Vijay Seshadri Interviewed at The Wire

At The Wire, Karthik Purushothaman talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning, Indian-American poet Vijay Seshadri about cosmopolitanism, the Indian diaspora, and his latest collection, That Was Then, This Is Now (Graywolf Press, 2020). "One of the ways I experienced your new book was by picturing the poems as dramatic monologues," says Purushothaman. From there:

The immediate invocation is Shakespearean theatre, but I also wonder how much oral Indian tradition is to be credited, since you said somewhere that you used to be read the Ramayana as a child.

Our family and our community were steeped in Indian religious knowledge. They were orthodox people, highly orthodox. That element was certainly a part of my early consciousness in India, and it was retained to a certain extent all the way through my life in America. My parents were politically radical, but also pious – that wonderful South Indian contradiction. I don’t think those traditions of hearing and recitation from the religious tradition are significant for me.

Continue reading at The Wire.