12 or 20 (second series) questions with Laila Malik
Laila Malik is a desisporic settler and writer living in Adobigok, traditional landof Indigenous communities including the Anishinaabe, Seneca, MohawkHaudenosaunee, and Wendat. Her debut poetry collection, archipelago (Book*HugPress, 2023) has been described as haunting, tender and exquisite (SalmaHussain, Temz Review) and was named one of the CBC's Canadian poetrycollections to watch for in 2023. Her essays have been nominated for thePushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology, longlisted for five differentcreative nonfiction and poetry contests, and widely published in Canadian andinternational literary journals. Malik has been awarded grants from the CanadaCouncil for the Arts and the Ontario Council for the Arts, and was a fellow atthe Banff Centre for Creative Arts for her novel-in-progress.1 - How did your first book changeyour life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does itfeel different?
My first book was avery slow, jigsaw process of building courage and coming to acceptance. I comefrom a people who are intensely private, and the prospect of publishing hasalways posed carried great risk to me and to us. I had to slowly come to termswith the idea of becoming more public, and think through ways to navigate alandscape that was foreign and riddled with real and perceived threat. But oneof the most wonderful results has been the opportunity to connect withindividuals who were just as starved as I had been for more complex diasporastories, and specifically voices from our hitherto unspoken experience as SouthAsians coming of age in the Arabian Gulf.
I still writepoetry after archipelago, but I havebeen trying the new challenge of novel-writing, which so far feelscomparatively slow and clumsy. I did a residency at Banff where a mentormentioned that it takes on average between four and six years to complete anovel, and that sounds about right. Add to that the daily needs of paying thebills and feeding the children, and who knows how much longer it might take?
2 - How did you come to poetry first,as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I was a high schoolmisfit in a place of impossible airlessness, skulking the dusty aisles of mylibrary to alleviate desperate boredom when I came upon two forms that changedmy life: poetry and plays. There was ee cummings and Eugene Ionesco, and thestrange speed and immediacy of poetry, alongside the radical but upside-down,inside-out approach of the theatre of the absurd in particular, split open myuniverse of possibility. I was stunned that this work was sitting casually anduntouched in the middle of an otherwise strictly guarded world. I began acorrespondence with another poetic rebel friend, and we compared notes on formand content, pushing one another to try new things with words on paper to speakto all things unspeakably sublime and grotesquely unbearable.
But it wasn’t untilI got to university and encountered the work of feminist, and especially Blackfeminist poets like Audre Lorde and June Jordan that I began to understandpoetry as innate and experiential to the lives of women and those who arerepeatedly kept out of institutions of power, a form that is fundamentallyrevolutionary and accessible. I could and did write poetry in hospitalhallways, in the mosque, at 3am while feeding a child, after a racist or sexistencounter at a supermarket, with a boss, with a government official. Poetrygleams from within the blood and visceral filth of the every day and so Iseized it quickly and greedily and eternally as mine, before anyone could tellme any different.
Finally, in 2017, Iwas selected to participate in a small, advanced poetry workshop withaward-winning poet and author Chelene Knight. Besides being a phenomenalwriter, Chelene has devoted her career to enabling writers to succeed andnavigate the publishing world with creative balance. The workshop was pivotalfor me in terms of deepening my craft, understanding the industry, and gainingenough confidence to take the next step. archipelagowas born of that process.
I did and do writefiction and non-fiction, but it requires a different kind of time andattention.
3 - How long does it take to startany particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or isit a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape,or does your work come out of copious notes?
My writerlythoughts initially come quickly, and most often in the place between sleep andconsciousness. It’s always a question of how persistent those thoughts are thatdetermine whether they make it to paper. Poems almost always get completed,seconded by essays. Fiction is a whole other ballgame and seems to engage anentirely different part of my brain.
4 - Where does a poem or work ofprose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end upcombining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" fromthe very beginning?
For me, poemsusually begin from an experience or observation, suffused with strong emotion,often emerging as snippets in my journaling. Essays begin when I’m wrestlingwith an incident or dynamic that has no name or precedent, and I’m compelled todocument and make sense of it. Fiction begins with a flirtation with outrageouspossibility – perhaps the reason I’ve yet to really fully explore that path.
5 - Are public readings part of orcounter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doingreadings?
The prospect ofpublic readings used to fill me with the deepest dread but since publishing archipelago I’ve come to look forward toit – the opportunity to connect with readers and other writers is precious.People who were waiting for me to give name and life to experiences and didn’tquite know it, much as I have waited for other writers to do the same for me.I’m not sure how much it propels my creative process but it does remind me tostay in the room, and not to get too distracted by the drudgeries of life tocontinue the practice.
6 - Do you have any theoreticalconcerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answerwith your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Certainly. I’mpreoccupied with the big ticket items – eco-collapse, spirituality, encountersbetween gender, imperialism and petty human power-mongering around identity,all from the perspectives of the specific groups of peoples from whom I draw mylineages and in the context of the most unprecedented migratory movement ourplanet has ever seen. I suppose my “the questions” are “Who are we becoming?What are we choosing? And what will be the outcomes?”
7 – What do you see the current roleof the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you thinkthe role of the writer should be?
After decades ofshirking that question for fear of sinking into hackneyed hubris, I’ve come to thinkthat the role of the writer is to provide relief to the reader by giving voiceto the complex vagaries and possibilities of existence. A window through whichto see and be seen, hence to feel fulfilled. In an essay I wrote for my latesister, I talk about seeing the CN tower on a prodigal return to Toronto, andhow it provided “a reassurance, corresponding with my earliest memory. Asingle, immovable constant, proof that we happened, my family and I.” Don’t weall want to be assured that we happened?
8 - Do you find the process ofworking with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It really dependson the editor. For the most part, I find it to be an incredibly rewarding,educational experience – almost all of the editors I’ve worked with have anincredible eye, and show me things I hadn’t seen. On the rare occasion I’veworked with a pedant, or an editor who is really not getting where I’m comingfrom or what I’m trying to do, and I’ve found it necessary to learn how to holdmy ground a bit. Overall I do find it to be an essential and extremely usefulpart of the process.
9 - What is the best piece of adviceyou've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Keep writing.
10 - How easy has it been for you tomove between genres (poetry to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I spent a long timein the academy, and work in communications, so I do tend to move betweendifferent types of writing frequently. My approach to essays, though, issteeped in poetry, so I haven’t found it difficult at all. On the other hand,there are some readers who have found it challenging. I’m thinking of aworkshop I did many years ago, in which the instructor, despite seeming toreally like my work, scratched her head at my meandering, sometimes rhythmic,alliterative and occasionally absurd sentences. But that’s my jam and I’m happywith it.
11 - What kind of writing routine doyou tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you)begin?
In a perfect worldI would journal religiously. Life and its upkeep often keep me from this goal.
12 - When your writing gets stalled,where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Books, film, travel(when available), visits to desi neighbourhoods, family.
13 - What fragrance reminds you ofhome?
Jasmine, thai basiland the salt scent of the Arabian Gulf at night.
14 - David W. McFadden once said thatbooks come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work,whether nature, music, science or visual art?
All of the above,but definitely nature, science and music. It’s been decades since I saw it, butthe Indian Ocean fires every one of my neurons.
15 - What other writers or writingsare important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
So many. When I wasyounger, I was so influenced by the humour and absurd possibility in TerryPratchett and Neil Gaiman’s works. More recently, my jaw was reset by AkwaekeEmezi’s Dear Senthuran. Ocean Vuong’sOn Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous tookmy breath away and reminded me, as did Noor Naga’s If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, that it is not impossible towrite a poetic novel beautifully and with solid, coherent, narrativearchitecture, and that this ultimately is what I want to achieve next.
16 - What would you like to do thatyou haven't yet done?
See above. I’mworking to achieve this with my novel-in-progress, Bitumen, but I have a long way to go.
17 - If you could pick any otheroccupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think youwould have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I pay the billswith communications but I think it would have been deeply rewarding to be azoologist or a meteorologist, had I had more of a scientific brain.
18 - What made you write, as opposedto doing something else?
The feeling of beingchronically, constantly, eternally silenced, and the irrepressible need to givevoice to the unspoken, the grotesque, the beautiful, the ludicrous, thepossible.
19 - What was the last great book youread? What was the last great film?
Book: Noor Naga’s If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English.Film: Desi Standard Time Travel, anincredibly sweet, funny and poignant short by Kashif Pasta. I hope they bothget turned into feature films.
20 - What are you currently workingon?
I’m working on myfirst novel, which germinated twenty years ago in a very different world and avery different moment in my life. I’ve been trying to work out who it is now,and what it needs to say.
I’m alsocontemplating a book of essays, comprised of some of the work I’ve alreadypublished, alongside newer work. Thinking through narrative threads andconsidering publication options.
