Interview with Indian Poet Tishani Doshi

Tishani Doshi (photo credit: www.tishanidoshi.com)

“I would like to be a night-blooming jasmine,” Tishani Doshi said when I asked her which she’d choose if she could be any flower. She told me that they come up a lot in her work, and they remind her of home. Doshii is from Chennai, India,  a city where night-blooming jasmine grows natively. Born in 1975, Tishani is a dancer, poet, and fiction writer, and she also writes essays, and short stories.

During in my interview with her this winter, Doshi told me she started writing poetry at the age of 20 when she took a creative writing course at Queens University in Charlotte, where she was studying business administration and communication. 
   

Business administration? That was my knee-jerk reaction.

Communication? What? And how did she get from there to unofficial poet laureate of the planet earth (my designation, please indulge me)? 

“I was pretty good at that stuff too and I think I would have made a pretty competent banking / finance type of person,” she said. “But I was reading contemporary American poetry – poets like Mary Oliver, Mark Doty, James Tate — and I guess I simply hadn’t come across voices like that before, voices which seemed to me so immediate, and their poetry just blew me away – I wanted to be able to write like that too – to talk about my experiences.” 

I read Doshi’s answer once, still trying to figure out how this 180-degree turnaround happened, and for a second time, just grateful it did. Doshi adds so much to the global poetry community, and she inspires many young and political women, myself included. I found her when I needed her, at 20 (the same age when she began writing). During my third semester at college, I was feeling a little flat. They call us Gen Z folks nihilists, but I was just feeling the “list” part. As in listless. It just goes to show that poetry can always find a way to lasso depressed poets into the life and love of it. I danced away from her poems thinking ahh this moonlit, rose petal, colorful pursuit. 
 

That was how I felt after reading just a few of Doshi’s poems. And once I got started, I couldn’t stop.

Doshi’s first book of poems, Countries of the Body, won the 2006 Forward prize for the best first collection in 2006. She also won the 2006 All-India Poetry Competition. Her poems are, she told me, “triggered by images or stories”. Yes, by her  experiences but also what she reads and sees in the news. She says she needs to respond to it all somehow, and that is what poetry is for her.A language for responding.

When I asked her how she would suggest younger women cope with the cruelty and seeming deterioration of the world, she said: “…so how to counter this violence and cruelty – by turning the howl into a song – that is how I process the cruelty, and I would say to young political girls – arm yourself with education, with memory (historical / global / personal), with humour (so, so, so important), and with allies. Be angry but always allow space for beauty.”

I was floored. And even now, months later, I feel so empowered by this suggestion. As an official citizen of Gen Z, I feel so angry with the world, so hurt by its stumblings. Her suggestion to take out the emotions via art is one I had heard often, from poets, painters, my family, my own mind. But to allow a space for beauty, that is a harder idea to accept. Most often I do not feel like I can shed all this anger I carry, but it is important to just forget sometimes, and breathe in the night-blooming jasmine, the perfume of the peonies, the hydrangeas subtle scent; bask in the blush of a sunset, eat cherry pie. Not everything is about this monumental hurt of a stumbling world of hideous inequality and ecological ruin.

Doshi’s suggestion to arm ourselves with education and memory is perhaps the best advice I’ve heard in awhile. Education and memory are the key to argument, and what more do poets need for a poem or painters need for a painting? What do musicians need to write music? We want to voice our concerns whether they be political, or about personal heartbreak, death, confusion, or simply the admiration of birds. No matter the mood, the tone, the subject matter, education and memory are a good drawer to pull from. Point taken.

As previously mentioned, Doshi is a dancer as well as a poet. I asked her if one art form influences the other for her, and to this she told me that they very much go together. She told me that as a dancer she learned the concepts of time, rhythm, pacing, and how the body holds space, and all of these are the same skills needed for poetry — which to me makes sense. I danced ballet for several years. I felt I had to earn the ability to enter the rhythm, time and particular movement, and that my way of entering was quite idiosyncratic. I hadn’t realized this until my interview with Doshi. She told me that both forms of art require a state of vulnerability. 

Girls Are Coming out of the Woods by Tishani Doshi, Copper Canyon Press, $15.34

Doshi’s newest book of poems, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, published in May of 2018 is her riskiest and most effective writing yet. In it, Doshi writes a dark forest of danger, memory, and lets beauty poke in. You have probably seen this excerpt from the title poem, that one in which all the murdered girls come walking out of a wood like an army of zombies:

Girls are coming out of the woods,
wrapped in cloaks and hoods,
carrying iron bars and candles
and a multitude of scars

Truth: It is hard to shock someone from Gen Z; it is hard to even get our attention, I sometimes think. But then Doshi is no ordinary writer. She is fearless. She is that night-blooming jasmine, the one who encourages us to all bloom when the world is at its darkest. 

Below is my full interview with Tishani Doshi. This interview revolves around the poems in her third collection, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, published by Bloodaxe Press in 2018.

At what age or stage of your life did you take an interest in poetry? What got you into it?

I was 20 when I decided I was going to be a poet. I didn’t have any particular interest in poetry until I took a creative writing course at Queens University in Charlotte. I was an undergrad and my majors were business administration and communications. I was pretty good at that stuff too and I think I would have made a pretty competent banking / finance type of person. But poetry just blew me away – I was reading contemporary American poetry – poets like Mary Oliver, Mark Doty, James Tate — and I guess I hadn’t come across voices like that before which seemed to me so immediate, and I wanted to be able to write like that too – to talk about my experiences. I decided I wanted to be a poet after that class, and I’ve spent the last 20 odd years figuring out how one lives as a poet and what it means!

What compels you to choose a particular subject matter?
It varies a lot. I’d say most poems are triggered by images or stories. Either from things that I see or hear around me in real life, or things in the papers. Increasingly, I find that the news is a huge source for poetry – I read stories in the paper – some of them terrifying, some of them absurd, and there is a need to respond to that somehow. But it’s also the image, the body, certain movement, which stays, and then the poem could grow from there. In terms of subject matter it’s varied too – but I’d say a lot of my poems begin with the body – particularly the female body, as I began (rather late) to be a dancer (at 26) and so the body works as a metaphor for many things for me, the idea of home and elsewhere is important to me, issues of migration and belonging….

Which language do you mostly write in? Do they translate well?I only write in English (sadly). I wish I could move between languages.

What is your recommended writing routine?

I like to work in the morning. I like to be at my desk straight after breakfast and I try to work till lunch. After lunch things go a bit downhill for me. I may have another spurt later in the evening, but really, morning is everything.

How do you know when a poem is done?

You don’t. Paul Valery said a poem is never finished, it is only abandoned. But I suppose when the poem is published and it’s in book form there’s a sense of completion, but even then, you can tinker with it for a future edition. There are a few poems that arrive whole and remain whole. That’s really rare.

Does your poetry inspire your dancing? Does your dancing inspire your poetry?

Yes, it goes both ways. It took many years before I published my first book of poems, so until then I was essentially a dancer – and I have learned many of the most important things from dance – the concept of time, rhythm, slowness, and how it is held in the body, and this is also a space that poetry lives. I believe very strongly that poetry requires us to enter a different time zone, and this I learned from dance. But also discipline! When I set out writing I had no idea how to be a writer, so I just did what I felt, and the inspiration came in bursts. With dance I realised that you have to show up everyday. Whether you feel like it or not, whether you’ve got a headache or if you’re feeling down, because the practice, the rehearsal is what it’s about, and even if you have a bad day, by showing up and going through the movements, you may feel better, and all this accumulation effort, this slow accretion, is what it takes to make something. And in terms of how poetry goes into the dance, it’s harder to describe, but I suppose there’s a shared vulnerability. You know, to go out onto a dark stage and then perform for people – to write a poem, it requires something of the same fearlessness.

How do you process the cruelty in this world? Do you filter it out? Write/ dance out your emotions? Can you suggest a coping method for young, political women?

I think art has always allowed a response – either the making of art, or the consuming of art – and here I don’t mean in a consumeristic sense, but the partaking of art. So to lose yourself in a book, or music, or theatre, or dance, or to be able to stand in front of a painting and be moved by it. Art is the only thing I know of that is truly transformative. If you think about the cave paintings that were made thousands and thousands of years ago, and think of our ancestors in the caves, trying to represent their lives, trying to make something beautiful – and how we are still in a way trying to do the same. It is the best thing about humans, that we are capable of this beauty. Of course, we are capable of such cruelties and horrors too, and so this is the huge difficulty. Understanding that violence is coded within us, and that is part of what being human is too, apparently – so how to counter this violence and cruelty – by turning the howl into a song – that is what poetry is for me – and that is how I process the cruelty, and I would say to young political women – arm yourself with education, with memory (historical / global / personal), with humour (so so so important) and with allies. Be angry but always allow space for beauty.

If you were a flower, which flower would you be?

A jasmine I think. I probably have about 15 jasmine flowers in my poems, and the smell of jasmine makes me insanely homesick, so yes, I would like to be a night-blooming jasmine.

Tishani Doshi was born in the city formerly known as MADRAS in 1975. She has published six books of poetry and fiction. Her essays, poems and short stories have been widely anthologized. In 2012, she represented India at a historic gathering of world poets for Poetry Parnassus at the Southbank Centre, London. She is also the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award for Poetry, winner of the All-India Poetry Competition, and her first book, Countries of the Body won the prestigious Forward Prize for Best Firt Collection in 2006. Tishani’s debut novel, The Pleasure Seekers, was shortlisted for the Hindu Literary Prize and long-listed for the Orange Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She currently lives on a beach between two fishing villages in Tamil Nadu with her husband and three dogs.

Aviva Van Pelt

Aviva is a poet and a writer working towards earning a BFA in creative writing at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. Along with poetry and flowers, she enjoys coffee, cloud gazing, and dumpster diving for new collage materials.