Khadija Abdalla Bajaber: Hello Jarred. Please do forgive me for disappearing. For some months every few years, I fall into a deep and amplified listless lostness. It is not a bad place to be in, the creative drought or emotional gloom usually comes before a big breakthrough. I think of it as shedding old selves and thinking, long fever. But it’s lovely to be in conversation with you.
Jarred Thompson: So great to be in this conversation with you! I feel like writers are probably the most adept at disappearing because we do it each time we face that wretched blank page, where thoughts and feelings become amplified.
About creative drought and the emotional gloom that comes before a big breakthrough, I resonate. So often, other commitments and jobs creep in to take us away from our lateral, creative selves. Perhaps, this creative self hardens when it’s away from its source. It’s our inner child whining at our adult selves for abandoning our creativity. But, as you say, the fever does break and we’re able to return, hopefully, with ideas we’re brave enough to test out on the page.
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber: I’ve read some of your poetry and practically binge-read every prose from you the internet would let me get my hands on. There’s something about your work that is incredibly addictive, they have this tight strong voice from the get-go, and you set the atmosphere and tone in a way that feels like real subtle cinema openings, a gradual going inward, like a wide lens, and then it gets closer to real intimate detail. No sentence wastage – it builds suspense, constructed smoothly and yet you’ll have these incredibly expressive sentences that stun here and there, words “rolled like marbles dropping gently into laps.” They’re so distinctive, these emotions, they stick in the mind. I really love the way you write; your character work is so effortless. I’m from the school of bull-headed ramble writing, so being able to see brevity, not just for the sake of brevity or efficiency, the way it’s drummed into writers, is fantastic work. What I mean is that it doesn’t feel cut down to overly symmetrical morsels, there’s a crisp step to the work. It feels exactly as it should be. I hope that makes sense.
Since I do love some weird as well, always trying to figure out horror or eerie work, I keep going back to “The Itch” and “Possession.” But to dig at the process behind these kinds of stories is to risk messing with its mystique; what’s more menacing than the unknown? The unknown needs to be maintained, felt rather than interrogated, but I’m still irresistibly curious about it in the way that I want to hear about the process as a reader who read these works but also kind of protects them as the writer who knows knowing too much can kind of like hack away at a piece? Does that make sense? The whole point is that the veil between the reader’s understanding and the writer’s meaning is kind of a necessary veil sometimes, especially when dealing with work that’s meant to be eerie. Eerie work needs to stay eerie! What do you think or feel about this?
Jarred Thompson: It seems you’ve picked up a pattern that I am now recognising in myself when you refer to those “subtle cinema openings, a gradual going inward.” I think I’m someone who is influenced by film techniques, particularly in the way film can tell you about a character through the objects they surround themselves with. Often, when trying to begin a story, I usually reflect on the best entry point for the story I want to tell. What sort of image will set the story on its way, or what interesting turn of phrase might hook as something distinct the character would think or say? Once that’s set down it’s a bit like playing Lego the rest of the way, keeping an eye on both the individual sentences as they’re put down as well as the overall picture being built, however tentatively.
I’ve never really picked up on my brevity before, but I think you’re on to something. Perhaps the brevity of my sentences is for me a way to imbue some kind of energy to the story, peppered with descriptions that act as these larger moments of intense sensory detail where some readers may be asked to pause in their journey. I also think, when I’m focalising a character, I challenge myself to speak (write) in a cadence similar to how that character would speak and move through the world, imagining the character addressing the reader through me. This isn’t a new perspective to take when writing a character, but I do try to “hear” the story, the sentences, as they flow on from one another. Is there a link back to my original love? The love that got this whole “writing thing” going is poetry. Little scribbles at the back of my mathematics textbook, creased exam pad paper handed over to English teachers to read, a book of William Blake’s poetry in my school blazer pocket, dog-eared. The sound that words make when parcelled together has always been a secret, unexplainable love of mine.
Thank you for enjoying my weird and eerie work, those stories are some of my favourites because they were quite fun to write. Why is the weird and the eerie fun to wade in? I’m not sure. Maybe you have some suggestions? I recently came across a book by Mark Fisher, titled The Weird and the Eerie and in it, he says that “the weird is constituted by a presence – the presence of that which does not belong […] The eerie, by contrast, is constituted by a failure of absence or a failure of presence. The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present when there should be something.” I find this definition really stimulating for thinking about the impulse behind “Itch” and “Possession.” Whereas in“Itch” the sense of an out-of-place presence, of a sensation that does not go away, that exceeds all logic of how we’re taught to deal with it, persists. In“Possession,” one is never reconciled to what has actually happened by the end; indeed, I’m not entirely sure who really is possessed in that story. Perhaps all the characters were driven by divergent forces to live the lives they were living. What is sure about the story is that sense, as you say, of the “eerie,” a kind of foreboding atmosphere in which the reader is unsure of how to interpret what they’re being told.
You’re right in observing that once the unknowns of a story are answered that a certain energy in it is dampened, or lost. I’m often approached by readers who want to know what happened after the story, and who ask for follow-ups to a certain one they felt really connected to. I tell them that I don’t know what happened to the character after the story ended, that the end in itself allows flexibility in the story, a multiplicity that “knowing” restricts. If, as in“Possession,” the story ends with the protagonist trapped in this labyrinthine world where they’re unsure of what’s real, who’s possessed, and what intentions their husband has for them, do they always remain trapped if the story is never continued? Maybe the circumstances of that character get answered in other poems, stories or essays put out into the world; maybe the character’s perpetual “trapness” is necessary for any reader to really feel the tragedy of the story. I recently completed a writing workshop where one of the writers repeated a quote which said that every writer has at least one question that they spend their lives trying to answer. When asked what mine was, I couldn’t answer. I found the possibility quite daunting. I think that’s a kind of clarity of one’s work that comes with age. Either way, I’m happy not knowing, floundering in the waves of my interests, leaving the investigation of those overarching questions to other literary critics. The veil, as you call it, is both protective and productive.
Khadija: I love when writers start realising things about their own style and M.O. Sometimes I feel called out – because it’s like, “Oh, so is that what I’m about?” I’ve always enjoyed the shape-shiftiness of writing in general because in the end, I’m still myself, so it’s fun.
Poetry is where I discovered my strengths, which in turn influenced my prose. But I wasn’t doing much better in poetry, especially in its long form. Some great lines from those bad poems ended up reappearing in my fiction. In The House of Rust, Hamza thanks Aisha for her kindness by telling her “It was sweet, very sweet” – I can’t say for certain which came first, the line in the never published poem or Hamza saying it. It’s not always deliberate. Have you done that too?
In my published works one can see the things that interest me – and I wonder if that’s the “question” I’m trying to answer, though that isn’t static. Thematically, my recent works show a lot of my curiosity about kin killing, revenge, and betrayal. The petty politics of home. I keep leaning toward horror or the off-putting – or at least the duplicitous. Less wonder this time. Less about what it means to be the betrayed, and what it means to be a traitor. How easily, inevitably or almost irresistibly, one can fall from being one into being the other. I don’t know what the current “question” I could pick up from your writing would be, because I’m not you – but if you were to look at it, what would you observe about what’s got you curious right now? What are the things you feel you’ve been moving toward thematically as of late? Has it changed much, whether it be in your private or public pieces?
Eerie is free-ing, and I like your blasé open-ness with your readers who are like “What happened next?” I like moving on. Stories can keep growing, but being able to leave it as it is pleases me. It’s like returning something to the wild. You’ve released that story to the public as it was formed! Be free, little story.
Fantasy – the imagination’s gift to its overarching consciousness that enables us to live outside of our flesh, through different art forms. I think it’s the fantastical part of the self that keeps us open to the world, to change.
– Jarred Thompson
Jarred: I am at an interesting point in my writing life. I’ve just finished putting the finishing touches to my debut novel and I’m waiting for its launch (February 2023). While I wait, I find myself coming back to the basics – writing a poem here, tentatively starting a new short story over there, and taking down ideas for further projects. It feels a lot like taking the first tentative steps after a major surgery. It is kind of relieving to check in with that poetic, short-form side of myself and see what’s changed, what’s stayed the same. As you say, it certainly feels like shape-shifting, experimenting with what lines of flight get the juices going. There’s this short story I’m writing that feels unwieldy in the sense that I don’t really know where it’s going. I have a sense of the atmosphere and the imagery I want to work through but the “where” of the plot feels less important to me than communicating the “atmosphere” of the scenes I’m stringing together. There’s a part of me that feels like I’m in-between questions at the moment. A lot of my novel dealt with mortality and memory and the desires that endure even in the face of our imminent demise. I feel that question has loosened its grip for now. It is still there, but it’s more of a familiar scent that I catch a whiff of every now and then.
I kind of enjoy the uncertainty of not knowing where a writing project will go – whether it will succeed or fail, whether I can give it the life it so badly wants. There’s a kind of thrill-seeking dive into the unknown that I get on the page that I won’t necessarily always get in real-life. Certainly “bad” lines or “bad” poems do appear, but I try not to take them personally. Sometimes it feels like standing by a flowing stream, just waiting to see those specks of glint hidden beneath the silt. There’s very little in comparison to the feeling of having sifted out something true and beautiful and having its texture fill your mouth – right up to the back of your throat. Even if it’s only true and beautiful for you. So, yes, sometimes a poem is only as good as that one line that strikes you in the chest. I actually feature a poem I’ve reworked a number of times in a scene from my novel, The Institute for Creative Dying. It was a serendipitous moment for me to realise that that poem fitted into that scene so well, almost as if I had written it for a future moment where it could be used. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20; distance from events helps us see where the pieces fit together as if the pieces themselves were working through you all along. I find such “magical thinking” to be a comfort of sorts, even if it’s just to get me back to the page with the reassurance that it’s not up to “me” alone. When the thought of getting to the page feels daunting, what do you do to nurse your confidence?
In terms of where current curiosities are leaning, I’m interested in writing along the borders and scales of different bodies, meditating on how different bodies affect, navigate, and coalesce together; writing that can hold different knowledge systems together in one poem, story or essay. For instance, how is a character’s psychology affected by the high levels of mercury in the dam where they receive their water and how, as a writer, can I include that aspect of interconnectedness in an aesthetic form? I’ve always been interested in “the body” not as a distinct thing sealed off from the world but as a porous border, a territory of sensation, moving through the world, as the world. This vision is drawn from indigenous worldviews from around the world; worldviews that contest the idea that nature needs to be defended by humans, who are separated from nature. Humans are nature and so when we defend a forest or a river or another species we are, in fact, defending ourselves. So, I’m interested in thinking more about how our animal and plant ancestors still echo in us and how our technological, digital age is bringing out other sides of human nature. What do you think about that? It’s always interesting for me to think about how one technological innovation can reverberate in so many domains of human life, changing the trajectory of a species and, possibly, the world.
What is currently on your mind right now? It’s interesting that we’re writers whose debut novels are quite fantastic or “strange.” There’s something delightfully playful in coming to the page knowing that reality as it is outside in the world is only a mere suggestion, that you as a writer can pick and choose which aspects of it to include or reject. It can be freeing, but it also seems to have an element of responsibility too. I say that because building new worlds means attempting to build new world orders or even speculating on different laws of nature or metaphysics. And, if we accept that one’s metaphysics informs one’s ethics, it takes some reflection to write about characters who live in worlds at once familiar yet strange. What do you think? Perhaps our attraction to “the strange” is part and parcel of being willing to shift our thinking about things, without calling it hypocrisy.
There is, I think, a part of the self that will always live in its own fantasies. That’s why people love movies, music, art, and literature. Fantasy. The imagination’s gift to its overarching consciousness that enables us to live outside of our flesh, through different art forms. I think it’s the fantastical part of the self that keeps us open to the world, to change. That continues to compel, seduce, tempt, implore, or repulse us. It definitely has its role to play in keeping us “unfinished.” Thinking about it now, the state of being completely “finished” as a human being is quite a daunting thought.
I saw that you recently won the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. Wow, that is amazing, congratulations! How do you feel about winning prizes? I’ve found the journey of winning and coming down from the “high” of winning to be quite interesting. What has your experience been?
Khadija: When the thought of getting to the page is too daunting? I’m starting to relearn enjoying it the way you do. It’s less about me not having ideas so much as having no way to give those ideas honest lifeblood. Sometimes I also look at the idea and think about what it would look like as a screenplay or a poem. How can I sound it out? This can be a cool and curious exploration of form; things sort themselves out from there. Or I revisit my zero-stakes WIPs that are unserious and fun. The only times my worthwhile short stories came around was when I wasn’t all “on a mission” about it. Or I get my life or to-dos and tasks in order, and then I feel less choked up about things. We need to be among the living, too! I realised that my work and I need that. Of course, in doses that won’t overwhelm me, and with people I like or with people who are like-minded. Rewarding work can’t be built in the attic when we no longer remember what life outside of it feels like. Insufferable but true. So, giving up is great. It’s not goodbye, it’s see you when I see you.
One of the WIPs I’m working on deals with narrative sense and unreliable narration, vengeance, and creative media as property, and, in a way, loyalty as property. It’s kind of a weird story. It’s not magical in the least or surreal, but its tone is weird. I don’t know if it’s ever going to be publishable, or even going to be a book at the end, writing it has been taking a great toll since it’s so grim and confusing. If I complete the project, it’s not what I’m going to seek publication for as my second book. I’m working on that book simultaneously with another that’s more accessible, still fantastic and still true to my interests and what’s been niggling at me idea-wise, but less dreamlike and loopy and poetic in tone. It’s got to do with food, and that’s inspired a lot by my childhood and my community life in Mombasa, where food is so much more than just food, as well as the gentleness and the emotional things I felt in programs like Midnight Diner. How food is tied to memory and love. There are still monsters in it, because of course. But that’s my next project if we’re talking about intending it as my next book.
Your idea of nature being the self, I like how it reframes things so humans aren’t some grand protectors, they need to realise that they are protecting and cherishing their literal selves – it’s what they ought to do. I think we’re similar in spirit about this. There’s a kind of false-heartedness to conservationism as it’s been popularly enforced – strange that imperial power is wielded through the ways in which they “protect” and manage resources and wildlife that’s supposed to belong to the “natives.” I think of humans and nature as very separate things; in Islam, we’re told that nature was put here as a provision, proof of God’s power and beauty, and as a temporary space. Since we are guests here, the right thing to do is to conduct ourselves respectfully. Hunt only what you can eat, take only what you need, and this is in everything. The House of Rust works with the ideas of “shares” and “portions,” what we need from each other as people, what we demand, what we pre-emptively give up, what we should take, and what we shouldn’t abuse in the things around us. I have been told that The House of Rust is eco-fiction. And it’s interesting because that’s not how I thought of it going into it, nor coming out of it. It’s just something that stems from my religious and spiritual beliefs. I’m not an environmentalist, I’m just Muslim. Conducting yourself in an ethical and unwasteful way is basic decency, no matter your belief system. Not unlike you, I think there’s a spirit-like sensibility to the idea of nature and humanity as the same self, and I appreciate very much any kinds of philosophies or principles that aren’t separate/halved away from the spirit. But the spirit being very much involved, and sometimes even what leads. It’s much more human, and much more refreshing than the saviour mindset that can sometimes propel environmental ideologies, which still ironically centre the self. Not to mention the politics of these things. It’s really interesting, knowing those are the ideas that have been nibbling at you; I think I’d be really keen on seeing the creative works that’ll arise out of that.
I like the fact that I’ve been talking to African writers about work that’s “fantastic” or “surreal,” discussing why our works feel that way, and how we feel about that. I really like this idea you’ve put out that these ways of telling stories require building new world orders or looking at restructuring things in life. As people who cannot escape the notice of structures and institutions in life, we know how important it is to rethink them and build something else, better or worse – so as much as I’m interested in the entertainment aspect of work that’s less anchored in the “real,” (which is often hostile or uncompromising in its structure), writing fantastically can also be a radical act. Whether we mean it to be or not. It doesn’t make the work necessary or vital or good, which I don’t think are the things a work should aim to be either – it does broaden the way we think about things, and imagine them, and how we then act in our real worlds, or how we hope or dream. At the same time, there’s always the idea of, at least in my experience, the work being seen as alien or inaccessible because of who it’s written about or where it comes from – and then on top of that, making the work even more unfamiliar by going into a dream-like territory. It’s like double layers of distance between you and the reader – not only in terms of subject matter genre/style execution but in terms of the perspective written from. And how that’s the extra party coming into the way the work is felt or understood.
Being acknowledged and honoured results in real-life changes: getting the financial freedom to do things or your work gaining access to a greater audience, and the benefits that come with that. There’s not necessarily a “high” or perhaps, just a “high?” I know I’m happy, but I’m also experiencing something more complex. Also, the legacy of a writer like Ursula K Le Guin is massive. What would sci-fi and fantasy have been like without her? What would craft, regardless of genre, have been like? Even if you’ve never read or experienced her work, she’s got her fingerprints on nearly everything that’s come out of that era of imagination, and that’s affected the work of other writers since her too. So, it’s a massive and beloved legacy, and the establishment of the prize is also an act of love – so I’m very moved by and conscious of it.
The Graywolf Prize too began a life where writing could be a real option for me, rather than just something I did. It forced me to care about my work. Prizes can change your life, and I’m stunned by how lucky I was to experience two. I felt some of those changes immediately and I’m still working through some now. Prizes can change your life because they can give you a chance. I’m so grateful that these things have happened for me, and that my work could be considered in the spaces it’s been in, supported and cared for. Whether one’s work wins prizes or not, the existence of competitions means your work enters places where it can be fostered and grown and improved. I’m thankful that I could have those chances and that there are people out there who care about creating those chances. What was winning the Afritondo Prize like for you? How has it been accomplishing the things you’ve been accomplishing and how has it impacted your ideas of yourself or your work? And how do you feel about prizes themselves?
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Jarred, I hope you’ve been well. There are exciting things ahead for you this year, your novel The Institute of Creative Dying will be coming out in the beginning of February, congratulations! I’ll be breaking my book-buying ban for what sounds like a wonderful, morbid, and fun story – you’ve got a mortician in there and an interesting cast of people coming to terms with ending and what it means to be alive. February isn’t far away so how are you feeling? If you’ve already been interviewed excessively about these things, feel free to pass on answering them: One of your stories deal with an elderly character in a sort of hospice, did this story, like a poem, come before the idea for the book or around the time, or did you catch it like a “whiff” or a familiar idea/feeling? How long did this idea brew in you before it became something as structured as a book? And I guess, without giving anything away, is there a scene from the book that surprised you as you wrote it, or was particularly difficult for you? What did you learn about death and living as you were writing it, that maybe you hadn’t really thought about before you did? Was there any research you did into this book that struck you, whether or not it made it into the book? The cultural practices of dying and being buried/cremated/put-away are always fascinating, there’s so much documentary on it, and we’re irresistibly drawn into trying to understand death, dying, which is essentially understanding life and living of course. Death is such an interestingly individual experience; everyone goes through it but we all do it alone. And being able to make that experience both individual and yet in touch with community and people, in the ceremony and the rituals of death and dying is life-affirming. So, if it’s possible to talk about these stuff without going into spoiler territory, and if you feel up to it, I’d love to learn more about them.
Jarred: Language and death are unlikely bedfellows; one reaches towards eternity in its endless repetition, the other is this magnanimous absence that marks and constitutes our living on in the world. Looking back on the launch of my novel and the interviews I’ve had, it’s possible that this is why writing the book has been so generative for me. This tension. The way we talk about death and comfort during the dying process is also a very communal act, at least in my experience. We pass around the same idioms of speech at every funeral and it never seems enough. I think the speech we pass around at the passing of a loved one is really just a stand-in, a place-holder, a vibration of air, to let the grieving know we’re there, with them, in the morass of it all. There’s very little, if anything, that can replace “being there” for someone who is grieving, whether you say something or not.
It makes me think of one scene that was difficult for me while writing the book, and one that I rewrote several times; the scene where Dianne (a former nun) enters into dialogue in the garden with the Mortician. The scene has various mythical, material, and spiritual undertones I was drawn to, but the dialogue was particularly difficult because of what the characters were discussing. The Mortician tries to engage Dianne on her impending death and Dianne tries to offer reasoning (sometimes for, sometimes against) what the Mortician is saying. I wanted this scene to convey the playful tension between Dianne’s view of the world and the Mortician. It was a struggle because the Mortician came off too didactic, too much of a know-it-all-you-gotta-listen-to-me kind of person. Which is not what I wanted. I had to step back several times and think about how we learn things from others in conversation without meaning or wanting to learn. I had to thread an organic conversation that led to tender places where two characters who know one another very little might connect. You’ll let me know if I was successful when you get to that part.
The idea for the short story “Waving and Drowning,” about an elderly man in a home for the elderly came from my daily life. I’ve grown up opposite a home and have often taken a curiosity to that stage of life when everything feels retired and tied up, where life has seemingly given all it has to give to someone, and where people of a certain age now spend their days waiting and watching and, if they’re lucky, being visited by those who love them. In hindsight, I think the story was the beginning of my journey into the novel, but I wasn’t thinking of a novel-length idea at the time. What’s interesting about this particular home is that it sits right beside a kindergarten, a creche in South African terms. My stories often emerge from noticing strange occurrences like this: occurrences that feel like some kind of poetic coincidence that is begging to be written. I felt that with The Institute for Creative Dying too – my own life journey was setting me up to write this novel, based as it is in a South African locale. This kind of ties in with what you said about the intricacies of writing alien, sometimes unfamiliar, worlds. My novel submerges itself in South African slangs, idioms, places, and people and I’ve been asked if I wanted to add a glossary to the novel at the end to explain some of this. I’m on the fence with this suggestion simply because I don’t think everything needs to be accessed easily in a story. Sometimes a story’s opacity is its point. Different stories demand different things from their readers. I do feel that there’s always a balance to be struck between opacity and clarity, between dream-walking and wakefulness.
I resonate with what you’ve said about food and, funny enough, one of the future creative works I’ve been thinking about wants to also take up food as a medium of reflection and storytelling. I’m thinking of a short-story collection loosely tied together around issues of foodways, food sources and culinary cuisine. I don’t think our shared interest in this is a coincidence. An awareness of food has been increasingly popular, especially with the rise of reality food channels and the increasing precarity that food sources will have as environmental damage continues unabated. I look forward to discussing what comes out of our shared interest in food and its journey in the future. I’ll definitely be looking out for your work as well as checking out that program you mentioned (Midnight Diner).
Similarly, I like this idea of prizes giving you a chance. Writers want their work to be read. Writers want to entertain, enthral, and incite, not just their audiences but themselves too. Prizes for me are both an affirmation and a question. How am I going to show up for myself after the prize? How am I going to honour what’s been seen in my work and how am I going to deepen my relation to myself and my work? I think I am most comfortable placing myself in the position of a student. So, I’m interested to hear what others see in my work because quite often it’s not what I expect. It’s strange, when I think back on winning the Afritondo Prize it always feels like my alter ego won it; like my writerly self took home the gold. I don’t mind that distance between myself and the name referred to as “the winner.” I think that distance is healthy.
Khadija: I’m most comfortable thinking of myself as a student too! And I learn so much by just talking and listening to writers. Having almost like an alter-ego experience, yes! Is it that writers come to learn to separate their consciousnesses from specific things/experiences? Or that there are people with a pre-existing quality of not being quite attached to the real, who then become storytellers because storytelling becomes the only natural (or inevitable) recourse? In telling stories not just to express things but to understand them, writers become liars that you can trust with the truth because they know how precious it is, how incomplete it is, and that it needs to be told in a certain way. It’s the collaborative aspect of storytelling and story listening that’s always pulled me. That the gift is not only to tell the story; the gift is also to give your time to listen to it being told. Aren’t writing and writers neat?
Being in conversation with you feels like this generous and open exchange because we’re speaking to a shared sense of strange that is a point of connection and understanding rather than one of separation and alienation. Like we’re here talking about death and nature and all these things, and it’s almost therapeutic to have someone to sound it out to, and to listen to it with. So, I’m really enjoying being in conversation with you and I’m glad that we’re continuing it!
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber is a Kenyan writer and the author of The House of Rust which was awarded the Graywolf Press Africa Prize and The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. You can find her work at Enkare Review, A Long House, Lolwe, and Down River Road among others.
Jarred Thompson is a literary and cultural studies researcher and educator and works as a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pretoria. He was the winner of the 2020 Afritondo Prize and the runner-up in the 2021 Dream Foundry Prize. His debut novel, The Institute for Creative Dying, is published through Picador Africa and Afritondo UK