What I took away after my first reading of Countries of the Body was a sense of sadness, almost mild despair. What is the tone you were hoping to evoke in your readers?
I wasn't hoping to evoke any tone. In fact, I think very little about the reader when I'm writing a poem. It's distracting. The reader only emerges as a sort of final judge after the poem has been written. If there's something that is obscure or needs clarification, you provide a footnote or some such. But I try to avoid this as well.
I find that a number of people in India now choose to call themselves poets on the basis of collections published by obscure publications. After hints to the media, these individuals are automatically elevated to the status of 'poet' with little or no critical evaluation of their work. Does that ever bother you?
Not really. I think as discerning readers and writers we should be able to make our own decisions about such things. As India lacks quality space in which critical evaluation can be made about literary work, who can blame people for calling themselves poets, when they really think they are?
Image: With Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka and Welsh poet Menna Elfyn at the Hay festival in Cartagena, Colombia.
Also see: 'What does it mean to be an immigrant?'
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