N.A. Kimber (she/her) is a writer from Caledon, Ontario. She has been writing since she was twelve years old and has always been moved by the power of storytelling across all mediums and genres. She is the co-founder of the online publication Forget Me Not Press which she runs with her twin sister and artist, K.E. Donoghue-Stanford. She can usually be found with a cup of tea in hand and either knitting, reading, or (obviously) writing.
Enjoy!
If you could go back to the most difficult time in your life, would you change anything about how you acted? What about how others acted?
Kimber: I am going to sound incredibly depressing when I say it is hard to narrow down a single moment in my life to the “most difficult”. It can be hard to quantify tragedy, and in turn, how you respond to it. When I think about any of the times, I try not to let myself drown in “what ifs”. Of course, there are things I would change about how I acted. Experience makes us so much wiser, and at times, unkind to our past selves. Regarding other people; always. But I have learned over time, even if it is difficult to remember at the harder moments, I can only control how I react to things. How I choose and manage to survive.
When you think of the word Igneous, what’s the first thing to come to mind?
Kimber: I think of something made new after being cooled from fire. My favourite book is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and in the book, fire exists as both a positive (a source of light, knowledge, and warmth), but also as a destructive force, something to be feared and that can hurt you. I think many of us are made new by being cast into flames, more often than not, before we are ready. Sometimes it can be a positive experience, sometimes a negative, but ultimately it transforms us. Sometimes we get a choice in the matter, and sometimes we don’t.
If you could say one thing to your past self, what would it be?
Kimber: Narrowing it down is hard. I suppose I would just want her to know that it will become easier to believe she is loved.
“Phoenix” has more of an optimistic tone with the voice of a narrator who has moved into not only a state of acceptance, but of redemption. Compare this to “To Ash,” where there is an underlying anxiety, a quake of anger and spite.
We are all wondering: are these two about the same event, in different stages; or, rather are they to be read completely independently?
Kimber: For “To Ash”, I wasn’t thinking about a particular event. Rather, more a state of mind I used to romanticize. “Phoenix” is much more personal, in that the process to acceptance and redemption is something I have gone through myself, and I can clearly remember the first time I went through it. I was twelve.
I think they could be read together or independently. But together, if we view the narrator as the same, it is a process of growth. Regarding “To Ash”, I think we all have that time in our life where anger and destruction seem like the right way to go, even when it comes to love. I like that you make note of that underlying anxiety, because as my mother has said to me on countless occasions, anger is usually the mask we wear to hide something more vulnerable.
“Phoenix” is what comes when you’ve had to live in that new skin for awhile. When the flames really have cooled down, and you are able to see what you have become. You learn that the anger doesn’t serve you. It just keeps you from moving forward. It is not an easy thing to do. To let go of that anger. But it is freeing. And I should make it clear: letting go of the anger does not mean forgiveness. It means loving yourself enough not to keep poisoning yourself.
That’s a beautiful answer—the way that idealizations of love or mental states or relationships can truly bring our self-concept crashing down. It’s not realistic, or healthy, to put anyone or anything on a pedestal. And that letting go of anger is freeing, but it does not have to mean forgiveness. We find this curiosity-provoking because the usual rhetoric is to “forgive but not forget.” This presents a third option: accept what happened, and move on, but do not forgive the perpetrator (whether that be yourself or others) for what they did to you.
What would you say is the difference between letting go of anger versus forgiveness?
Kimber: Letting go of anger is something that is done when forgiveness is not possible. I think we live in an idea that forgiveness is always something that can be achieved, and I think that is because, a lot of the time, we don’t want to imagine the things that can be unforgivable. But to be forgiven, there needs to be recognition of a wrong, reconciliation, the chance to either restore, or repair, a relationship. As sad as it may be to think about, there are things that can be done in which those are not an option, whether it be because of something within ourselves, or the actions of another person.
Therefore, letting go of anger means that, when forgiveness is not possible, when enough time has passed, and that anger has served its purpose (whatever you may believe that is), then you let it go for the sake of yourself. You may still despise that person, may never want to see them again, but to live in anger every single day – to devote that energy to that person…it hurts you more than it hurts them, particularly if you have already cut them out of your life, or, for some people, you are in the unfortunate circumstance that you cannot express that anger. It sits in you, and with nowhere for it to go, it only succeeds in pulling you down. This isn’t the case for everyone, but I found it was for me. The anger I held to a person…well it didn’t hurt them. They didn’t care. They never sought forgiveness. Being angry at them just meant that I was giving them time and energy that they did not deserve. If they were not worthy of my forgiveness, they were not worthy of my anger either. Letting it go allowed me to begin the process of moving forward. To process all those emotions that anger tries to hide. This was not an overnight development. It took a great deal of time. It was worth it in the end, but I don’t want anyone to misread this as a simple thing to do. Forgiveness is hard, and so is this. You pick the path that is best for you.
The concept behind “Phoenix,” that anger keeps you from moving forward, reminds me of the quote “Softness opens doors that force cannot kick down.” It’s almost like the more negative emotion one grapples with, or the more of the past one hangs onto, the cloudier the mind becomes. What do you think about this in regards to writing? Or even in life in general?
Kimber: I think that cloudier state can be quite inspirational for writing, but we have to be careful with it. It’s easy to get lost in negative emotions, in the past, because it follows us. We can never truly leave it behind. People turn to poetry and writing in general because they want to feel connected to something. To understand if anyone has ever felt the way they feel before, whether that be a great love, sadness, happiness, etc. Writing is a greatly personal act, even if what ends up on the page can apply to many people. But I don’t think its healthy to, even metaphorically, draw blood whenever we write. I don’t believe to make art you must keep yourself in a state of perpetual suffering. I’ve certainly stepped away from writing pieces when I felt it was getting too personal, to a point where I ran the risk of retraumatizing myself. Writers are honest beings in a way that, even when we tell lies, we tell a truth. But I think, just like in day to day life, we have to be careful with how we share those truths. It must benefit us, not hurt us. At the end of the day, you keep you and yours safe, healthy, and happy.
Would you say that your mental state has any bearing on the topics you choose to write about? Do events in your life tend to greatly influence your work, or is it the opposite—is your work usually fictional?
Kimber: I feel like I am not a very straightforward person when explaining my writing process, because the answer is yes and no, to all three questions. If I am writing, it is because I am looking to work something out in my head, and that can be good or bad, but that can manifest in a lot of different ways, in a variety of topics and themes. I have themes that I explore constantly (death and grief, desire and idealization, the idea of home, what love is, etc), and my life, the things I have experienced and what I have learned inform those topics. So, yes, my life informs my writing, but it does not mean my writing is always about my life. At least not in terms of the facts of it being written out. My heart is there, certainly, scattered across the page in some way.
We love that you emphasize that simply because an author is putting their heart out on the page doesn’t mean that the story needs to be about them. A lot about writing is about being an observer, in that way. To take the feelings and experiences of others and maybe resonate with them, so that they become part of you. These themes that you explore are not necessarily individual to one person but to the entire human experience (death and grief, idealization, the idea of home).
Would you say that you’re an observant person, and how does this play into your life and writing? Is this isolating, or does it warm you to the world?
Kimber: I do find that I am quite an observant person. I think writers, in themselves, are borrowers. We see details in people and places, and we think: “Well, wouldn’t this be interesting to use in a piece?” I borrow from strangers and acquaintances. Usually little habits or quirks, such as seeing a woman reading a book upside down on a plane. I might borrow from friends, both online and in person. I’m in an online book club and last time we met we had a great discussion about poets living (or rather not living) up to the love they write about, which I took down a few notes of inspiration for. I know from my best friend, I’ve borrowed her eyes a lot, both in colour and expression. I borrow a lot from my family, because we are so close. The softness of my grandmother’s hand. My twin sister’s smile when we were little (showed her gums a lot). The goodness that shines out of my mother. I even borrow from myself – I’ve noticed when I walk in a certain pair of shoes, I follow a click clack click clack clack pattern when I drag my right heel.
When you borrow something from someone, it is like a little piece of poetry you take inspiration from. That, in a way, warms you to the world. In being observant, you see a lot of the small goodness you sometimes take for granted. You learn and see a lot of beautiful things. It doesn’t matter where I am, I have something to write down what I observe. I can tell sometimes it makes people who know me nervous. Usually, I tell them if they’ve said something I think would be good for a story. I know one time my husband said, “You’re a haunted house, you just don’t know it yet” (really wish I remembered the context) and a variation of that made its way into my last book, with the quote credited at page 115 of the handwritten first draft. He was quite proud of that.
What did the writing process look like while writing “To Ash?” The poem exhibits a great amount of repetition of the word “Let,” followed by a soft command. Was there a moment in time that sparked inspiration for this format?
Kimber: I won’t lie, I was up at my cottage, sitting in a rather old armchair, and listening to some new Hozier songs while writing this poem. Yet, it made for a fitting mood. I saw your call for submission, and I just cracked down and started writing. It came to me rather easily because it was in a subject I had given a lot of thought to. I have a lot of fear and anxiety about what I once believed love should look like, and how many people still perceive or present love in writing. Yet, I use it to my advantage. I think a lot of people could read this and think, “oh, well that’s romantic”, and I like to sometimes trick people with that in my writing. But I also like that for some people, the anxiety and the spite are clear from the get-go.
I really liked the balance of the softness of the command with the violent destruction the narrator is asking for. It is an uncertain voice; it is asking for permission. The voice could be read as begging., an almost, “let me have this, if nothing at all.” And the repetition adds to that: “Let me, oh please, let me have this.” I really loved using this passive voice, because I think it relays that the narrator only thinks they know what they want. They are asking permission to have a love that could destroy the world around them and they aren’t thinking of the consequences. In University, they really tried to drill passive voice out of me, but I think it works so beautifully in poems to convey those moments where we don’t have as much certainty, but we think we know what we want.
You mention that, at University, professors tried to drill passive voice out of you. However, in the world of poetry, a virtually ruleless world, this absence of passivity doesn’t always make sense. Your use of “let” absolutely adds an emotional, push and pull layer to the poem that would not otherwise manifest. What would you say is the most valuable piece of advice you learned regarding writing in University? Further, would you disagree with anything else they taught? What do you think this has to say about the ambiguity and subjectiveness of writing within an academic context?
Kimber: Well, the one thing I appreciate from my university experience was that I was taught that in order to appreciate the ruleless side of poetry, I had to learn the rules in order to break them. This made me a better writer, even if I didn’t always like the forms I had to practice. I remember particularly hating writing my first ever sonnet, and it's not a form I go back to often. But it is one of the pieces I am most proud of, and it taught me a great deal about what I was capable of.
That being said, I did not really enjoy my creative writing career while in university. They fostered an air of competition as opposed to community. I made some good writing friends despite that, but our critiques were more cruel than constructive. I often found myself and my work labeled stereotypically. I think using a passive voice unfortunately fell into that. The worst thing I was taught was probably not to sacrifice my integrity. Not because this sentiment is untrue, but because it was hypocritical of them to teach it. In an academic sphere, to succeed, you had to learn what kind of writing your professor liked, write accordingly, and get your good grade. We were told it was better not to write genre fiction as a whole because it wasn’t “literary”. Some of the worst pieces of writing I ever did came out of my creative writing classes. I think I have two in total I am proud of. I had plans following my graduation to continue my education. My grades had to be good.
Telling me not to sacrifice my integrity without recognizing the risk to my grades was a cruel thing to do. I struggled for a long time feeling like I couldn’t be a writer if what I thought was bad, but they thought was good, was what my writing should be. I actually thought about giving up writing altogether. Thankfully, I’ve grown a lot on my own since then. I do think there is the potential for these creative classes to be positive experiences, but it needs to be about community, and there needs to be an understanding of what individual people bring to writing as their own person. Not about the personal likes and dislikes of the professor, and certainly not about treating every other writer like someone to tear down so you can rise up. I am sure there will be those who will just say I am being “too sensitive”, but that’s a tune I've had played at me many times, and quite frankly, it's grown quite dull.
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