In Conversation with Molly Arabella Kirk

SYLVIE: Could you tell me about influences on your writing?

MOLLY: One big influence is Sylvia Plath. I absolutely love her poetry. I read it a few years ago, and thought that it was exactly how I would like to write. I love how she can make the mundane into something haunting and beautiful, and that’s what I really try to do with my own work. Sometimes I’ll talk about something that you’d do in everyday life — I literally wrote a poem about biting my nails — and I thought, this is kind of Plath-esque, because she can just take something you do everyday, something overlooked, and turn it into something darker and more thought provoking. From there, it can become a metaphor for something else. So she was definitely a major influence. Also Katherine Mansfield’s short stories. It’s kind of just the gothic genre — her short story “The Woman at the Store'' especially, because she used devices that make it kind of carnivalesque, and I love that abstract feel to poetry and short stories, where it’s very morbid, but also very disorientating. It’s kind of similar to Iain Reid’s work, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which is one of my favourite books, because it basically doesn’t make any sense, until suddenly it does, and the feelings it conveys are so abstract that you have to re-read it, then when you get to the end you finally understand. I like works that come together and give you this big complete picture. All of these pieces and gothic genres, I try to incorporate into my own works by making them dark and emotional. My poetry similarly deals with darker things, but it allows me to understand them and reach closure. In terms of more general authors that I love, I’d say Erin Morgenstern, who wrote The Night Circus, and Stephen King as well. I like darker genres that portray pain in a beautiful way. I feel like emotions are very fleeting; I don’t always understand how I’m feeling until it’s too late. So for me, my writing is a way of piecing together the world and my understanding of it, which I feel is a similar case with these authors who all convey these raw messages through hauntingly beautiful imagery and storytelling narratives. So I feel like that’s largely why they’re my inspirations. But besides them, I’m a horror movie fanatic, I especially love psychological horror/thrillers, like Shutter Island, with amazing cinematography. Or Gone Girl — I need to read the book. All of those things, and how they make me feel, is what I would like to convey in my own work.

SL: I love Plath and Mansfield also! I’ve meant to read The Night Circus for a while too; I’ve been recommended it a few times. I was hoping we could discuss your poem “Caramel”, which I believe was the one you read beautifully at the spoken word event?

MAK: Oh thank you! Yes, I was so nervous.

SL: So was I. I can’t read things out without shaking.

MAK: Same. My friend took a video and I can see myself shaking and it’s horrible!

(both laugh)

SL: But yes, if you could tell me about the thought process and writing process behind “Caramel”.

MAK: So “Caramel” is about my best friend Cameron. I’ve known him since Year 10. I met him in my first year living in Dubai, and we clicked so fast, and just somehow managed to stay in touch. That’s always been my most consistent friendship, he is my lifeline, and at the time I wrote the poem I was in a really bad place, but he was always there for me, and helped me out of it. So, I was sitting in the study place — I should’ve been studying, really — I had a summative essay to work on… but I was sitting there thinking ‘Oh, I just love my best friend’ and typed up the poem. I use Goliath imagery in the poem, and the reason for that is that one of Cameron’s distinguishing features is his hair; he has this beautiful golden curly hair. It used to be really long in high school. I thought, I have to mention this in the poem. He used to say he thought he would lose his strength if his hair were cut short, and then he had it cut short, and he said he felt like he’d lost his whole persona. And I thought: I have to compare him to Goliath… It’s so perfect. Also the angel and devil on my shoulder… he’s very spontaneous, (a bit too much so), and has always encouraged me to be more rebellious, but also helps me out of dark places. So he is both — a good and bad influence (laughs).

SL: I love having that personal insight into that! I love knowing that detail about his hair. One of my favourite lines is about the childhood best friend you never had but always longed for. It’s that knowledge of a loss, even though you haven’t lost anything. It’s really beautifully expressed.

MAK: Yeah, it’s about wishing I’d known him sooner but appreciating that he’s in my life and always will be.

SL: The next poem I’d like to talk about is “Mermaid”.

MAK: So, I was on this staycation in the UAE, because I live in Dubai, (where my dad works); I’ve been living there for the past seven years. We went on this staycation in Fujairah, which is about an hour away. I was on a deck chair thinking: the mountains look so pretty. Then I saw a raven carrying a silver fish, and thought: I need to write a poem about this right now! It was about my experience swimming in the sea. I had been reading a lot of Angela Carter at the time, and I wanted to write a dark piece similar to her own work, so I made it into this dark poem even though it was about this lovely vacation. Swimming in the sea, there was this seaweed that got tangled around my legs, and I felt kind of like a makeshift mermaid. (laughs) So I sat in the sun typing up this poem. I guess I just wanted to eternalise how beautiful it all was and how at peace I was at the time; it’s basically a love poem to nature and my surroundings that day.

(Sylvie goes on a tangent about the unreal in Virginia Woolf’s prose)

SL: Let’s move on to “Carnival”. I love this poem; I’ll say this about all of them because I’m such a big fan of your poetry.

MAL: Thank you! I’m a huge fan of yours; I’ve read all of your poems. I will buy a copy of your poetry when you eventually publish one (laughs).

SL: (laughs) If. But yes, moving onto “Carnival”.

MAK: So “Carnival” is a darker one, covering much harsher, rawer themes. In first year, I had this really bad experience involving sexual assault/rape. It was really horrible; I was so unsure what to do and who to talk to. It was literally term one of my first year at university. It made me wish I’d never gone to uni. And it made me seriously stop to think of the dangers of living away from home, as a woman, the dominance of men and how they see us as their prey, or a prize to be won. Just kind of along those lines. I used the bottle as a sort of metaphor for me, because I felt as though I’d been shattered — completely broken, just in pieces. Also the image of the goldfish in a bag, I used that too, because I felt like two things at once — the other feeling being almost like I was looking at everything after through a plastic wall. Whenever I look back at it, it looks distorted and not real. I wanted to include both experiences and combine them, because that was how I felt. It was a lot at once. So the poem serves as a sort of catharsis; it helped me to move forward. But also as a form of awareness for people who’ve gone through similar things. It didn’t want to be too explicit, but I wanted people to get the message at the same time. 

SL: I get what you mean. I wrote a poem last year for ENIGMA called “A Year in Recovery” which discussed sexual assault, and I didn’t want it to be too explicit. Partly because I didn’t want to write something that would be completely triggering to read, but it was also for myself. I wanted to write something where it felt distanced from myself, in a way, which was partly why I turned to so many images and metaphors and similes to define emotions.

MAK: Same, there were things I edited out before sending it to ENIGMA that seemed too personal

SL: I also understand the balance you mention wanting to strike between the emotional and the wider perception of the issue of hand. It was a huge thing for me when writing “A Year in Recovery” to try to write something that could serve as a source of comfort for someone who’s been through something similar. In that sense, I didn’t want it to be this cry from my heart; I wanted it to exist as a text in its own right.

MAK: Part of why I used the amusement park as a setting — firstly, I hate amusement parks (laughs), they make me so uncomfortable and I thought that sense of disorientation and overwhelming of the senses related directly to the topics discussed — but it was also the idea that something that could make me so uncomfortable could be a source of amusement or comfort for someone else. I didn’t want to make the poem one-dimensional; something that’s my narrative isn’t necessarily someone else’s, so it incorporates lots of different elements. I just wanted to make a piece that stood on its own and that others who may have suffered something similar could read and find what they needed from it.

SL: Now we’re moving onto stuff you’ve had published this academic year. So firstly, let’s talk about “High school sweethearts”. 

MAK: This was about an on-and-off relationship that ended a few months ago, which started in high school, and so had gone on for four years, and was not great towards the end. It was about how we grew apart, and it simply wasn’t good for me towards the end. Even though it really hurt and I didn’t want it to end at the time, the image of the phoenix rising out from the ashes is kind of an image for ‘it’s over — thank goodness’. It’s about longing and loss, and missing him, but it’s also a sigh of relief that he can’t hurt me anymore; that chapter is closed forever now. It’s good that it’s finally over and I’m moving upwards and onwards to better things. 

SL: I like that balance in the poem between longing and knowing what’s right for you.

MAK: Exactly. The balance of being upset at the time and the relief that it’s over. Missing him while thinking ‘thank fuck for that.’

(both laugh)

SL: I also love that the phoenix is called a ‘stubborn phoenix’. For one, it’s a phoenix that doesn’t necessarily want to be liberated. It’s a phoenix that maybe needs some coaxing out —

MAK: Yeah: it needed a little push… (laughs)

SL: (laughs )…but it’s important that it escapes all the same. I think “4am” is the next on my list.

MAK: “4am” was literally written at 4am. I just couldn’t sleep. When I’m really stressed I can get these waves of insomnia. They vary in length. So this particular night, I just opened my Notes app. The poem used to be much longer, but I cut it down. It’s basically just about wishing my brain would calm down and stop overthinking everything so I could get some sleep. It's about spiralling, anxiety and stress and how everything sometimes just feels like too much even when it's not in reality. The poem acknowledges the irrationality of my thoughts whilst also succumbing to them and I quite like the madness it brings.

(both laugh)

SL: Shall we talk about “Liminal Spaces”?

MAK: “Liminal Spaces” is about the conflict of living abroad, then going back to where you are originally from, and realising you really don’t fit in anymore. We’ve always had a house here in England, in Somerset, but we moved when I was twelve, and that was to Malaysia, and then to Dubai. Eventually we returned to Somerset for holidays, and people would comment on my accent, and I’d feel I couldn’t relate to them. Childhood friends, even family members, you feel you can’t relate to them. You feel like an outsider. I think I’m so lucky and blessed to have had my experiences abroad, but it is an alienating feeling to come back to your “roots”. They’re two completely different lifestyles; it makes you feel like you don’t belong anywhere. When I read the prompt of Home for this year’s content call for ENIGMA, I thought: what does home even mean? So, I made the poem about how I perceive “home”, and how it becomes a very foreign concept when you constantly feel as though your home is somewhere else — or feeling like you belong more in your adopted home rather than your actual roots.

SL: Does that make you feel like you have more than one home, or that you have one and then another of feeling you don’t belong?

MAK: I feel like they’re both home in two different senses. Dubai is where I spent all my teen years — that’s where my friends are. If I didn’t have Exeter so close to home here, I wouldn’t feel at home at all. I feel more loyal to my other home because of my lifestyle there. I have friends and a routine and know where everything is. Here, last year, without my uni friends in lockdown, (I commute), I was just floundering, and thinking: what do I do with myself? (laughs)

SL: I like the return you have throughout the poem to material objects that act as effective metaphors — images like the baggy clothing, and the child wearing a mother’s heels. Those are such good lines. I really like clothing represented in literature in general.

MAK: Yes, it works because it’s literally how it feels — the feeling of something not fitting. I wanted to represent my accent as clothing that doesn’t fit because of that. I also liked the childish image of the mother’s heels because of how young I was when a lot of this upset me. So, people in Dubai saying that my accent is so British, or people here saying I have an international twinge or American twang.

SL: All these ideas come across so strikingly in the poem. I thought I’d end by asking you about your experience as an editor for ENIGMA. How has your editorial experience intersected with your creative process, and also how have you found being an editor more broadly?

MAK: I’ve honestly loved it so much, because editing has really made me think outside the box, and made me adopt different voices and empathise with others, because I’ll have to edit through someone else’s perspective. I’ve definitely been inspired by other people’s voices and narratives. I’ll consider different approaches to writing because of other people. I enjoy editing other people’s work for the lovely insight it gives me into their creative process and their thought process, and their understanding of the world. Seeing so many different voices, styles and concepts, makes me feel so lucky. I love helping people to make their work what they want it to be, the version they’d want published and be most proud of. It’s amazing to be a part of that journey; it’s really humbling, and such an honour. I’m so glad I’m an editor; I love to see a deep part of someone before it gets published — a little piece of them that they would want to share with others, but isn't quite ready yet. As a perfectionist it brings me such catharsis to help them make their own work better, in a way that makes them satisfied. It’s a very intimate experience. It’s great that we can provide that safe space and sense of community where people can give us that part of themselves through ENIGMA.