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Anu Mahadev |
“Are you a creature borne
out of fire, earth or water?
I flicker like an
ephemeral blunder this night.
We are found, sculpted,
immaculate, seared in moonlight
In an act of final
surrender, Anu, this night.”
In a poetry collection
that starts with a lunar poem, ‘This night (A ghazal)’, such intense, elemental
lines of yearning fabricated by the thoughts and emotions of an Indian diaspora
poet is bound to not only inspire, but also to bewitch with her poetic prowess.
In her richly evocative
collection of poetry, her second poetry anthology titled Neem Leaves (AuthorHouse, January 13, 2015),
US-based Indian origin author Anu Mahadev weaves a searing emotional tapestry
that ceases to be merely musings of a lovelorn, grief-stricken soul and
transforms into a treasured panorama baring open the human psyche. She attains
catharsis through an inward journey into hitherto uncharted terrains and brings
out some heart-rending poetic epiphanies and truths with her almost mystic,
surreal usage of language and imagery. Written in the year of the tragic demise
of her mother-in-law, Neem Leaves is a dedication to her overpowering
memories, her eulogies to people and places that have been central to her emotions
and her existence. In an in-depth interview, the author/poet shares her journey
with the poems of this collection and her inspiration behind writing the book,
among other things.
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Lopamudra Bannerjee |
Anu Mahadev: Hello Lopa, and thank
you very much for this interview.
In all honesty, Myriad
(2013) came about purely out of desperation, after decades of incubation. Post-childbirth,
and the loss of identity that followed, combined with a diagnosis of severe clinical
depression led me to turning my childhood passion into reality. We all go
through certain experiences that define us as people and Myriad was the result
of all those buried stories that came to life in this very unplanned venture.
There was no intention of a book, until a close friend suggested that I collect
all my poems and publish them. When I look back, what I see is raw emotion,
with no special technique, but a simple narrative that readers could connect
with instantly.
Neem leaves (2015) on the other hand, was a very careful deliberation. At this point, I was an MFA student at Drew University (Madison, NJ) and was trying (not too hard) to infuse some craft into the poems I wrote. Underneath though the emotions were the same, the aim was to channel them in a more sophisticated manner. Halfway through the project, a personal tragedy struck. Sometimes you never realize what a person means to you until they’re gone. Clich├й, I know but looking at disease and death in such close quarters left me utterly helpless, and with no other way to express myself, I started writing, more as a catharsis, without a second thought as to how they would turn out, or how they would be perceived. I’ve always loved beautiful words, and vivid descriptions of places, people, scenes and so I combined the two to create the imagery prevalent through the book. I probably paid more attention to detail and punctuation, line breaks and the general tone of the poems, but quite honestly, they wrote themselves.
LB: Do share with us a few words about how the
poems of Neem Leaves took shape in your mind. In the title poem, the
central image of the neem leaves, to my understanding, becomes an abiding
metaphor of the memories you hold close to you “like folded laundry, warm
skeins of silk.” Did you weave the rest of the poems in the collection keeping
in mind the riveting call of your memories which might have torn you apart?
AM:
Around the time I was writing this book, I was also reading a lot of poetry,
and was struck by the extensive use of metaphors in some of them. I’d probably not
been consciously aware of them until that point, but I began appreciating them
even more, and was able to constantly draw parallels between a particular
situation and a magical world that existed only in my imagination. I know that
it would perhaps benefit me to write everyday but honestly some days I come up
empty, and some days I am greatly inspired by a thought, a word, an image or an
event. I believe that is how the book evolved – there was no way of knowing
what the journey was going to be like, but I let it take me wherever it was
going. The progress of a disease from its inception till the end, brought a lot
of pain in undiscovered places and the knowledge that these were her last few
months made me urgently want to capture the turbulence inside me, as well as
what I saw pass between mother and son, wife and husband as a third-party
observer. Suddenly here is a person, and then suddenly there is a void.
Snatched too soon, her absence made my world cold, very cold. The only solace
was my pen – because time was certainly not a friend at that point.
LB: Apart from many poems in Neem Leaves
which speak directly to humane dreams, passions, churning from an unswerving
bottomless pit of pain, some of the poems, I felt, stem from a hidden core where
an imagined yearning bubbles up, scalding the poet in you till its crescendo.
For example, in the poems ‘Nishka, my unborn daughter’, ‘The dancing girl of
Mohenjo-daro’, ‘Traffic Monsoon’, you blend the surreal and the imagined
reality so seamlessly and effortlessly that they become fragments of your
palpable urban persona. Would you say there is magic realism in these poems,
and if so, what inspired you?
AM:
I am generally a dreamer (which poet isn’t) and I find my thoughts wandering to
impossible, imaginary scenarios in the midst of a humdrum routine life. There
is beauty everywhere, depends on how you look at it. The very definition of
beauty differs from person to person. Things which are obviously beautiful,
that is, generally considered as such by the world, need no introspection. On
the other hand, I believe that it is the ordinary, the commonplace, the things
that are often ignored and overlooked, the people who are forgotten are the
ones that make up for a beautiful world. That is how I view it. Often I find
myself associating a place to a memory, either something that has happened
there, or something that reminded me of someone or something else, or just
simply the way I feel about something. I find it fascinating to meld these
together and make these associations that aren’t readily obvious. Yes, a lot of
these do stem from my own ideas and experiences, but I find myself projecting
these onto other people in a way that makes them sit up and say “Aha!” because
it was something that wasn’t visible to them before. I try to make these
connections because that is what ultimately binds us together – the underlying emotions
behind every action, every word, every event. Urban landscapes attract my
attention as much as the rural, but being a city girl, born and bred, I have
learned to find beauty everywhere, even in an unfinished skyscraper.
LB: Also, some very important poems of Neem Leaves
are inspired by your poetic vision of places crucial to your personal journey.
For example, ‘Saturday Afternoon, Old City, Ahmedabad’, ‘Stanley Park,
Vancouver BC’, ‘Yellowstone’ and some other poems, you depict some fragmented
scenes and images central to the places and turn them into your own emotional
landscape. Again, in ‘Peshawar’, the ruins of a city and its people devastated
by outrages of terror forms the emotional nucleus of your poetry. How would you
describe the feelings and the process behind writing these poems?
AM: I
have always been a sincere student of geography, and this has fueled my
interest in various places, people, cultures – in other words, I am a constant
traveler. This doesn’t mean I am on an airplane constantly, rather I let my
mind wander without any physical boundaries restraining me, example – “I dream
of Bariloche”. The poems and places you mention above, however, are places I
have either lived in or traveled to, and while at the time they did not seem
significant, I found myself discovering nuggets of emotions and information
upon random ruminations. The words pretty much wrote themselves, but I remained
very much grounded, not letting the abstractions cloud the concrete descriptions
of these places as I tried to bring them to life. I am not of the belief that
one has to dig very deep and write flowery stuff to call it poetry, most of the
times, it is right there, staring at you in the face, unaware of its own
impact. I also like to write in layers – there is always a hidden emotional
map, a motive behind describing a place, although it is not evident to me when
I’m writing it. It comes forth by the time I am done with my work, and I am
glad to say that it evokes the same feeling in the reader as it does in me.
LB: In some poems like ‘Indian Summer’, Kurinji’,
‘Moonstone Sunrise’, there are these very raw, visceral earthen images with a
strong synesthetic effect. In ‘Kurinji’, you write about the flowers “Stitched
across these rust-red valleys/streak the earthy soil, will the rain, and spring
to be patient.” Would you say you are inspired more by the Indian, ethnic
sensibilities in your lyrical representations or you are more of an erudite
cosmopolitan poet blending some of your Indian experiences into a largely
diasporic milieu?
AM: I
was born in India, and I will always identify with the sensibilities of
anything Indian, even if I have lived abroad longer than I have in India. As
American as I may be in many of my liberal values, there is a tug towards the
country of my birth and something very comforting and something very familiar,
since I spent most of my growing, impressionable years there. But at the same
time, I realize I belong everywhere and nowhere all at once. Even within India,
I did not reside in my native state, and so the displacement is something that
is not novel to me. I don’t start writing with an agenda – that this poem will
be about something Indian, and this will be about something else. Poetry in my
mind, is immune to languages, cultures and boundaries of any kind. All these identities
swirl in a kaleidoscope in my mind, and that is what emerges when I put pen to
paper.
LB:
In Neem Leaves, there are also some very intensely emotional personal
poems including ‘Mother’, where you write: “My birthmarks containing your
cells, weep, shed you today.” In ‘Ice’, when you write these lines: “They take
her away. Her last journey. I melt. Someone wipes out the last traces of me.
Mixed in with her”….the stark portrayal of pain resonated with me not only as I
remembered my own experiences of witnessing the death of my loved ones, but
also as I felt a sisterhood in the ink dipped in your own oozing blood from
which the poems originated. Would you say this poetic depiction of pain comes
from a deeper elemental understanding of human life and the connections forged
on the way?
AM:
Certainly. As we grow older, the magnitude of the hurt/pain we feel only gets
larger, but the beautiful thing is so does our heart’s ability to withstand
these tribulations. Until this untimely death of someone so close to me, I
never imagined I would feel what I felt, or that I would express myself so
eloquently. I strongly believe in the human connection – the way our lives are
joined together in this intricate web. Everyone’s time here is limited, and
ultimately what we leave behind are these bonds that strengthen over time. I
am, by nature a hermit and do not go around making connections aggressively, so
it takes me a while to open my heart out to new people, but when I do, I do not
take them lightly. Such was the case with my mother-in-law. She became a part
of my life so seamlessly, that her departure left behind a big void, one that
can never be filled. I am certainly more grateful for the family and friends
that I have, and in general have become more willing to forge new
relationships.
LB: In
an NPR conversation with Arun Rath, Jane Hirschfield, one of the most
celebrated poets of the US and a Guggenheim fellow had remarked that “some
poems have a way of, sometimes literally, looking out a window.” Those poems,
she meant, look into a small microcosm by portraying a scene, but in the immediacy
of the experience, the field of the poem becomes larger. I had this exact
feeling while reading some poems, including ‘Coral Necklace’, ‘Housewife’,
poems with their striking portrayal of womanhood, where the personal becomes
universal. In ‘Housewife’, you write, “And sometimes/she hears the shadows
speak in stolen moments, when her voice isn’t muffled, her existence taken for
granted.” What would you say about this observation of mine, in context with
these poems?
AM: As
we live, we realize that when it comes down to it, humans are the same
everywhere and need the same things. But societies and other factors demarcate
them into various categories, and not everyone gets the same nature/nurture
equation. The poems you mentioned above – my subjects are usually the people I
know, but when I look at life through their lens, it becomes clear that these
are not the experiences of one person alone. I often try writing from the view
of an inanimate object such as a couch or a postcard, but that turns out to be
a window into someone’s life as well, which then translates into a larger
audience. I do tend to dwell upon women and their insecurities, the challenges
they face and their struggle to balance so much in life. And I am sure that is
something many in the world can relate to.
LB: In
your poem ‘Adi paints a Peter Max’, again, you again depict an endearing moment
of your son immersed in his idyllic world of scribbling, coloring, ‘scattered
clouds’ and “makeshift desk, cutting, shaping, gluing”, which you portray
almost with a philosopher’s edgy, explicit analysis. Are these two binary
worlds, on one hand the painful solitude in your poems, on the other hand the
world of tranquil love and beauty consciously blended in the collection, or did
you just go with the flow of the moment as you wove each poem around the
elemental feeling nurtured within you?
AM:
This is one of my favorites. My son is into art and art history and one day he
came home with a painting modeled around the style of Peter Max. The colors
were so vivid, and his enthusiasm so infectious, I couldn’t help but write
about it. I think most of us will agree that children and their innocence take
us sometimes off guard and make us reflect upon life in general. In a way, that
makes us all philosophers as we grow older and catalog our own life
experiences. Personally, I have concluded that I find that kind of unbridled
joy in very few things, and my child’s admiration for art is one of them. Most
everything else is peppered with the wisdom of a lesson behind it. I guess I
find that pain is not the only factor that kindles my writing – I am also an unabashed
romantic and want to believe in the goodness of things and people, even if that
good is hard to observe at first. Very rarely does a situation present itself
when the good is almost a 100% present, and that kind of joy makes me rush to
the writing desk as well.
LB: I
would now like you ask you about your poetic journey following ‘Neem Leaves’.
What are you working on currently, and how do you see yourself as an Indian
diaspora poet in today’s global scenario of literary publishing? Any particular
insights that the readers can carry home?
AM:
Post ‘Neem Leaves’, I had a few readings here and there, and began working on
my third manuscript, which is centered more towards womanhood, and celebrating
what it means to be bad, brazen without any compunction or regret. It is quite
different and aggressive from the first two books, and most of it was written
while I was in Kerala, God’s own country. It happened to be the monsoon season
at the time, so a lot is woven around that as well. I’m sending out poems to
journals and anthologies and I hope this manuscript will be published soon. Other
than that, I am co-editor of two online journals, the Woman Inc. which focuses
on women and their issues, and Jaggery Lit, which is a South Asian online
magazine for the Indian diaspora. I have also been recently appointed as board
member for the Quills Edge Press based out of New Jersey – this press is all
about works from women of age 50 and above. As far as how I view myself, I am
of the firm belief that one should be true to oneself and the rest will follow.
There is no readymade place for anyone in this literary world, and no one wants
to be slotted in a particular category because everyone believes that their
voice is unique. In order to do that, I am of the opinion that one should be
faithful in their writing. Nothing should be doctored because a fake voice can
be spotted from a mile away. Just my 2 cents for readers.
LB: The
famous veteran poet and Beat publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti has famously
written about the poet’s world: “The poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rime to a
high wire of his own making.” Would you say this coinage is true about your
poems in Neem Leaves and your other upcoming collections of poetry? And
what about your contemporary poets who are making their foray into poetry
publishing, how do you perceive their poetry in the light of these lines?
AM: I
think it is safe to say that anyone who wants to create something understands
that somewhere along the creative process, he or she has to take a risk and
that might either pay off or not work at all. Creating something out of nothing
isn’t easy, especially when a poet wants to infuse the language with something
fresh and new. The poem may be about a lampshade or a field of tulips, but
either way, trying to write something that hasn’t been done before several
times is a challenge, one that may succeed or fail with the reader. I basically
took the leap knowing fully well that not everything will resonate with
everyone. But at the end of the day you hope that the reader takes something
out of it, something that only he or she may feel, since art is subjective and
there is no one correct interpretation. A poem will mean different things to
different people, based on how they view it. I think nowadays many poets are
experimenting with new forms and new subject matter with the full belief that
it will appeal to someone if not everyone. But I think ultimately you have to
create for yourself, because you have something to share, something to express
– come what may. What happens to it at the end of it, is not in your hands.
Bios:
Anu Mahadev is a left-brained engineer turned right-brained poet, based in the Greater New York region. She is a 2016 graduate of the MFA in Poetry program from Drew University. She is part time editor for the Woman Inc. online and Jaggery Lit online, and in addition is a board member for Quills Edge Press, based in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies.
Lopamudra Banerjee is an author/poet/translator based in Dallas, Texas, USA. She is the author of ‘Thwarted Escape: An Immigrant’s Wayward Journey’ (Authorspress, 2016), a Journey Awards 2014 recipient (hosted by Chanticleer Reviews and Media) and also received Honorable Mention at the Los Angeles Book Festival 2017. Her works have appeared in various journals, e-zines and anthologies and she has also received the International Reuel Prize (translation) instituted by The Significant League, the literary group in Facebook for ‘The Broken Home’, her English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s magnum opus novella ‘Nastanirh’.
Wonderful read! Honest evocative answers by Anu to soul stirring questions posed by Lopa.
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