Kimberly is an editor and artist working on a poetry collection. "The Squid and the Whale" is her first published poem.
“The Squid and the Whale” appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Carve. Order your copy here.
What inspired you to write this poem? Does marine life show up in your writing often?
In early 2019, instead of using writing prompts, I wrote a poem (many were haiku) about every movie I watched. One of those movies was Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, which mentions the sperm whale and the giant squid exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I hadn’t seen the exhibit then, and I’m sure I hadn’t heard of it. After some research, I found out that whales hunt squid but the fight between the two hadn't been observed by humans. The only evidence of a fight is the sucker-shaped scars on the whales. Just imagining a battle between these two huge marine animals stirred something in me: I felt the teeth of the whale on my arms, the suckers of the squid tentacles on my body, and the scars left behind. I’ve always had this strange interest in scars because they tell pieces of a story, a life story, but not all scars can be seen; some are invisible. My mind formed this unexpected connection among these things—a squid, a whale, scars, past traumas—and I had to write about it. Marine life is woven into this idea as a visual, but my writing doesn’t include these elements often. It’s really a mixture of nature, emotions, and people, and whatever haunts me at the moment.
I love the relationship between the squid and the whale and the speaker—it's vivid and emotional. How did you go about balancing the metaphor of this relationship throughout the piece?
The speaker is recalling an experience, but they refer to it, the fight, as if they had witnessed it. Sometimes my memories seem like this, whether or not they are positive or negative. It almost feels like I’m seeing someone else’s memory, and yet it has still left an impression on me. And maybe that's a safe way to approach and examine violent and negative things if you can’t examine them head-on; it’s a little less unsettling through poetry and fiction. Doing it this way doesn't provide the absolute truth, but it gets the story out there. Poetry, storytelling, art, whatever—is a mode for teaching and a tool for healing, and using metaphor to retell a traumatic event or unpleasant memory, for me, makes the act of writing about it tolerable. In an attempt to instill that idea into this poem, the speaker examines this painful thing that happened but imagines it as if they witnessed a battle between two huge creatures, which actually has never been seen by anyone.
What poets (and/or other writers) have been a big influence on your work?
There are so many poets and writers, including songwriters, who influence my work or inspire me to keep writing; I’ll keep it short. I was 10 or 11 when I first heard Maya Angelou read one of her poems (on some TV show or movie). I fell in love with how she created metaphors, and I wanted to do that, too. Sometime later Mary Oliver helped me view nature differently. In my early twenties, Sarah Kay inspired me to start writing again after I hadn’t for several years. After the hiatus from writing, I read “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson and it astonished me; I soon became a fan of hers. In the last few years, I’ve found dozens of poets and writers (people who I would invite over for dinner) who inspire me, some include Hanif Abdurraqib, Kim Addonizio, Jon Sands, Morgan Jerkins, Ross Gay, and Wendy Chen. As for music, one songwriter who will always have a place in my heart is Elena Tonra from the band Daughter. The album Not to Disappear was cathartic for me. I’m still filled with awe whenever I listen to it.