Hello Emily!
Hello Emily!
An interview with poet & writer Emily Sun about co-editing and publishing 'Hello Keanu!' — a brand new anthology of pop-culture poems inspired by the one and only Keanu Reeves
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This week, I’m thrilled to welcome West Australian writer, poet and debut publisher Emily Sun to Thursdays After Lunch. We’ll be chatting about her experiences co-editing and publishing 'Hello Keanu!', a brand new poetry anthology inspired by Keanu Reeves.
I first met Emily around fifteen years ago when we were studying postgraduate Creative Writing here in Boorloo/Perth. We both had young sons at the time so we were deep in the trenches of balancing new motherhood with writing and earning an income. I’ve loved watching Emily build her career since then, and I’m in awe of her talent and her creative drive. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.
Guest Bio:
Emily Sun
Emily Sun grew up on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar in Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia. Her poetry and prose have been published in various journals and anthologies including Meanjin, Growing Up Asian in Australia, Cordite Poetry Review and Australian Poetry Journal. In 2021, Emily published a stunning poetry collection, Vociferate (Fremantle Press, 2021), which was shortlisted for the 2021 WA Premier’s Book Awards and highly commended in the 2022 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry.
Emily is also raising a teenager with her husband while working on a historical fiction project for her Creative Writing PhD at the University of Western Australia. This weekend, together with her co-editor Sarah Yeung, she will launch Hello Keanu!, a poetry anthology inspired by actor Keanu Reeves.
In the process of bringing this inspired collection into the world, Emily and Sarah have created indie imprint Momolo Books, which, according to its striking website, ‘[specialises] in pop-culture poetry … [and] reflects the vibrancy of contemporary culture.’ I’m so excited to see where this imprint goes.
As for me, Keanu Reeves and I go way back:
I was first introduced to Keanu Reeves (by my friends Janis and Kelly, back in the nineties) in the role of Ted in the Bill & Ted movies. We were blessed with so many blockbuster Keanu Reeves films in that era: Point Break (1991), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Speed (1994), The Matrix (1999), to name just a few.
Needless to say, we were all head over heels in love with tall, dark and delicious Keanu. He was extraordinarily beautiful, yes, but he was also clearly good at heart.
Of course, we were fourteen and perhaps too easily won over by a perfect face, but I think it’s fair to say we weren’t wrong. Keanu has turned out to be one of pop-culture’s wisest, kindest and most down-to-earth celebrities. Truly, what’s not to love about Keanu Reeves?
Interview:
Q: Emily, curating a poetry collection is such a generous act. You and Sarah have created an opportunity for poets and writers, and a new collection for readers to love. What inspired you to do it, and how did you and Sarah pull it together?
It started as a joke at the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival three years ago when I was on a poetry panel. I was asked that inevitable final question: ‘What’s next?’, and as I had not prepared a pithy response, I said I would create a book all about Keanu Reeves.
It wasn’t completely out of context because I have a poem in my book titled ‘Culinary Interpretations’, and he’s the punchline in that poem. There’s a line about Heathcliffe (from Wuthering Heights) being a Chinese princeling and looking like an angry Keanu Reeves. It’s my ‘go-to’ poem.
I met Sarah (who was born after I’d taken down Keanu from my bedroom wall) when I started my PhD. I can’t remember when or how we started working on the grant as it was a really organic process. Between us, we had all the skills we needed to make Hello Keanu! happen.
Q: Still, this was a time-consuming commitment on your part.
I have no idea what compelled me to do it, because I’m currently in my ‘sandwich’ years, where I’m navigating both the aged-care and school systems. It’s definitely not something I could have managed alone.
Q: I hardly need to ask this, but why Keanu Reeves? And how did you settle on the title? Titles are so difficult.
I always read my Keanu poem (from Vociferate) when I’m asked to read a poem, and when I reflected upon why it is the ‘go-to’, I realised that it is one that I know will connect with many people, because I’ve mentioned Keanu Reeves. People connect with him, or his celebrity, in their own unique way. Some connect with certain characters in his films, others with his internet memes, or his well-known acts of kindness, tolerance, and generosity. Keanu contains multitudes!
This is very much, for me at least, a nostalgia project. For a while now, I have been thinking about how, when I was growing up, there were more universal cultural touchstones. Everyone knew who Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana, Mother Theresa, and Michael Jackson were. It’s great that there is more diversity now, with the advent of Youtube and social media, but then the flip side to that is that culture has become more fragmented and communities have become more polarised, and angry!
Social media, and other companies, use anger-marketing to grab our attention and tap into a primal emotion in the name of profit, and they want us to live in their specific virtual world. It’s not enough just to pop in and like a few cute cat videos. It used to be rage against the machine, but now it’s rage IN the machine—the longer the better for the shareholders.
Anger is necessary for change. But sustained anger is harmful and does nothing really. I began thinking about what might connect people who would probably have nothing in common these days, since so many of the figures we grew up with are either dead or problematic. And the only person I could think of was Keanu Reeves.
As for the title, many moons ago, I had an anonymous blog called Hello Keanu! with a pink love heart. It may have been from that period where all blogs were anonymous, and no one shared anything online.
Q: I wish I could read that blog now, Emily! And I love that you were essentially inspired by a desire to help others connect through a common interest. After you’d put out the call for poems inspired by Keanu, were you surprised by any aspect of the submissions?
Both Sarah and I were overwhelmed by the number of submissions we received. One of the most challenging aspects of this project was rejecting so many quality submissions from emerging and established writers. There were many submissions that were inspired by John Wick of course, as this is Keanu’s most recent franchise, and it’s a film watched by both older and younger Keanu fans. There were also quite a few inspired by The Matrix, but almost as many, I would say, were inspired by My Own Private Idaho. And what was surprising about that was that not all of them were from Gen-Xers. Many younger people, including those born after the film was released, submitted poems about Scott Favor (Keanu’s character in My Own Private Idaho).
It would take too much time to list every poem that stood out for me, and I have to add here that the ones that I connected with were not necessarily the ones Sarah connected with. One of the strengths of the collection is that we are from different generations, so we love Keanu for very different reasons. I had a poster of Keanu as Johnny Utah tiled across my bedroom window and fantasised about returning to my 20th high school reunion with him as my date (which could potentially have happened, but that is another story), whereas Sarah’s connection with Keanu is through his films, which she watched with her mum, who is a big Keanu fan.
Q: If this is your first collection as editor and publisher, I imagine it must’ve been a steep learning curve. What would you say are the key take-aways from this experience?
Sarah was not a first-time editor and publisher. Prior to this, she single-handedly put together the zine Zou Mat Je. But we were both first-time book publishers.
We had to make some very ruthless decisions. The collection would have looked very different if it had only had one curator. There was give and take, and while there were perhaps five or six poems that we both immediately said yes to, there were a few where we had to negotiate and argue our case. But even culling the ‘maybe’ ones was really difficult!
My key take-away is that it’s worth applying for a bigger grant to pay typesetters, layout editors and designers. Always go with local businesses or suppliers because then you do not have to worry about whether your books will be delivered on time. We used a printing company where the friendly salesperson knew how to make a book from beginning to end. I also learnt that typesetting experimental poems is far easier than typesetting block text in Adobe Indesign. I naively thought that it would be as easy as Word, and that all I’d have to do was cut and paste the text, click ‘block’ and that would be it.
Q: Vociferate is a rich and varied collection, full of striking imagery and insights, as well as pop-culture references and crossovers. Can we expect the same kind of energy in Hello Keanu, or should we expect something completely different?
Vociferate was a sole-author collection and this is an anthology with an eclectic mix of works by a group of writers from all walks and stages of life. You’ll have to read it and let me know what you think.
Q: Sometimes talking about a writing project too soon, when it’s still incubating, can cause the magic to leak out, which can spell the end of that work. With that in mind, no pressure to answer this next question! But fans of Vociferate and your short fiction will no doubt be keen to hear what you’re up to in your own creative work. Can you tell us anything about it?
Life is short. There’s so much good stuff out there I want to read, and I haven’t had the time to read it. I haven’t had time to listen either. I’m not talking about podcasts or audiobooks, but to listen to the stories of the people around me. My father is 91 and has Alzheimer’s. Until his diagnosis, I always thought he’d be around forever and that he’s already told me so much about his life that I knew it all. But going through boxes of his old photographs and letters, I have more questions. He has lost his short-term memory but he still has his long-term memory.
There’s too much noise out there, and I really don’t need to add to it. I’m not sure when or if I will publish a sole-author work again. Vociferate received a few significant nods, so my ego is satiated. Ask me this question again in twelve months time. Who knows what the future holds?
Thank you for giving me an excuse to fill a newsletter with pictures of Keanu Reeves. Assuming he can’t make it to the launch, will you be mailing him a copy of Hello Keanu?
Do you have an address? :)
Sadly, no! But I think he’d love a copy, seeing as he’s a poet himself.
Readers, if you have any ideas as to how Emily and Sarah might get Keanu Reeves a copy, please let me know!
And that’s it for this week. Thanks for joining me on Thursdays After Lunch!
Joanna
Buying Hello Keanu!
You can find Hello Keanu! in several bookstores in Perth and in Margaret River, so far. And if you can’t find it at your local bookstore, you can always request it. Alternatively, order it online at Beaufort Street Books, Margaret River Bookshop, or the Momolo Books website. Alternatively, you can buy a copy at the Boorloo/Perth launch this weekend.
Thanks for reading ‘Thursdays After Lunch with Joanna Morrison’! Subscribe to receive new posts and support my work — it’s free.
My name is Joanna Morrison. My debut novel, ‘The Ghost of Gracie Flynn’, is an atmospheric mystery novel in which three university friends are divided by a tragic death. Eighteen years on, they’re reunited, but when another body is found, the ghost of Gracie Flynn has a story to tell about the night that changed their lives forever.
Party on, Jo and Emily! Such a brilliant, bodacious interview! What a thrill to have a poem in this awesome anthology!
I HAVE to read this. I've been striving to consume "gutsier" art in 2024 and this definitely fits the bill!