In the poet’s debut novel, The Catch, twin sisters in London believe they have reconnected with their long-deceased mother.
What was it like to write a novel with your poetry background?
My first entry into reading and writing was fiction. Poetry just took over—it was how I got into the business. But I wrote my first novel when I was 18—it wasn’t very good—and fiction has always been a part of me. It’s so lovely to actually put a novel out. It’s been a long time coming.
One of the twins and their mother have each written an autobiographical novel. How much of yourself did you put into The Catch?
To write is to have a deep understanding of your characters. These characters aren’t actually me, but they do display behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that come from me, or they’re an amalgamation of people who mean a lot to me. Even if they’re not me, I have a good understanding of them. Writing fiction can feel like wish fulfillment. At times, I feel like they each say things that I wish I could say.
Twins Clara and Dempsey are in many ways two sides of the same coin. How did you navigate writing protagonists who are so similar in some ways but opposite in others?
It speaks to the fight inside of us. You know when one self is saying one thing and the other self is saying another? They’re both valid. In the extremes of the two sisters, it gave me a chance to show those characters’ broad spectrum of thought. There’s something about writing two sides of the same coin that’s deeply satisfying.
Also, I have a lot of voices going on, so it was nice to put two of them on paper! We do a lot of shape-shifting, particularly as women, and particularly for me as a double immigrant—I’m English, I live in America, and my parents are Jamaican and Nigerian—so writing in two disparate styles is second nature.
London is its own character in the novel. How has location played a role in your own life and writing? London represents such a specific time to me. It’s the site of a lot of drama and a lot of beauty, but also deep difficulty—feeling trapped in a way. I love that London is its own character because it speaks to where the sisters are and how they’re feeling.
How did you approach the process of blending speculative elements into a literary novel?
I just think it’s so fun. The problem with being an artist is that sometimes you get boxed into one thing. It may be the first thing you did, but it’s not all you are. I love speculative fiction coupled with elements of historical fiction and sci-fi. Wherever stories can take me, I want to go. If somebody in a story I’m writing is doing something that isn’t feasible in this realm, I’m going to expand the realm. That’s what happened here. It trickled into these different plots, and I followed them.
