Shan Shan Song was one of our Spring 2025 Digital Residents. As a part of this program, we do Q&As with our residents to feature them, their work, and their words. See our Q&A with Shan Shan below, and explore more Spotlights here.
TSW: Tell us about your work, writing, or project. What are you writing these days? How is your work changing, and how is it changing you?
Shan Shan Song: I just finished a chapbook about poems called Love and Rage: Poems for a Revolution about themes of love, yearning and queer intimacy during COVID-19, big mental health issues, big feelings, and community. The next chapbook will likely dive deeper into themes of political solidarity, communion and queer family. My work is changing in that I’m trying to write more autobiographical and prose poetry. Inspired by the Seventh Wave residency I’m changing my form up!
TSW: What is a question you’re asking yourself these days, and what is a question you or your work is asking of your reader?
SS: A question I’m asking myself these days is how do I tell the story of my lineage of being queer, trans and Asian-American as a self-described old soul of a goth elder, and how do I tell the story of my community. A question my work is asking of the reader is do you want to be healed and how? How do you heal? Who do you walk alongside when you walk with your community? How does your community change you and empower you? What gives you joie de vivre? Who helps you dream of a better world?
TSW: Who do you bring into the room with you when you write, and/or, who do you consider your work to be in conversation with? Who are you writing for?
SS: I bring my elders and the ancestors with me in the room when I write, whether that’s elders by blood or movement elders of choice such as Emma Goldman, Malcolm X, and Ursula K. LeGuin. I’m writing for my queer, trans, chronically ill and disabled community (both elders and young ones).
TSW: What’s a mantra or motto that you have in mind these days when you are writing or creating? Is there a writing routine or ritual that keeps you beginning?
SS: Be present not perfect. I light candles when I write to begin the portal of writing and I also try to be mindful and present in my breathing and get up to stretch my chronically in pain body.
TSW: What is something that someone said — a fellow resident, a past mentor, perhaps something from one of the bonus sessions — that helped change the way you see your writing or work?
SS: Be present not perfect is what someone said in the session. Also have people handle your art with care.
