Spinning a good yarn

Six years after her first book of poems City of Water was published by Sahitya Akademi to critical acclaim, Anindita Sengupta returns with a second collection called Walk Like Monsters (Paperwall). She continues to be a poet committed to vivid, memorable imagery and restrained, precise sentences. Her second book is a departure from her earlier preoccupations with the immediate and the personal. In this one, she casts her net wider and the poems she brings to the surface are a revelation. The following are edited excerpts from an interview.

This manuscript has been in the works for a few years, right? How old are the oldest poems in Walk Like Monsters?

Walk Like Monsters was written over five years or so. Finding a publisher and finalising the manuscript took another three years. Partly because I got busy, partly because I’m slow to let go of poems. I rarely submit to journals and I take months to send back proofs. Hemant (Divate), my publisher, was so patient with me — bless him! The first poem in the book is titled ‘How to Make a Cup’ and draws on the Japanese concept of wabi sabi, which, among other things, tells you that imperfection is desirable, that any creative work will be flawed — and in fact, this makes it more beautiful. I wrote the poem as a directive to myself, as a reminder, of the lack of control inherent in the process. The oldest poems are about eight years old.

In a post many months ago, you wrote that you stayed with your second manuscript a long time and that you kept undoing and redoing it like a piece of knitting. Can you tell us a little bit about that process?

Ha! Yes, in knitting, it’s called frogging. Because you “rip it, rip it”, see? Most of the final poems have very little resemblance to the first draft. I think on the page. In the act of writing. Even ordinary things such as groceries or what I’m going to do with my year. Both yarn and words are, for the most part, endlessly pliant. You can work it back to the beginning, rip it out, introduce changes at any stage, build in new layers and colours.

My first drafts are usually rubbish. After I write a first draft, I forget it for a long time. Then I take it out at some point when its turn comes up. I like using sound and language experiments each time, adding and compressing in turns. I’m an obsessive person, so some days, I’d sit on the bed, tinker obsessively, and at some point, the room would have grown dark and I’d get up and take a shower. I always needed to go out immediately after that.

City of Water touched many times on the relationship with the father. In Walk Like Monsters, the attention has shifted to a child. This second book feels like the reader is watching the poet get older and enter a new chapter in life.

My nesting instinct is huge. It was a bit of a shock. I spent some time wrestling with this new me that somehow betrayed the images of me as a cool, detached young person. This book reflects that transition and doubt, perhaps, the cocoon years. My writing process is different now, less moody, more disciplined. After Amaya’s birth, I took to motherhood so much that I found it hard to write for a while. I was also stupidly happy and didn’t want to write a bunch of sappy poems so I took a break and wrote other stuff. I joined UCLA to study screenwriting and wrote two screenplays. I’m finding my way back to poetry

Do you want to share a little bit about how you redraft images and lines?

To be completely honest, a lot of these poems are not all that revised. Interestingly enough some of the more popular ones are first and second drafts. I always find that amusing. One of the techniques I use is I make a list of things I want to do with it — look at the sound, imagery and so on. In one revision I will look at only the sound or the imagery. In different revisions, I deal with different layers.

There appears to be a concerted effort towards honesty. As you say in one of your poems, the character wants “not rescue (…) but to prevail.”

I’ve seen the rescue syndrome in action in different ways. I’ve never been in a flood situation, but I’ve been in terrible situations. A lot of the time what one wants is to prevail, to exist in the room and not be treated as the person to be covered in a blanket and put in a corner. A lot of the book (whether it’s a flood or widows in Kashmir) show that a common reaction to suffering is to offer them soup and tell them you will take care of them. I feel strongly that these women don’t want that, they don’t want soup or to be told to be quiet. They want to speak, no matter what the situation is. When you are feeding them soup you are effectively silencing the person on the other end of trauma. I think some of the poems are probably a protest against that.

What are some books of poetry you’ve read recently that you’re excited by?

Off the top of my head, Float by Anne Carson. I found Ban en Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil very interesting. I enjoyed Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay. Pictograph by Melissa Kwasny. Dementia, My Darling by Brendan Constantine is wonderful.

Urvashi Bahugunais a poet based in Delhi

COMMENT NOW