HOW DID YOU COME TO POETRY?

My journey with poetry is a bit convoluted. I first started writing at a very young age - I wrote a musical for my class to perform at the winter pageant in second grade - but I abandoned it for a long time. I was very depressed throughout middle school, and my poetry reflected that, and after a while, I gave it up. I continued writing but no longer took it seriously or believed my poetry had any potential. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I started writing seriously again. That “second coming” of my creative ability happened because my English teacher that year had us read Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich, and something clicked. I wrote a poem inspired by it, which I sent to my teacher, who encouraged me to submit it and another poem to the Fresh Voices Contest run by the Hill-Stead Museum. When I won that contest, and my poems were published by the museum, I once again had faith that my writing could touch people. I haven’t stopped writing since.

HOW HAS YOUR RACIAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IMPACTED YOUR WRITING JOURNEY?

My racial and cultural identity is something I’ve grappled with a lot throughout my life, especially as a queer Indian-American. I’ve always felt isolated from the Indian-American community because of my queerness and from the queer community because of my brownness. I’ve used poetry a lot to try and understand my feelings about that rejection and how to deal with it. Looking at my poetry over time, you can see that journey from rejecting my racial and cultural identity as a whole to gradually accepting and celebrating it. I’ve used poetry as a way to carve a niche for myself where I am queer and Indian, and that’s okay.

WHAT IS THE BEST PIECE OF WRITING ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED?

The best piece of writing advice I’ve ever received is actually a piece of editing advice. I took a poetry class in July 2022 taught by Leslie Sainz. In that class, she told us that when we were stuck while editing a poem, to read the whole thing, put the poem away, and rewrite it from memory. The important stuff is what you’ll remember, and you can get rid of the stuff you don’t remember. That advice has been invaluable because editing has always been far harder than writing for me.