Mad Diva
by Cadence Chung

In Mad Divas, Cadence Chung ponders on the great themes – Love, Death and Time – while dashing through the nights of Wellington city, glammed up, perfumed and hungry to feel alive. But it’s not just her: there are other mad divas in this book, come to play from the past. Life becomes a theatrical, hedonistic affair, full of cocktails and kisses and designer labels; we’ll all be dead soon, so why waste time on anything less? Chung explores desire – sexual, but also the desire to be loved and accepted (by the self, as well as others), and the desire to become something: a woman, a lover, a poet. This desire is, perhaps, the driving force of this gem-studded collection.

The word ‘diva’ means ‘goddess’ in Latin, and ‘star’ in Italian, and is used in that sense as the name for a female opera singer. It is helpful to know that Chung is a classical singer (and composer, and commentator on RNZ Concert), and this (or a version of this) is the narrator. Chung also, presumably, uses it in its pejorative sense: she is self-aware, and at times self-conscious – in ‘Old masters’, she points out the making public of the private:

[…] didn’t we all write poems and
make the private disgustingly public for every bookshop window to flaunt?

When I studied creative writing, we were told never to write about writing – it was said to be boring, and too obvious. But I disagree. The writing process can be interesting in itself. Many readers are writers or are interested in writing. Chung peers at the makeup of a poem, why we write them, and their moral implications. In ‘Borderline sonata’ she asks:

I write poems like I write love letters
like I write pre-emptive eulogies
which is to say
perhaps I give away too much
which is to ask
am I doing too much?
which is to ask
am I too much?

She breaks the fourth wall, and these small breaks in form are windows that let us sit a little closer to her. She encourages intimacy and finds comfort in it. This is from ‘Muse Witch’:

They say all poetry is about Love, Death,
and Time, and what a horrible thing a poet
is, writing about these instead of living
them, deep inside a lover thinking about
what a sensual poem it’ll make.

The book makes ample use of operatic language and references. The stage – literally and figuratively – features characters from famous operas. ‘Scheherazade sits in the back seat with me / while we Uber into town’; Carmen tells us she ‘sang the Habanera / like a bat out of hell that night’. In ‘Lucia’, ‘the soprano on stage reaches the 20-minute mark of weeping’. I’m far more knowledgeable about opera now that I have read this book, something I love about reading, particularly in poetry – following clues and unlocking further secrets. I am sure readers with existing knowledge of these operatic works, or who dive into research, will experience even deeper readings of these poems.

It is the same with a series of poems, their titles named for Greek heroes, near the end of the book. The series title is ‘Metamorphoses’, so perhaps these poems signal the narrator’s metamorphosis into and through these different heroes. Reading the book feels, at times, like watching the film Midnight in Paris – bustling around in the metropolis, meeting iconic figures who Chung uses as foils for the protagonist’s own self-realisation.

I wondered if the characters in this book are ones Chung has played on stage, and if she was trying on different costumes and taking them into her real world, as she goes forth into adulthood. Or are they mirrors, helping her see herself from different perspectives? With Scheherazade, the speaker says: ‘I try to be like her, swallow my histories in / rattles of metal, hide my grandmother’s jade in / the back of my jewellery box. But my / foreignness finds me anyway’. Or is she attributing famous names to ex-lovers, self-mythologising? Is she exploring the performative role society demands of women? I think she is doing it all – these poems are grand, generous, and aspirational.

The poems sparkle with accessorised language that paints vivid (and sometimes startling and perfect) images of the city’s fashionable youth. Chung uses a comical mix of classical and contemporary imagery and language; she makes many specific references – Instagram, Facebook marketplace; ‘that cheap stuff / from Mecca that little girls wear’. Poems glitter with luxury goods, with the ‘hot sweet smell’ of Dior and the YSL perfume ‘that smells like psychotic jasmine’ and a perfume bought ‘because it was named / after Duchamp’; with negronis and ‘the allure of bitter orange’; with ‘Metro Top 50 Wines’, with pink gin. It’s not all glamour: there’s also the bus stop, Farmers, Whitcoulls and the ‘cheap-Clinique-Diet-Coke / cacophony’ at a dive bar. This is the modern-day bohemian lifestyle – a poet’s life – and Chung writes herself into it.

Chung is twenty-two years old, writing in ‘Question’ of ‘my near-empty checking account / and my embarrassing over-18 card’ and complaining about ‘old white people’ in the foyer. While her age shouldn’t distract me from her work, it does make me marvel at the maturity of her craft. She writes of a life curated to hold and witness beauty, glamour and passion, but there is an ever-present current of darker thoughts that swirl beneath ‘every shimmering skin, every satin / silk’. It is this darkness that is entangled with desire, and it is this that she must reconcile within herself. By the end of the book, I believe she has. There is a personal growth – an emotional evolution – that occurs within these pages, that makes them even more special and weighted.

Mad Divas is an ode to poetry and its substrates. These feel, to me, like coming-of-age poems, where the poet begins to look tenderly at her past versions. There is a kind of nostalgia even as things are happening, like a life lived in prophetic perfect tense:

It would be enough for me, to sit
in white dorms forever,
the blue night heaving through open windows; enough
to lean from high places and feel the city
grope down my shirt.

…

For I’ve witnessed it all:
the wet kisses in parking lots
the hallway goodbyes, the traffic lights
glinting like eyes, the rushes for buses,
the unknown

hours of walking each brick
of Cuba Street
together
and not knowing if you’d ever ask me to come back to your flat.

The Dove soap
moulting in the shower –

Did it mean nothing?
What more
did I want?