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Chris Tse ↝ feature interview

Tēnā koe, Chris. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us! Congratulations on your recent successes with Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (Nov 2021) and your third poetry collection, Super Model Minority (March 2022). 

Thank you! Congratulations on the launch of eel mag. What an exciting and timely development for our literary scene.

Your publication and editing history is prolific and super impressive. When did you start writing? What drew you to poetry as a medium? 

It started back in high school when my friends were writing poems and sharing them with each other. I’d always been into writing song lyrics so it felt like something I could get in on too. I won’t hide from the fact that I was an angsty teenager so poetry was a very good medium for getting some of those feelings out and onto the page. Also, like song lyrics, it gave me the tools to compress time and entire worlds with short bursts of language, while also allowing me to experiment with rhythm and musicality. When I learned you could take classes dedicated to reading and writing poetry at Victoria University, I made it a goal to gain a place in the undergraduate poetry workshop and, later, the MA in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. It went from being this silly little thing that I did with friends to… a career path?!

Your work often references or takes inspiration from other queer or camp art (Carly Rae Jepsen, anybody?). What queer art/writing inspires you? What queer art/writing are you enjoying currently?

For me, being a closeted teen and young adult meant seeking out queer art very secretly, and although I sometimes felt shame searching for and consuming this art, it gave life to the parts of me I was too scared to reveal openly. Now that I’m out and more comfortable about this part of my identity, I still see queer and camp art as a lifeline of sorts – a living, thriving connection between me and fellow queers. So much art inspires me – I can get as much of a thrill from a Troye Sivan song as I do from a 300-page queer novel. All of it reminds me how far I’ve come personally, and what remains possible when it comes to expressing queerness in art. My partner and I started watching the Netflix adaptation of Heartstopper and binged four episodes in one sitting, which was A LOT of queer teenage feelings to consume in a short space of time. It’s very lovely and adorable, and I’m so happy that something like it is available for young people today. I’ve not read the original graphic novels but I’ve heard they are very popular. Something else I’ve also been enjoying Self Esteem’s album Prioritise Pleasure. I’ve had her latest single ‘You Forever’ on repeat. She describes it as a song “about never getting over [her] girlfriend” and it’s the perfect addition to any sadbanger playlist. As far as writing goes, there’s been so much great stuff recently: I recommend people seek out the new books by Rebecca Hawkes, Cadence Chung, Oscar Upperton, and essa may ranapiri. I’m really looking forward to reading Anthony Lapwood’s debut short story collection, Home Theatre.

Before Super Model Minority, there was How to be Dead in the Year of Snakes, and HE’S SO MASC. Do you feel your poetry has changed in any way? In what ways has it remained the same?

I’d say there’s a lot more confidence in how I approach writing poetry now, and perhaps there’s something a little more deliberate too, compared to how I was writing five or ten years ago. Maybe the biggest change is that I don’t hide behind other voices or characters as much, and that’s because I wanted Super Model Minority to be a warts-and-all reflection of my own fears and anger. In my first two books I used characters as a way to protect myself from revealing too much, or to divert the reader’s attention away from who the ‘I’ of the poems was. I know they’ll assume it’s me anyway but I want there to be at least a little doubt!

What does it mean to be queer in the literary sphere of Aotearoa?

As queer people, we tend to have to weigh up risk and take chances a lot in our day-to-day lives – do I come out to a new colleague I’ve just met? Do I hold my partner’s hand in public? How should I behave in different contexts? I think this has an effect on how some queer writers approach their work – we take risks, we adapt, and we challenge what is expected of “queer writers”. So for me, to be queer (and/or POC) in Aotearoa’s literary sphere is to take charge of dismantling the systems and norms of what’s come before us.

Those who know you within the Aotearoa poetry scene sing your praises. You are a supportive and encouraging member of both in-person and online literary spaces and you seem to have a real commitment to uplifting emerging writers in your editorial work. Why do you see this as important? What role did mentorship play when you first started writing?

You’re making me blush! For me it’s a no-brainer to uplift those voices because without them poetry can’t continue to grow or find new audiences. It’s incredible and makes me so happy how poetry has grown in popularity over the last decade, and I’d argue it’s because there are more young writers being published, which in turn attracts a younger readership and helps to create that buzz around books and writers. When I talk to high school students about poetry, I’m impressed that they know so much about contemporary New Zealand poets. I, and other, poets benefit from this exposure too – it ensures that we too continue to have audiences and readers for our work. This includes the poets who are coming to poetry and emerging at later stages of their lives – this changing landscape benefits them too because that increased readership is looking for a greater diversity of voices overall. I’ve been so lucky to have been taught, supervised or mentored by the likes of Bill Manhire, Chris Price, and Siobhan Harvey, all of whom have had a major impact on both my work and the career I’ve forged as a writer. Mentors have many roles to play, and some approach the role with differing levels of formality or structure. It might not be the right arrangement or solution for every developing writer, but for me it certainly gave me a level of security and direction to keep me focused on my writing.

What would you say to an aspiring poet looking to develop their craft?

Be prepared to fail and to learn from those experiences. Also, I think there’s something in acknowledging that you might not be ready to write certain poems, or to tackle a particular project. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the last few years is how life experience and technical ability, or craft, can go hand in hand. I started my MA in creative straight out of my undergraduate degree at the age of 22. In hindsight, I should’ve waited a few more years to live a little and learn more about myself – it would’ve made so much more of a difference about what I could write about, and how I could go about it. Super Model Minority really does feel like the result of years and years of working hard at my craft whilst also knowing what lens or perspective I bring to the issues and subjects I’ve chosen to write about. 

When selecting poetry for the Spinoff’s Friday Poem series, what poems excite you?

One of the interesting things about editing the Friday Poem is that gives me a glimpse into what’s on people’s minds, and for the last few submission periods I’ve seen some recurring themes or topics in the submitted poems. Obviously there was a lot of lockdown and Covid-19-related poetry last year, but the most recent submission round also produced a lot of poems about birds for some reason. That’s why I tend to gravitate towards poems that stand apart from the rest of the submission pool and are unique in their subject-matter or perspective. I’m also looking for poems that surprise me linguistically – how are they are using language in new ways, or breaking from convention and expectation.

The final poem in Super Model Minority, ‘Funeral arrangements for the end of the world,’ creates a sense of open-ended possibility and uncertainty, in a way that is both unsettling and hopeful. The poem (and the collection) ends with the instructions:

“Pass through the gate and walk until you reach a door. Knock, and hope that whatever’s behind it is kind.”

What role does poetry have to play in queer hope and futurity?

Many of the poems in Super Model Minority started from a place of anger and sadness, so it was important to me to have the book end on a hopeful note, even if there is still a trace of uncertainty and of not knowing what waits for us on the other side. When I was younger, the future was about hoverboards, flying cars, and teleportation. Nowadays it’s about how we’ve fucked up the world and those in power or with money are falling back on old prejudices and bigotries. In spite of this, queerness has always represented possibility to me – to be able to imagine and grow into a version of yourself that makes you happy. A lot of writing by queer writers in all genres nods to that possibility – it presents a full spectrum of worlds that some of us may have thought would never be available to us. We need to keep reminding ourselves, and readers, that hope can look very different to different people, and they’re all valid.

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