Tishani Doshi

So she was important.

And now I tend to read.

I read a lot of contemporary American poetry, English poets, Indian poets.

I just feel I'm I'm kind of always keeping an eye out for for a new voice.

But there are also favorites that I return to.

And do you say poetry is a political force?

Yes, I do.

I think it's hard to think.

I don't like to think about what a poem can do because when you write a poem, it's not an act of activism.

I don't write a poem thinking that it's going to affect change in legislature or anything like that.

I write a poem because I'm compelled to for different reasons.

But the fact that a poem can land

surprisingly in different places and affect people differently is part of the wonder of poetry.

But I think the political act is the act of transformation that a poem is capable of to convert a lot of anger, injustice, and fear into something more beautiful, into something lasting.

And that transformational power

is political.

I think I'm obsessed with the idea of hybridity in a way.

I'm somebody who carries, I suppose, this bi culture, bi influence inside me.

And so my relationship to writing about India has always been as this hybrid person.

And so it just emerged that from The Pleasure Seekers, my first novel, which had a half Welsh, half Indian protagonist, I moved on to a half Indian, half Italian.