hika.

Gustave is a freshman who is planning to major in English with a concentration in creative writing, with a possible double major in studio art. He is from New Orleans, has participated in the Kenyon Summer Workshop Program, and is now a part of the Kenyon Review Associates Program. His poem “The Lovers” was accepted into HIKA’s 2026-2027 edition.

What inspired you to write “The Lovers”?

I was doing a project for my senior year of high school where I would write a poem for every major arcana tarot card. Specifically, I looked at the artwork, the symbolism, and the meaning of the card, and then I thought about that and then interpreted it. Specifically with The Lovers, I wrote that one after looking at the cards, and I was thinking about this idea of like…I didn’t really date at all in high school. So it was kind of this loneliness in relation to the tarot card, because it does obviously represent love. But then tarot cards can also be reversed, and so for a lot of the pieces, I incorporated the reversed meaning. So the lovers reversed implies dissonance or problems in your romantic life, and I was thinking about that also when I was writing it.

Do you have any specific authors or artists that you’re inspired by in your work?

I really like looking at non-writers for inspiration from my writing. I think I kind of have a synesthesia about writing, where it’s not necessarily like I literally sense something else when I write, but I don’t necessarily think the inspiration that I get for writing has to come from other writing. I think that E.M. Carroll makes really cool horror short story graphic novels. I was really into that when I was doing the project because there was also a visual component—I made the tarot cards—and so a lot of the poems were duly inspired by E.M. Carroll’s work. But for writers, I really like Ada Limón. I mean, it’s a basic answer because she was the poet laureate, but I think that she has a very personal style to her poetry that I mimic. I really like how she uses personal reflection in storytelling. I really appreciate poems that can lean into more general concepts or abstractions and make like wider commentary, but it is very rare that I write a poem that doesn’t use “I”, and isn’t specifically me talking.

Can you tell me a little bit about your writing process?

So a lot of these pieces were written as responses to prompts that my teacher gave me. I cannot remember if this one was or wasn’t—my impression is that it wasn’t because there were some of them that I wrote at the start of the year, and then as the year was coming to a close, I realized I didn’t like them and needed to rewrite them. And I think this was one of those. For this poem specifically, I think a lot about space when I’m writing. I don’t like writing poems that are all left-justified in stanzas. I really want to move around the page. And a lot of times it’s kind of like drawing, where I kind of just am like, this feels good to put this here. You know, I don’t really think about it. My writing specifically is a lot of stream-of-consciousness. I would rather write something once and have it be kind of just okay and then go back and revise it. But a lot of times I just like, write, write, write, write, write, then I’ll give it like a week and then go back and revise it.

How did you start writing?

I read a ton as a kid. I used to go to the library and bring back as many books as I could carry and just read them all over the course of a week. And I think school definitely diminished that, but in tandem with me stopping reading as much, I started doing creative writing classes at my middle school in 6th grade. When it came time for high school, you had the opportunity at my school to sign up for different artistic programs or, essentially majors, and I was thinking about which one I wanted to do. I just thought creative writing seemed like the best fit. It was more of a this is the one that best fits me as opposed to I know for sure that I want to write. Then I started the program and I was like, oh yeah, this is all I want to do. It was in like ninth grade that I really got into it.

Do you have any ideas or themes that you may want to explore in the near future?

Yeah, right now at least, I want to explore the concept of logic and emotion. I think that people pit logic and emotion against each other, and there’s this concept that emotions are something that you feel, but they’re not ultimately useful, and that logic is the way of looking at things that triumphs emotion or that emotion is an inhibiting factor in decision making. And I think that that’s kind of untrue. I think that they feed into one another. Everything that we feel is emotion, like the concept of logic is something that humans made up, you know, based off of their emotions. And so I think I really want to, in poetry, delve into the concept of emotions and objectivity and subjectivity. I think that I would love to explore the concept of rigidity and logic as opposed to subjectivity and emotion.

Final question: Do you have any advice for people who want to be writers but might be afraid to start?

My advice would be to submit your work to contests. When I first started out and I look at my old writing I don’t think it’s good, but I still submitted it to contests, and I was as part of the program that I was in, I was required to, for a grade, submit my work to contests. And for the first few years, I didn’t get into anything. And this was like dozens of submissions. Then my junior year I got into my first publication, and then I started writing more, and I got into more and more publications, and I kind of snowballed. It’s easy when you start anything to recognize that you’re not good at it and to hear other people critique your work and think like that means you’re not good and you should stop. But really and truly you should not be discouraged.

I think that my other piece of advice would be to go to workshops and get your pieces critiqued, and get them critiqued honestly. It sucks to take criticism. It really does, but especially with writing, you can write the same poem a hundred times, and if no one tells you something might be inhibiting your work, you’re never gonna change. So I would say even submitting to stuff like HIKA or something to literary magazines here and going to the meeting and hearing what people have to say about your piece is very valuable. And it’s tempting to be discouraged, but you’re never expected to be perfect, and nobody is perfect. Everything is subjective. So write what you want to write and keep writing, just keep writing. It’s the most it’s the most often said piece of advice because it’s the most true. Just keep writing.