Marina Diamandis mastered the art of melding her quick-witted songwriting prowess with whimsical production and candy-colored concepts in the early days of her music career. With a dedicated following of 3.3 million fans across platforms and nearly 10 million monthly Spotify listeners, the singer-songwriter has evolved in her artistry and her personal identity since she rose to stardom in the 2010s. Perhaps you were (practically) raised by her visual Electra Heart archetypes on Tumblr as Marina and the Diamonds, or you stumbled across her music when she started going by her mononym, MARINA. But something shifted after she released her last album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, in 2021: she felt inspired to pivot from writing pop music to playing with poetry during a trip on mushrooms.
"I basically had started just writing things down, which I thought were lyrics. But then I realized that the format was completely wild and I was unable to fit it into a song," Marina tells Cosmopolitan, adding that she spent that entire summer penning poetry.
"It unlocked a part of my brain that allowed me to reflect differently on the past and access memories and situations that I just hadn't thought about for a very, very long time. It just felt very satisfying to write, and very fun as well."
In her first-ever poetry collection Eat the World, which is set to be released on October 29, 2024 by Penguin Random House, Marina explores topics ranging from self-worth and identity to loneliness and longing for connection. Because of the personal revelations that make up the project, she felt it was important to make a distinction between the pop star we've come to know and the true human being behind her on-stage persona.
"It was a fairly quick decision," Marina says of publishing under her full name, Marina Diamandis. "This book is about me as a person—it's not about me as an artist portraying this visual or conceptual world—it's more just life stories."
"It's always very freeing when you write about something that you feel secretive about or sometimes ashamed about. The idea that it might be read by many people later on feels concerning, however, not concerning enough to not do it," she continued. "I've felt similar with songs sometimes, particularly when it involves other people that I'm writing about. With this book, I've definitely explored the parts of myself that I think were taboo or not acceptable to me. So there's a little of that feeling that still remains, but I'm more in acceptance that this is going to be read by a lot of people and that's okay."
Eat the World was previously described by the artist as "spicy, and brutal, and funny, and sad, and kind of like my lyrics, but way more savage," as she incorporates scrapbook and zine-inspired visuals into its lineup of 38 poems. And, like her music, Marina's written work is laced with brilliant and bold wordplay throughout. She even snuck some elements of concrete poetry in there, too.
"Discovering that poetry could be something different from what I thought felt very inspiring to me," she tells Cosmo. "I hope it could maybe bring people in who might not have thought that they were into poetry or that they didn't think it would resonate with them because it sometimes feels like this archaic, quite traditional art form."
While publishing is a new move for Marina, her years in the music biz primed her for certain moments—like recording her audiobook and going on tour in support of the project. She's performed for massive crowds during her musical gigs but is scaling back to more intimate venues for her book tour, which kicked off in Manchester on October 21 and ends in San Francisco on November 1.
"I'm very much looking forward to it because any type of context that you can exist in outside of music in order to connect in a different way feels worth it to me. I think with pop, one thing that I've struggled with is this desire to create these visual worlds and then having this expectation that I have to behave like other artists or that I have to seem to be some way. I'm sure other artists also feel the same, but I just also want to feel like a human being," she says. "Pop is amazing—it's the heart of my entire life. However, the most important thing is connection in the world and this book is all about feeling a lack of it growing up. It's also how I abridge that and how I've been able to improve that for myself. I hope we have lots of deep and enriching conversations and I'm keen also to just hear other people's experiences as well."
Want to connect more with Marina? Make sure to pre-order Eat the World so you don't miss a beat. The multifaceted artist has been teasing several pieces from the book on her social platforms in anticipation of its release—and her latest excerpt, "Pink Elephant," can be found exclusively right here. Check it out below!
An Excerpt From Eat the World
By Marina Diamandis
Pink Elephant
Excerpted from EAT THE WORLD by Marina Diamandis, to be published on October 29, 2024 by Penguin Life, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Marina Diamandis.
EAT THE WORLD by Marina Diamandis will be released on October 29, 2024. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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