A Conversation with Maëlle Keita
Maëlle Keita is a French law student living in the Parisian region. She's always reading and writing in between assignments. She can be found on Twitter at @maelleta.
Maëlle’s poems, “Eureka” and “Out of Reach,” can be read in Issue no. 1 of Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine.
“I think that, with our words, we save each other.” —Maëlle Keita
Yasmina: What do your days look like? Do you work or are you in school, and what things do you try to make time for?
Maëlle: Right now, I'm doing my Master's in Business Law. I go to university in France, and we have very, very long hours, so I'm there basically all day, and then I get home and study some more. I also work as a receptionist. So I just spend my time working or studying. At the beginning of law school, I thought I had to give everything to that only, and I became really miserable because I missed literature so much. Over the years, I’ve tried to make more time for it. I try to be reading something at all times and to read poetry every day, and that has become integral to my day-to-day life.
Yasmina: How long have you been in the master's program?
Maëlle: I just started. In France, you do three years of a bachelor's and then three years of a master’s immediately after. So that's two more years and then I'll be free, hopefully! France is really special because we have so many classes and so much time we spend at university. I don't know how it is in the US, but I know at least in the UK, the hours aren't that voluminous, but you have a lot of work at home. Here, it's just both. I think it's because university is basically free, so they really make us work for it.
Yasmina: Yeah, in America, you’ll usually only have 3-5 hours of actual classes per day, but it’s very expensive. The price has gone up tremendously, even since eight years ago in 2018 when I was applying. I know sometimes in other countries, though, college is much more specialized, whereas in the US you can take a few years to decide on a major.
Maëlle: Without counting how expensive everything is, I feel like it's nice, because in the US you guys have the opportunity to discover many different areas in college, like with majors and minors. You can take classes just to discover something, whereas in France, you have to know what you're doing right after high school because in university you go and do something specific. So it's not a discovery of anything.
Yasmina: In the vein of discovery, how did you find out about Sabr Tooth Tiger?
Maëlle: So I started submitting poetry in 2024, and I try to participate in the poetry world when I have free time from university. I saw submissions opening on Twitter (I still call it that), and as soon as I saw the magazine, I felt like it would be the right place for my poetry. I also loved the pun! So I was excited to submit. I like new magazines because I feel like the editors are so careful with it. I'm new at this, and even though the editors might not be, it's still their first time with the magazine. So it's exciting for everyone, I think, in a special way.
Yasmina: Why do you write poetry?
Maëlle: It's funny, I always end up doing everything the opposite of how I plan to do it. My mom taught me how to read very early on with bedtime stories, so novels and stories were the first thing I ever loved. I appreciated poetry sometimes, but I wasn't really touched by it. Maybe it's because I'm French, so the classic French poetry we studied in school was the first I knew. We have very iconic poets, but I felt like French poetry was more focused on the beauty of the language itself and not what the poem actually does for you.
Then, I had a grieving period when my grandfather died, and poetry became the only thing I read because I didn't have the time to focus on big novels like I usually do. I think that, with our words, we save each other. Poetry is more digestible, more accessible. So until you really need it, you don't really think about it. Then when you do, it's all you care about.
Yasmina: I’m really sorry about your grandfather. I hope things are better now.
Maëlle: Thank you.
Yasmina: I’m also curious about which French poets you were studying in school, and if there were any you liked more than others, even though that style of poetry overall wasn’t really your thing.
Maëlle: We studied all the greats, really: Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Rimbaud... I liked Rimbaud. And I liked the poets we studied, but their lives just seemed so far away. When I found English poetry, I was more interested because I feel like the vulnerability is more straightforward. There's obviously a lot of work put into it, like with the use of metaphors and the beauty of their language, so it's not like they're just venting. But at the same time, reading Emily Brontë or Emily Dickinson, I can feel the strength of their emotion much more directly.
Yasmina: Was your studying of French poets in school the extent of your poetry education? Or did you study poetry in some other way? If not through formal education, how did you find English poetry?
Maëlle: Yes, that was the extent of it! In high school in France, we had three pathways to choose from: scientific, social sciences and economy, or literary. I chose the last one, so our courses were more focused on literature. I moved from the West Indies to the US for a year when I was 9, so I was forced to learn English, which I hated at the time! But then, since I loved reading, that led me to literature in English. From then on, I read in English just as much as—if not more than—in French. At that point, I wasn’t very much into poetry yet because I felt like there wasn't enough story being told. Then I found some I did connect with, and I just felt like it was this whole other world I got curious about, and I couldn’t get enough! I feel like maybe maturing is realizing that everything doesn't have to be long. There's so much you can say with so little.
Yasmina: It’s interesting to hear this trajectory, especially because both of the poems you've submitted for this magazine are actually very short. Was that intentional, or did the poems just come out that way?
Maëlle: They just came out that way. So, my poems used to be very, very long. My best friend is also a writer, and she always said she liked the way my poems were stories in and of themselves. When I write a poem it’s still very long at first; I just edit more ruthlessly now. I try to be really concise and get to the heart of what I mean directly, rather than saying everything. It forces me to be more careful with the words that I use. At the same time, it leaves the reader more alone with what the poem is saying. Those two poems kind of just came together, and they’re part of a series of four shorter poems I wrote. They kind of complete each other, I think.
Yasmina: When I look at both of these poems, the idea of creation feels very present to me. Did you set out to write them with that in mind? And what does creation mean to you?
Maëlle: It felt very intentional. I'm Muslim, so I believe in the fact that we were created and everything that goes with it. But we’re also told that we have free will, that we are the ones who create our reality. At the same time, I always struggled a lot with actually feeling a spiritual presence. Even when you believe in something, sometimes it feels very, very far away. In “Eureka,” it was more about constant fear. A lot of the time people tell you that if you believe in God or anything, that fear disappears, or that you shouldn't be so scared of the future because things are already sorted out. But that’s not really helpful when you're in the fear.
“Eureka” is about sincerely believing that we asked to be here, but also reckoning with what that means. For a long time, especially as a teenager, I used to think things would just sort themselves out. I was very passive. Not wishing I wasn't alive or anything—well, actually, yes, at one point I was. But, eventually, you have to accept that you're here anyway. Now, what are you going to do with that?
Yasmina: Yeah. It’s a hard thing to do, though, because it kind of puts a huge level of responsibility on you.
Maëlle: Exactly.
Yasmina: Do you find comfort in the idea that everything is written, or does it feel scary, like you have no control over anything?
Maëlle: In “Eureka,” I was really trying to see it in a reassuring way. I wrote “Eureka” before understanding that I was having panic attacks. I thought it was just normal to feel like that. At the time I was writing it, I started thinking of my life as this journey. As Muslims, we're told about Judgment Day, and it feels scary, but then I thought, ‘Maybe it doesn't have to be.’ Maybe you can look back on your life fondly as you're standing in front of the Creator that you're supposed to love. And you think about all the things you were scared to do, and you're almost laughing at yourself, not mockingly, but almost telling yourself, ‘If only you knew it was going to be easy.’ You just have to jump ahead of your fear to where you've done the thing already.
Yasmina: I really like that perspective. To think that you don’t have to do it alone, and also you have to choose to keep going.
Maëlle: Exactly.
Yasmina: I think I'm going to ask you a little bit about “Out of Reach” now. I see time flowing everywhere in this one. What do you feel influences your view of time in that way? Or is it just an idea you’ve come up with?
Maëlle: Being Muslim, I’ve often thought about life before I got here, like my existence before I existed. I was always fascinated by this idea that we asked to be here. That’s something we are told in Islam, and at the same time, I feel like there has to be a truth to it outside of my own religious belief; I remember I saw Toni Morrison in an interview saying that we asked to be here, and she was so sure about it. And in my favorite poem by Rainer Marie Rilke, “Go to the Limits of Your Longing,” he talks about being sent out beyond your recall. When I read it, I was so fascinated because he was basically saying that we were sent to Earth and we just don’t remember asking for it, and I was like, ‘Whoa! That’s the same thing we are told in Islam!’ He’s not Muslim as far as I know, so I think it has to be true. I feel like it’s an inclination that your soul has.
Yasmina: To ask you a bit about the future, as you may or may not imagine it—why did you choose to study business law specifically, and where do you hope it takes you?
Maëlle: In my specific degree, I get to keep studying both the French and common law systems like I did for my bachelor’s. Business law is the practical side of that because it opens more doors for me than other areas of law that tend to keep you only within the French system. The international/English aspect is the whole reason I went into law. It’s more of a means to an end for my goal of working abroad. I actually remember saying I’d never go to law school… you add that to the fact that I resisted learning English and that I used to not care much for poetry, and it starts to get a bit funny!
Yasmina: When you talk about the idea that we asked to be here, you talk about reckoning with what you think you've asked for. Is there anything specific you think you've asked for? I guess another way to ask this question is, is there anything you feel like you're sure of in your future, or have you ever felt sure about the way your future would go? Or are you mostly just reckoning with the unknown?
Maëlle: I don’t think it’s just one thing. I’m sure I wanted to be my mom’s daughter, but that’s just one facet of who I am. It’s more like seeing the entirety of what my life would contain and choosing it. Before, I never thought about the future, but now if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that writing is always going to be part of whatever happens.
The reason I first wanted to try getting published was because I felt like I kept taking and surviving off other people’s shared vulnerabilities through their art. It always helped me feel seen and understood and understand the world as well. I felt if even one thing I had to say could be meaningful to someone, it almost became a duty to contribute. To me, it’s like we’re all working on a tapestry together. So, at some point, I realized it wasn’t humility to have something in you and keep it to yourself. The first time I got published, it was a poem about grief, and a friend of mine told me, ‘Hey, maybe you’ll think I’m weird, but I’m burying someone I love this week and reading your poem was like a sign for me. It helped.’
So that’s a long way to say that I think connecting with others through art is one of the things that I’m sure will always be in my future. Even if I never get paid for it, it’ll always be what’s meaningful.
