“The Narrative Soliloquizes (I and II)” and “Your Dead Fairymother” by Indrani Sengupta appeared in Issue 31 and can be read here.
We’d love to hear about “the Narrative soliloquizes” and “the Narrative soliloquizes (2).”
I’d been working on a cycle of fairy tale character poems where the speakers “come awake” and interrogate the construction and artifice of their lives — the tropes, the traumas, the banality of being yet another long-haired woman in a tower (but without the wherewithal to swap notes with/gain the companionship of other women in towers). At a certain point, I’d talked of the narrative so many times, it seemed only fair to let the Narrative respond — in all its daughter-drowning, butter-hoarding, garden-wrecking glory. But I didn’t want to cast it as an unmitigated villain, because the Narrative doesn’t write itself. It’s constructed and reconstructed; it’s given power by those who believe in it and even those who rail against it. I thought it would be more interesting to have a Narrative character that’s equal parts apologetic and indefensible; messy and malicious; self-aware, well-schooled in feminism, but not able to do much but talk, talk, talk — all while the kingdom burns.
What was the most difficult part of writing these poems?
As soon as you give the Narrative a voice, it’s not just the Narrative anymore. It’s, well, a lot of things. A participant. A mouthpiece. A character in its own right with weirdly human traits (loneliness; self-hatred; egotism). I struggled with whether this was the right way to give a concept a voice. And then I struggled with why I wrote a Narrative poem and not a Narrator poem. And then I struggled with what the Narrative even represents within the scope of the poems — the status quo; patriarchy; those complicit in patriarchy (villains and victims both). In the end the best thing I could do was give the Narrative room to vibe with itself and not over-prune or over-conduct. There’s probably a lesson in there I could apply to wider life.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
To keep on the subject of fairy tales, Taisia Kitaiskaia’s The Nightgown & Other Poems is a complete romping delight. The language is so lush, so precise; the music positively earwormy. The book draws from fairy tales without being beholden to them. But what I love most about it is the speaker(s) that inhabit it — they’re irreverent, playful, darkly funny. They make up rules just to break them.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
I’m a huge fan of Bhanu Kapil. Humanimal, her documentary poetry book about two Bengali “wolf girls” forcibly reintegrated into society, made me bawl in public. It’s the perfect marriage between something conceptual/project-driven and something utterly emotionally raw. I think I’d just like to hear how she struck that balance — and how she navigated the impossibility of languaging the unlanguageable.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
Besides the fairy tale cycle, I’m working on another manuscript about domesticity, reproductive trauma, bodies and how they work (or don’t), and plants. I have never kept a plant alive. I think that’s part of it.
Our thanks to Indrani for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “The Narrative Soliloquizes” (I and II) and “Your Dead Fairymother” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/new-poetry-by-indrani-sengupta.
___________________________________
Indrani Sengupta is a poet from Kolkata, India, currently braving Illinois weather. She received her MFA in poetry from Boise State University and is a senior staff reader for Lantern Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Quarterly West, American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Copper Nickel, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Southeast Review, Indiana Review, and elsewhere.