In Conversation with Sofie Drew

I’m back at the Glorious Art House, this time to talk with Sofie. She is ENIGMA’s current Head of Poetry and was recently elected as our next Journal Director.

Despite only joining ENIGMA in September, Sofie quickly established herself as a vital member of our team. She has led this year’s poetry editors with a tireless approach and conviction. Furthermore, she has been an ever-present at our social events. Not only is she a talented writer, but also a humorous and well-meaning individual.

You can find more of her work here.

Ben Blackwell: Thanks for joining me this morning. We're going to talk about some of the writing that you've sent me, starting with a bit of an introduction to the type of stuff you typically write. So far with Enigma, you’ve primarily published poetry, which makes sense as you’re Head of Poetry. You’ve sent me some fiction you'd like to discuss too. Would you say you have a stronger preference for one form over the other? Or is it more of a case of you writing whatever form feels right for the specific story?

Sofie Drew: I definitely do a lot more poetry than anything else because I think the way that I write tends to come in a sudden burst rather than anything more sustained, something longer like fiction would need. Whereas with poetry it's a lot easier to just write it all out and then it's done. I don’t have to look at it again.

BB: Would you say you’re more of an intuitive, strike while the iron is hot type writer, than a planner?

SD: Yeah, definitely.

BB: Okay. In that kind of vein, do you have any particular poems or authors that you specifically cite as inspirations to you.

SD: Yeah. Recently, I've been trying to do more research into the Beat writers because I think I want to do my diss on them maybe. But I really like Jack Kerouac in particular. Last year, I read On the Road and I actually think that's inspired a lot of my writing. I really love this idea that there is this constant moving on and constantly going on to the next thing to the point where you eventually crash. The idea really stands out to me and I think that's in a lot of my writing, whether I realise it or not.

BB: I haven't read On the Road, but from the people I’ve spoken to who have read it, it seems to be quite a polarising book, because some people love it, absolutely love it, but some people find it a bit meandering and a bit plotless, if that makes sense. I’m guessing you’re more interested in that state of fluidity?

SD: Yeah, yeah.

BB: Moving on to Bambi, which is a fiction that was part of your creative writing module. Within it, there's this deep sense of lingering regret prompted by the objects on the floor around the narrator. How did you balance the props within this story with the memories associated with them?

SD: I had these images in my head that I wanted to put together. And so, that's how it came about really. I had this idea of smashed CDs everywhere and that was something I've been wanting to put into a poem for a while. I just had it as a line – “smashed CDs” – in my reminders app. I wanted to have that image and then all these other images came along and with them, they already had these emotions attached to them.

BB: It reminds me a little bit of the way that the Modernists imbued memory to objects. Someone like Marcel Proust with his idea of involuntary memory and Virginia Woolf to an extent as well. You describe the different music of all the smashed CDs in the story: “Bossanova, Sunburn, the ‘Bridget Jones’ soundtrack.” Obviously, they’re all very different types of music. I’m not a poet myself, but I've always considered poetry to be closer to music than something like the novel, for example. I just wanted to ask you, if you'd say music plays any influence in your writing.

SD: Oh, that's a good one. I know a lot of people don't like this, but I listen to music while I'm reading and while I'm writing. I listen to a lot of Dominic Fike. I feel like there's a vibe there that I really like and it goes into some of my writing. Sometimes I’m just listening to music and I don't even know what I'm listening to, but it's just there in the background. So I think there's probably quite a few random influences that I don't even realize.

BB: So you put just anything on shuffle rather than having a specific playlist.

SD: Yeah. Actually though, Bob Dylan, because I associate him with the Beat writers. When I’m writing something influenced by the Beat writers, I often listen to Bob Dylan.

BB: I remember there was a bit of controversy when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. There was a big debate about whether songwriting could be classed as literature.

SD: Yeah, I definitely think so. It's like Kendrick Lamar, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music and there was a lot of controversy around that, but I definitely think music can be poetry.

BB: Even in Exeter, last year Stormzy got an honorary degree.

SD: Really?

BB: Yeah. It was also to do with setting up a publishing imprint, Merky Books, as part of Penguin Random House. But yeah, there’s definitely an overlap between music and literature. Moving onto your poetry, I want to talk about Tarmac. When I first read it, I was a little bit disorientated until I reached the last line where it’s revealed the poem is a child’s dream. Was that a case of creating art from real life or imagination?

SD: I think a bit of both really. It definitely came from a feeling of claustrophobia, which a lot of my writing comes from. The sense of being trapped in your head and then when that happens, the lines between reality and imagination or dreams blurring together. And just the claustrophobia of that, not being able to escape that.

BB: It has a lot to do with interiority and perception in that sense as well. Would you say they are two big things you push in your writing?

SD: Yeah, definitely.

BB: Within that poem are some really vivid images. One I want to explore, which I'm not sure I fully got—

SD: I probably didn't get it either.

BB: —you talk about “d words” within Tarmac. What were you trying to signify there and what effect were you trying to achieve?

SD: I'm trying to think now. I think the dusty barn, and this is really random, but I'm pretty sure a few days before I wrote it, I watched some Post Malone video where he was in a barn, playing a guitar. For some reason that image really stayed with me, just the barn itself. That was something in my dream that just came through. I'm not sure I can really explain it much more than that. It's pretty much a mystery to me as well.

BB: The last piece I want to talk to you about was a drama you wrote in response to the theme of flying for BBC Radio 4. First off, very cool, I just wanted to say.

SD: It was really exciting.

BB: How did you become aware of that opportunity and how did you find the experience working with this bigger corporation?

SD: When I was 15, I entered this thing called BBC New Creatives. Then with some piece of writing, which looking back was really bad, but it somehow got through and I went to this development day in London. Unfortunately, it did happen during the pandemic so then a lot of stuff ended up being online. But anyway, I got to direct and write another audio drama which is awesome, and it’s in the BBC archives somewhere, I guess. A producer contacted me after finding that and then asked me to do this.

BB: Okay, so there was another bit of writing before this that led to this bigger opportunity.

SD: Honestly, I'm really thankful because when I first found it, it was just an Instagram advert. So I'm really thankful for that because then eventually it led to this. It was really exciting getting to work with professionals. For Flying, I got to go to a proper recording studio in London. Talk to the actors. It was really exciting. I felt like a proper professional. Not really, but you could pretend.

BB: Were you a bit nervous going into that?

SD: I was so nervous. It was actually insane. I don't think I slept for weeks before.

BB: I remember when you sent over all your writing to me, you said you couldn’t listen back to it. I thought it was good.

SD: Really?

BB: Yeah, I liked it.

SD: Thanks. No, I can't listen back to it. I think I've listened to it twice since it was first released. I listened to it when it was first on the radio, because I had to and that was when I realised that I hated it. Then I had to listen to it again because I befriended a random old lady on a bus once. I went to her house and she wanted to listen to it, but she wanted to listen to it right there. So I couldn't really say no to that and so we listened to the whole thing and the whole time, she laughed through it. I didn't really write it with the intention of people laughing at it. I had to confront my fears about that.

BB: I did a similar thing once. I wrote a short story for BBC Radio Bristol when it was Halloween so it was a short horror piece. I think I was fifteen when it aired, but it was something I wrote when I was thirteen. I recorded using my own voice, I read it out. I hated it, because there was such a marked difference between the radio DJs who’ve been doing it their entire lives and fifteen-year-old me. I was a little bit nervous, which you could tell on the recording.

SD: That’s really cool, though.

BB: Within the drama, there's two things which are present throughout a lot of your work, but I think are particularly strong in this piece: memories and dreams. Could you explain a little bit on what draws you to these ideas?

SD: In Flying, because I was told to base it around a certain place, I did this park near my sixth form. I already had quite a few memories there and so then just focusing on that, I made a mind map of different experiences and memories I'd had at that park and then thinking about what other memories people had around me and then just combined all those images together. I think a lot of my writing comes from my own kind of personal experiences, which might be a bit self-centred, but I find it the easiest thing to write about. I find it difficult to write anything that I don't really have an emotional attachment to. I did a creative writing module this term for the first time and it was good but I couldn't just sit there with a prompt and very easily write anything that I'd actually be happy with because I wasn't that attached to it. Writing about memories and my own experiences, I find a lot easier.

BB: Just talking a little bit about the future, you’re our next Journal Director. Do you have any plans for you want to do with ENIGMA next year?

SD: I do want to focus on non-fiction. It's something I really want to get into myself, because of the variety that you can have with that. I was explaining to you a while ago, about how I'd like to do writing projects with other unis, perhaps Bristol. Almost having a pen pal type scheme with writers in Exeter and writers in Bristol, and seeing what can happen when we collaborate with them.

BB: Before I was at ENIGMA, in its second year of existence, ENIGMA did some work with Spellbinder, which was originally run by University of Durham students. It’s no longer just a student journal now as the founders have graduated, but it would be good to bring more collaborations back.

SD: Yeah, that'd be cool.

BB: Just as a final question, do you have any projects you’re working on at the moment or any future ideas you want to delve into?

SD: I've got another image at the moment that I really want to write about. Sand in the shower. Eventually I’m going to make a poem with that kind of image in. More long-term, I’d really like to have a collection of poetry. For a few years now, I've just been gathering poems. It's kind of hard to explain. I understand it in my head, but I'm not sure it makes much sense to anyone else. I need to work on that, obviously before it becomes a proper collection. It's poems and stories about alternative lives when you make certain choices or even perhaps things that weren't your choice at all.

BB: What ifs?

SD: Yeah, exactly. Just a lot of what ifs and these images of other lives.

BB: But they’ll all be interconnected within the collection, will they?.

SD: Yeah, I'd like to do something like that.

BB: That sounds really interesting. That’s about it for today. Cheers for your time.

SD: Cool.

BB: Good luck with next year.

SD: Thank you.