“I have never thought of who I would be without writing. It’s always been an innate part of me, one that I have never considered or imagined I’d ever have to let go of.”
A few weeks ago I sat down with Phoenix Tesni, the 23 year old poet and multimedia artist, to discuss who she is as a creative and her work. Tesni published her poem “a child’s portrait of springtime in ten parts” with hand picked poetry in our first issue. The rest of her work can be found on her website, at https://www.phoenixtesni.com/portfolio.
1. How long have you been writing for, and how did you get started?
I think I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I remember this one time when I was four, I wrote a poem about my pet fish, and how food flakes were its favorite dish. It was a full-fledged poem, filled with silly little rhymes. It’s hilarious in retrospect, but I like the idea that I’ve always expressed whatever stories I had to tell through poetry.
As an early teenager, I started writing more consistently over blogs and social media, instead of scribbling haphazardly on my notebooks. At 17, I ran a literary magazine that is now defunct. Post-university, I started sending in my work to magazines more regularly, which is what I’m presently doing.
2. Where do you get inspiration? Further, what does your typical writing process look like?
I’m a person who believes in writing as expression more than craft. Of course, a perfect balance is what leads to a great poem, but primarily all of my work is a product of my dedication to life & all the tumultuous emotions that come with my experiences. There would be no art without wholeheartedness, even if the subject matter is bleak and hopeless. Poets do have artistic liberty, and we exaggerate and lie and make things up. That’s the fun of poetry as a creative medium. But all of whatever I write will be inspired by something very real and deeply personal to me, whether it’s an intimate memory, a captured moment, or a fleeting emotion.
My writing process will also often look the same. Sometimes an entire poem will come to me on its own, or a specific moment or emotion will hold me in a chokehold so strong that I will know I’ll want to write about it eventually. I note these little tidbits down — either the setting of a poem, or the mood, or the entire idea. The soul of the poem always comes first, and writing down the words and giving them structure & vocabulary come last. However, if I’m practicing writing as a craft, I will first spend an hour or two reading poems, analyzing themes and styles, and later try to incorporate the ones I feel the most inspired by into a poem. Still, it will almost always lead to a personal confession, even when I don’t intend it to.
3. Talk to me a little bit about specifically your piece you wrote for hand picked poetry, “a child’s portrait of springtime in ten parts”.
I wrote this poem more than three years ago in 2020, when I was a month away from turning twenty. The pandemic had just begun, and I had moved back home after university. I remember it was the first time I was at home as an adult with a job, so I spent an awful amount of time thinking about both my childhood & an adulthood that was yet to come, while also struggling to stay alive in an incredibly volatile environment & terrible mental headspace.
I think that as much as we change and evolve throughout our lives, there are also qualities that we were born with that stay with us until we die. For me, I think, like many others, that is the ability to empathize with people. I had it as a child when I anthropomorphized everything around me and gave it human emotions and feelings. I have it now and I’m sure I’ll have it forever, because I prioritize it more than anything else. Yet I often find that I don’t extend the same compassion that comes along with empathy to myself as I do to everyone else.
Combining all of this, this poem is a kind, compassionate love letter to my own self to show that there could still be a hopeful future, by reminding myself of the past — a future that I would want to live in, filled with autonomy, optimism, and genuine joy.
4. What does your writing mean to you? Who would you be without writing?
I have never thought of who I would be without writing. It’s always been an innate part of me, one that I have never considered or imagined I’d ever have to let go of. I can’t explain what writing specifically means to me, but I can speak of what words and articulation mean to me — it’s empowered me in ways I’ve never imagined. And I don’t mean like, “oh, I feel like such a #girlboss because I write,” but rather, “if I didn’t have these words, and if I didn’t have the ability to express them well, I would have been so helpless. I have such an infinite spectrum of terrifying & wonderful emotions inside of me, and words give me a chance to be able to understand them, share them with the world and with myself.” I owe language everything. I really would be very powerless without it.
5. I saw that you also practice art and photography– do all of these creative forms intersect for you?
Thank you for paying attention to my work and for this wonderful question! I believe that they do. I think it’s not just the art I create, but also every art form I consume intersects for me. My main personality trait is being an art consumer and creator. So I let my entire life be changed irrevocably with every new song I listen to, every artwork I see, every film I watch, and everything that human beings have poured their soul and energy into.
If I were to specifically speak about just my creative pursuits, I would say that photography and poetry intersect in more ways than my art does, and that’s mostly because I feel like I have a lot more to learn when it comes to visual art. If I see a moment I want to document, I can capture it perfectly on camera and with my words, but I can’t recreate it on paper with the same intensity.
One common fascinating intersection with all of these forms is how light binds them together. I’m always thinking about how there would be no photographs without light touching what’s being photographed. Light gives structure and dimension to all visual art pieces and sets the mood & tone. And poetry, for me, is a way to bring light into my life, and subsequently, share it with the rest of the world.
6. Where would you like to go with your art in the future?
With my writing, I would like to get to a point where I like my work enough to release it as a collection, perhaps by late 2024. I don’t particularly dislike my work, but a couple of days after I finish a poem, I start thinking that I could have, and can do better. And so as I keep striving for better, my dreams of releasing a collection keep delaying further and further.
With art, I would like to become more comfortable with gouache as a medium, practice digital illustrations more, and perhaps get them into the world. Last autumn, I released a mini zine for artists and poets to showcase their work, and I’d love to do that again this year. Apart from all of this… it’s always been a dream to release music into the world someday, so maybe that, some years into the future?
7. You also do work with a nonprofit — tell me about that and what it means to you!
My stint with the nonprofit ended very recently, but I can say that it has changed my entire life in ways I did not expect. For context, I worked at a school where I taught a few select students who came from poor, abusive, or emotionally volatile environments. My subset of seven students, though they were about to graduate elementary school, did not have basic literacy when it came to English, although it was evident that they were capable, smart, and extremely hardworking kids. None of these kids have parents who give them adequate time or attention, because they’re often struggling with financial troubles, addiction, or other terrible situations. These kids, even the ones with a reputation for being “difficult” liked me, asked me for more assignments, wanted to spend time together, and made me feel like I was always with family. My work not only made me realize the extent of my privilege, but also helped me find cheer in moments of despair. These kids were always so joyful. It was such a delight.
Apart from these seven kids, when I taught the entire class as a whole, there was also one girl who reminded me a lot of myself and had the strongest grasp on English amongst all her peers. I wanted to get her into a reading habit, but once I understood that she already did, I asked her if she wanted to learn how to write poems. We spent an entire afternoon outside a classroom, sitting in the sun, writing poems about her friends, the things she saw, and everything she enjoyed doing. It makes me really happy to think that I might have created a poet, and more than that– it makes me happy to think that I contributed to the world to make it a better place.
I used to work in the hospitality industry up till last year when I quit, and the Marxist in me hated every single moment I spent in a hotel because of the realization that I was actively participating in a severely capitalist & damaging industry. Now that my time with this organization is over, I would like to work with another again soon. The world seems much too cruel and hopeless to everyone, but especially so to vulnerable children. I want to keep a little bit of hope alive in them, and make them believe that the world can always be better.
8. What would your advice be for any writers reading this, upcoming or established?
I think intention has to play a big part in what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Not just with art, but also with everything else in life, it’s really easy to get lost as to what we really want. The world chases a lot of superficial ideals and recognition, and it’s also somehow really good at convincing us that we want the same things. But we’re all different people with different definitions of happiness & joy, and different wants & needs. For me, I write for the joy of it all. Or I write because I want to make someone else feel seen in their pain. So when my own writing puts me through torment rather than bringing joy, or if it doesn’t fulfill the purpose I want it to, it will always reflect in my art. Even if the intention is as simple as “writing about this will help me cope with what has happened,” I believe that having clarity is absolutely necessary to produce art that is authentic to who you are. It’s easy for even established artists to lose sight of why they began writing, or why they continue to make art.
For upcoming writers, I have only three things to say: be the person who believes in your own work the most, never equate your accomplishments to your worth, and don’t force yourself to write in moments when it feels excruciating. It will come to you eventually. Trust that it always will.
9. Okay, two personality questions. First, what is your current media obsession (book, tv, film…)?
This has genuinely been the most difficult question to answer so far because my answer to this changes every single week, so let me just go on about every single of my current favorites in all genres. I saw Barbie in the theaters recently, and I loved every moment of it. I’m halfway through a wonderful, action-packed & emotionally vivid Korean drama called Moving, which features one of my all-time favorite actresses, Han Hyo-Joo. I’m reading a book called Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown, which is equally insightful as it is aesthetically gorgeous. V of BTS is about to release his solo album called Layover in late September, which has two songs I’m already obsessed with. My current favorite poems are Relax by Ellen Bass, and Alone by Jack Gilbert. There’s something so enchantingly beautiful about poems with accessible vocabulary & simplistic formatting. I’ll stop, because this is already far too long for an answer that would have been entirely different had I answered this a week ago.
10. Second, if your work was a plant, what plant would it be?
A ghost plant! I think there are two plants by the same name – the one I’m referring to is a succulent that looks like a flower. It requires little to no water, but what it does need is loads of light to thrive. I love this question especially because I specialized in housekeeping & horticulture when I worked in the hotel industry, so I love that I get to combine two of my interests like this!
Phoenix Tesni (she/her) is a twenty-three year-old poet from New Delhi. A Best Small Fictions finalist, her works also appear in Surging Tide, Limelight Review, Sage Cigarettes, Celestite Poetry, and many other places. Phee likes to dedicate her life to consuming & creating art, indulging in all forms of South-Korean multimedia, and petting as many cats as possible. You can find her at phoenixtesni.com or on Twitter/Instagram @PhoenixTesni.
Izzy Astuto (he/they) is a writer currently majoring in Creative Writing at Emerson College. His work has previously been published by Hearth and Coffin and Renesme Literary, amongst others. Their Instagram is izzyastuto2.0 and Twitter is adivine_tragedy. More information about him can be found at https://izzyastuto.weebly.com/.
hand picked poetry 