How I Wrote This: An Interview With Mariya Kika
Mariya Kika is a young creative and student based in Toronto. She most prefers the forms of prose poetry and short stories; her writing often centers around healing, revolution, and family. When not writing or attending class, she enjoys bothering her cat and staring out windows. Her work has appeared in such publications as Pyre Magazine, The Fiery Scribe Review, Livina Press, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch. She can be found on Twitter @mariyakeeka.
By Leela Raj-Sankar
Recently, I chatted with Mariya Kika about the process behind her poem “Vengeance,” published in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, which you can read here. This interview is part of “How I Wrote This,” a new series where I talk to poets about the process, inspiration, and influences behind their writing. The last poet featured was Carina Solis.
Leela Raj-Sankar: What was the general inspiration behind this poem? Was there a certain situation in your life that it references or is the poem mostly ideological?
Mariya Kika: This poem was the culmination of many different conversations, each discussing systemic inequalities and the way they’ve been upheld over time. These discussions framed the way I thought of colonialism, or what once was, and coloniality, or what persists, and how this [cycle] continually serves power dynamics that have persisted for generations. Knowledge, resources, narratives, and ideals can be used to continue serving these power imbalances. As such, this poem is ideological in nature.
LR: How did you decide on the particular motifs to use in this poem?
MK: This poem originally started with light/dark, but as I leaned into the idea of progress and colonial history, I came to think about progress as something with levels and considered the vertical mobility that underlies it. This led me to thinking about sunlight/shadows in terms of who is in front and who is the afterthought. I still wanted to incorporate some aspect of verticality and this idea of reaching “up” for progress, so we can think of all those that have been buried because of colonialism and the slippery slope that the underprivileged have to climb. With this came the idea of a grave and all that it holds: the physical bodies of the disenfranchised and all their ideas that have been killed. This lent itself rather well to using mud as a metaphor and a marker because colonizers have seen those that they colonized as dirty and beneath them. This idea, while perhaps not as overt as it once was, permeates to this day.
LR: One thing I loved about the writing style was your use of parallelism (e.g. “will not shine / will not help”). How does the use of patterns and pattern-breaking reflect the distinction between colonialism and coloniality? Can you elaborate on how the theme of generational power dynamics impacted the line-level structure and syntax of this piece?
MK: Generally, parallelism and repetition feature very heavily in my work and I thoroughly enjoy using them. In this piece in particular, though, I was more conscious of the way I used parallelism because of the discussion and implication of levels in progress and change; this led to picking and choosing when to employ the pattern or lean into it more heavily, and when to almost break the pattern as I had wanted to have the structure serve the message and theme of the piece. For example, in the line “Our skin, our community, our upbringing, it marks us,” we have the use of “our” three times before deviating. In this case, it differentiates who the speaker and their community inherently are from the way they are perceived; it goes from in-group language to broader third-person language, creating a distinction in perspective and breaking this sentence-level pattern to provide a message in itself. When we near the end of the poem, we have the lines, “Our changes will not bring about progress, will not shine, will not help, will not bring prosperity. We are built for nothing more than burning, destroying, dismantling.” Here we see that the preceding line leans into pattern-making as the speaker discusses what society has planned for their people and the paths that they will follow for all that wish they could change things. The following line breaks this pattern, no longer using repeating phrases into which we can plug a word rather, it almost feels like the speaker is rushing to finish the line as they break the pattern. Beyond that, we also remove the use of negation, instead thinking of what the speaker believes they can provide for progress: dismantling systems and destroying power structures.
LR: Tell me a little bit more about the drafting process. What were the first lines/ideas/metaphors that occurred to you? How did the poem evolve over time? Do you usually sit down to write at set times or wait for a burst of inspiration?
MK: When it comes to poetry, I definitely wait for a burst of inspiration—most of which come when I’m falling asleep to be completely honest. If I do set aside time to write, I tend to pull together scraps and one-liners that I have, trying to draw meaning and connection from them to integrate into a whole new piece. With this piece, I had the lines “To change the world is a vast opportunity. This unknown possibility of progress” rattling around in my Notes app for a while, having enjoyed the rhyming of ‘opportunity’ and ‘possibility’. I had already had an idea of almost a narrator talking about all that they could have done and all that they wished they had done but that transformed under thoughts of why this imagined person hadn’t yet had the opportunities they so wished for. From there, themes of progress and coloniality easily bled into the work. I’ve already talked about the progression of motifs in the poem, but I do distinctly remember the motif of ‘mud’ and ‘dirt’ being the last one that I had added. It seemed almost obvious once I had framed everything else, but I hadn’t realized that until I sat down to revise this piece some weeks after finishing it.
“And so [the poem] ended up, in my mind, with a speaker that is an elder in a community, passing on wisdom and lighting the fire of the next generation.”
LR: The entire poem is written in first person plural. Who does the repeated “we” refer to? Is it different from the speaker of this poem? If so, who, in your head, is the speaker of the poem, and who is the poem being spoken to?
MK: This poem had originally started out with a nebulous form of a disenfranchised narrator talking to an unknown audience. As it progressed and as themes emerged, the narrator started taking the shape of someone older, someone with history weighing on their limbs, and failure colouring the hollows of their eyes. With that, this almost became a monologue delivered to an audience of bright-eyed idealists that so hoped to be the ones to change things, but were scared to do so. And so it ended up, in my mind, with a speaker that is an elder in a community, passing on wisdom and lighting the fire of the next generation.
LR: What was the most difficult part about writing this poem? The easiest?
MK: I think the hardest part was ensuring that I handled this topic with care. It’s a big topic and I wanted to be conscious of the way this piece might read, especially because I don’t explicitly name colonialism or coloniality in it. Once I had the motifs in mind, writing the prose and creating the imagery came quite smoothly!
LR: Are you working on any bigger projects at the moment?
MK: I’ve just finished my first short story collection and I’m currently working on my second! My first collection is one that’s close to my heart and feels almost intimate in its exploration of the lives of young Desi-Canadians; it’s an exploration of characters growing into themselves and their families and dealing with innocence, secrets, loss, guilt, and anger.
LR: Who are some of the most exciting up-and-coming poets and poetry journals to you right now?
MK: Beyond yourself, I look forward to works from Sofia Aguilar, Divyasri Krishnan, Holland Zwank, Mandira Pattnaik, MJ Gomez, and Abdulkareem Abdulkareem. I enjoy the works that Anti-Poetry Magazine, Overtly Lit, and Amphora Lit put out!
LR: One last question, just for fun: what are three songs you’ve had on repeat this summer?
MK: “Smoke and Mirrors” by DOUBLECAMP, "AOK” by Tai Verdes, and “No Complaints” by Noah Kahan.
Leela Raj-Sankar is a high school senior and part-time pile of dust in floral print from Arizona. Her work has appeared in HAD, CLOVES Literary, and Rejection Letters, among others. She's a 2022 nominee for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE released with Fifth Wheel Press in June 2023, and her microchapbook SYMPTOM DIARY is forthcoming with Ghost City Press. Say hi to her on Twitter @sickgirlisms or read more of her work at leelarajsankar.carrd.co.