’s The Gravity of Existence (Interstellar Flight Press, 2022) is an exquisite collection of dark poems that meditates on monsters and myths, aliens, and apocalypses. In this interview with writer Archita Mittra, Christina sits down to talk about the subgenre of scifaiku, poetic influences, monsters, and retellings, along with some helpful advice for young speculative poets.
INTERSTELLAR FLIGHT PRESS: The poems in this collection fall under the genre of scifi-haiku (scifaiku). What drew you to scifaiku?
CHRISTINA SNG: I was drawn to the beauty and brevity of the form where so much can be said in a mere three lines.
IFP: As someone who has published several award-winning volumes of poetry alongside other creative work, was poetry always your preferred medium? What are your inspirations and influences?
CS: Poetry was always my favorite medium, even as a child. I think it’s to do with how my mind finds a heartbeat in everything. The rhythm of words coming together to conjure a story.
I’ve been most influenced by the late Sylvia Plath, who was a master of the form.
IFP: While reading this collection, I was struck by how evocative your poems are, despite their brevity. With just a couple of phrases or sentences, you create such a vivid and emotional world for the reader to get lost in, such as in “Cinderella” (especially the bit about “glass slippers/stained with blood/from the stepsisters’/severed toes”) or “Little Red in Haiku.” It reminded me of another collection The Smallest of Bones by Holly Lyn Walrath that does something similar. So, tell us about your style. How did you hone your poetic voice? Is there a reason why you are drawn to brevity, as opposed to longer poetic forms or elaborate prose?
CS: My father was a man of few words, so few that when he spoke to me, I remembered, especially in his final years. There is great beauty in brevity. He taught me that. There is so much power in what’s unsaid.
While editing, I would keep taking out words until the meaning completely changed. Then, I would backtrack to the last change, where the poem still retained its meaning and the edit was done.
IFP: In fact, my favorite section, “Childhood Tales,” retells several popular fairytales with a dark twist. “Alice in Wonderland” particularly stood out to me in the charming way you evoke the Cheshire Cat’s grin in the vision of an autumn moon. Retellings often focus on certain aspects of the original tale to offer a commentary on our times. So, what were your thoughts and aims when you penned these poems? As a reader or a writer, how do you approach retellings in general?
CS: With retellings, I like to add a modern-day touch. Many of these tales are borne from another age with different norms and ideals. Retelling the same story with our lens helps us relate better to it.
IFP: In other poems, such as “Magic,” “Found Footage,” or “Life on Kepler-452B,” you manage to tell a complete story with such a few words. It has such a lovely flash fiction quality to it, recalling Ernest Hemingway’s classic six-word story: “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.” So, can you talk us through the process of writing a poem?
CS: Thank you for your kind words! As for the process, I sit down and get comfortable, pick up my favorite pen and notebook or else, my favorite note app, and think of a topic before writing.
Get Archita Mittra’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
It’s strange to describe my writing like automatic writing. The story comes to me, and I’m just penning it down. The thinking part for me comes with the editing, which shapes the piece to how I want it to be.
IFP: I was also fascinated by the poems in the “Real Monsters” section of the book, especially “Blood” and “The Joy of Travelling”. In those two, you write about vampires in a way that makes the reader curious about the way they experience the world and also sympathize with their predicament. It brought to mind a quote by Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong that goes, “What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be.” So, what is a “monster” to you? How do you feel about the way monsters have been depicted in media? What would you change about that if you could?
CS: To me, a monster is something that hurts others. We too can be monsters in retaliation or self-defense. It’s all semantics.
How we define monster is terribly subjective. I always get upset watching giant monster movies where humans feel compelled to destroy them even when the monsters have done no harm to us.
In this way, the media portrays monsters as different from us and should be destroyed. I think that’s wrong. That isn’t teaching us inclusion, but division.
There’s probably only one or two giant monster movies where the monster is led to a safe place to live in peace. But most, they are destroyed. I’ve watched many of them, and it’s a demoralizing end to witness.
IFP: Poetry is often sidelined in literary markets, and speculative poetry seems to be an even niche genre. So, what are your thoughts on contemporary speculative poetry? Do you think speculative poets get enough visibility? Are there any upcoming poets that we should be reading or watching out for?
CS: Speculative poetry is a wonderful genre, with many poets doing incredible work. And no, we don’t get enough visibility. There are too many poets to mention, but here’s a guide: if you’ve not heard of them, give them a try. These days, most poets have samples online. If you like their samples, buy their book. They may become your next favorite poet.
IFP: What is your advice to young poets who are still struggling to find their voice?
CS: Write authentically. This doesn’t mean send it out for publication when you’re not comfortable with sharing this voice with the world yet. But write true to yourself. Your life. Your experiences. Your story.
IFP: What projects are you working on currently? When can we read more of your striking and evocative poetry?
CS: I’m compiling my next “A Collection of…” horror poetry tome for Raw Dog Screaming Press, and it’s a monster of godlike proportions. It may take a while because it’s not complete yet.
The goal is also to work on more fiction and finish this novel I’ve been pottering about with for over a decade.
In the meantime, you can find all my announcements on my Facebook page /christinasng.
Christina Sng’s book of speculative haiku is out now from Interstellar Flight Press! Order your copy today.
About the Author
Christina Sng is an award-winning poet, writer, essayist, and artist. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online venues worldwide and is translated into six languages. She is the author of A Constellation of Songs (Origami Poems Project), Catku (Allegra Press), 2017 Elgin Award nominee An Assortment of Sky Things (Allegra Press), 2018 Elgin Award runner-up Astropoetry (Alban Lake Publishing), 2017 Bram Stoker Award® winner A Collection of Nightmares (Raw Dog Screaming Press), 2020 Bram Stoker Award® winner and 2021 Elgin Award runner-up A Collection of Dreamscapes (Raw Dog Screaming Press), and the collaborative poetry collection Tortured Willows with Lee Murray, Gene Flynn, and Angela Yuriko Smith.
Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
