Kamakshi Anand remembers in ninth grade thinking, “Oh, this is a thing people do — they write their thoughts online.”
"And I was like, ‘I could do this. Nobody knows who I am,’” she said.
Six years later and now a third-year economics honours student at UBC, Anand’s impulsive decision to share her writing on Instagram still holds, under the pen name Kia. She described herself as having two sides to her: a structured, methodical side that drew her to studying economics and another that finds comfort in blurred uncertainties. It is this latter aspect of Anand that immediately brought her to the online poetry community. She saw the platform as a means to anonymously express complex emotions she found difficult to articulate in reality.
“It’s gratifying,” said Anand. “And it makes me feel like all of these thoughts have some motive, instead of just being pointless thinking.”
Anand described economics as her “first love” — it offers a pursuit for answers, connecting the dots and drawing from models that give her a rush of satisfaction for capturing a particular situation.
“And that feeling is the same thing I get when I write down a poem.”
The dilemma between chasing perfection and creative expression
As a writer and editor-in-chief for her school’s magazine in seventh grade, the idea of perfection initially drove Anand’s creative writing process. Her experience with playing the piano and writing scripts for the school choir, as well as positive comments from teachers about her writing, encouraged her to share her poetry online.
A year after creating her account, Anand’s work started gaining traction. What started as journal entries morphed into poetry. She then introduced herself on Instagram and people began putting a name to a face behind the words they were reading. Slowly, messages started pouring in about her work, and Anand realized real people were engaging and resonating with her writing. The pressure eventually got to her and stifled Anand’s creativity.
“I think I put out my worst content at that time, just because I was so focused on what everybody wanted to read that it stopped being authentic,” she said. “And every year, I make this resolution that I’m going to be my most honest self in any content I make because that’s my identity.”
In addition to her Instagram page, Anand also runs the newsletter A-MUSE-ING and has authored a poetry collection, Say Your Vows, which she published when she was 17.
Anand explores themes of girlhood, love and living in a foreign country. And although much of her work is fiction writing, she finds beauty in articulating the honesty of the emotions she experiences. You might find her walking through downtown with her friends and frantically pulling out her phone to type out an idea that comes to mind or her emotions to process a fight with a friend. Whatever the circumstance is, Anand aims to articulate the vulnerability of complex emotions through her work in a way that connects with the reader.
She recalled sitting at a coffee shop and seeing a couple with their kid who was holding a box of LEGO as the family ran toward the bus stop. They had just missed the bus. But, she noted how happy the family looked in that moment.
“I remember sitting there like, ‘That needs to be a poem’ — that feeling of things moving away from you, but you’re still happy because you’re surrounded by so much love,” she said.
The crossroads of economics and poetry
At this point in the interview, I couldn’t help but ask Anand how she perceived her study of economics alongside her poetry in a world where mainstream economic narratives often zoom out to see people as numbers and quantify experiences while poetry brings individual stories and human emotions to the forefront.
Anand explained values are often reflected in economic models — people’s decision-making is driven by self-interest.
“When you quantify everything, you make everything a math equation,” said Anand. “I feel like, when you just make people numbers and you take their character away from them, it makes you a very pessimistic person.”
Anand sees poetry as a way to mend this, an avenue to understand people in a different light. When asked whether poetry challenged her study of economics, Anand said she sees both aspects of herself as complements informing her worldview.
“I think [poetry] makes me more receptive to so many stories the numbers won’t tell me. I think it gives me a more nuanced view of things ... And I think every story has so many ways that it’s been told,” she said.
“And that’s in a way, what economics does too — we tell stories to these numbers.”
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