WOTM: An Interview with Sage (@mygraveisneon)

31 JANUARY 2021

The Writer of the Month Project is a revised segment of The Plain Poets that looks into what makes a writer, be it their craft or ideas. At the end of every month, we will be conducting an interview with a selected writer, and we’ll be diving into their muses, their writing history and much more.

For our third Writer of the Month, we decided to interview Sage, who is known for her glorious writing account, @mygraveisneon on Instagram. Based in Spain, her feed takes on a unique take on the usual collage, but with a chaotic edge. The layers of images and fonts in her cover pictures are what intrigues me, and truly, it’s the perfect way to represent her pieces. Full of layers (and perhaps chaos).

As a writer, Sage finds her inspiration in her passion for writing. As if it were a movie, she romanticises all aspects of her life, including the details people tend to overlook. Personally, she admits that her life sometimes feels as if it were a poem; there’s always a metaphor somewhere, and it pretty much triggers something to write about. “Words whirl around them and I pick them like apples to place them softly among others.” she says, to explain what drives her to write.

Other than that, dreams are a big muse - some of her lines actually originate from dreams! If she thinks hard enough, her dreams can turn into poems. It is the only thing she would want as her forever source of inspiration. Contrary to what the others believed, she does not prefer writing over art. While poetry has remained her go-to, Sage actually has other means to be creative - an art journal for collages, a guitar, and dance. But she does admit writing’s the easiest (and the most convenient) out of them.

(I’d also like to add that she’s particularly fond of sculpture art as well. Not that she practises it.)

In terms of the why (she writes), she simply says this “because I can’t not.” A quote that deeply resonates with her is one by Virginia Woolf, and it is: When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me, I am in darkness — I am nothing. Truly, it is a beautiful quote, and it is no wonder why it’s constantly glued to Sage’s head. Speaking of which, a line that has been on her mind lately would be “the Eden that grew wild and untamed in its emptiness.”

“It’s not that I’m nothing to me, because words are just always there,” Sage explains, “a lot of my lines come to me unexpectedly, in the bus or half asleep or at a party. Writing is just a way of putting the words down; the poem is already written, formless inside my head.”

In terms of her favourite piece ever written, she’s pretty sure that she won’t be able to choose. (I mean, there are some pieces she likes more but that’s not the point). Honestly speaking, all of her pieces have their own individual personality and in their own ways, they’re equally perfect.

On a more interesting note, we wanted to look into how she classifies her pieces with colours. We’re not kidding! Though the writer says that she doesn’t exactly have synthesia, she perceives objects in a different light. That is, she sees colour and textures in everything. Overall, it depends on the poem. Considering how her style has shifted over time, her current narrative format exudes a soft beige tone. For pieces that are soft and happy, she sees them with an undeniable, yet insidious dark background. In terms of the themes that she frequently addresses in her works, the colours are black and cherry red, with a dash of baby blue that we register in flowers.

For projects that are not on Instagram, she does not have any at the moment. Sage reveals that while she did dabble in the publication of her own book, she ended up not moving forward with it because she realised that it wasn’t what she wanted to do. She has also made a magazine (or zine, as she calls it) of collages and poems but when it all came together, she didn’t see a reason to keep it. “I truly enjoyed the process but I’ve always thought art is charming in its ephemerality and it’s no different with writing, so I gave it [the zine] to a friend.” She says, “ I don’t think I’ll ever stop writing but I’ve never been very interested in recognition; fine by me if only a few of my followers read my poems.”

To end off the interview, we wanted to know the origins of her username. Turns out, it was a Twenty-One Pilots song that inspired it, specifically “Neon Gravestones”. At the time when she created the account, she had been into the band. It’s a song about suicide prevention, and the writer continues to say that she likes how her username has a profound meaning to it. Ironically, her poems contain a lot of trigger warnings, but according to her, the truth is way simpler. She also notes her affinity for neon tones as her username’s inspiration, and how she associated the luminescent spectrum to the topics and pieces she wrote about.

Here at The Plain Poets, we aim to identify these unique poets and writers and to put them on a pedestal via a platform everyone can support them. You may check out our page here.