Peter Mishler Interviews Tishani Doshi at Literary Hub

At Literary Hub, read an interview between contributor Peter Mishler and Tishani Doshi, author of poetry collection, Countries of the Body, which won the Forward Poetry Prize in 2006. "In your new collection, you explicitly address the reader in the first poem," Mishler notes, "I wonder if you’d share your thoughts about the relationship between your readers, the words on the page, and your personhood. What drew you to developing a kind of contract with the reader as an opening to this particular collection?" From there: 

Tishani Doshi: Because it’s hard to survive as a poet in most countries, because it’s hard to know who your readers are, because you sometimes wonder what the point of poetry might be even though it has changed your particular life. There’s a mystery involved in poetry—writing it, reading it—and much of this collection has to do with those mysteries of poiesis, and what the poet’s role might be beyond that, if any?

When people put the words “poet” and “responsibility” together I laugh because I think of someone like Arthur Rimbaud or Dylan Thomas or Kamala Das—debauched brilliant characters, not known for moral rectitude, and yet, they had a contract with poetry. My contract was instigated because I wanted to redefine my relationship with the reader by offering the most direct poems I could, to perform these poems so there could be a dimension off the page—I’ve created a 25-minute performance piece that I’ve been touring with for the book—all of which increases the already pretty high level of vulnerability involved in poetry. And in return, I want you, reader, to follow me, love me, allow me to buzz eternally into your auditory canals. The contract is an act of desperation but also optimism. Can we renew ourselves to the possibility of poetry? Because for all the obituaries that are constantly being written for poetry, it seems to me that poets are still the legislator —the most alive and agile in responding to an ever-changing, ever-same, bonkers world.

Learn more at Literary Hub.