World bee day, it’s mother’s day, It’s a blue moon, it’s boba day, it’s national turtle day, it’s a Friday, it’s our anniversary, it’s the day we met, it’s your birthday, it’s your birthday again, it’s twenty years ago On this day, a picture On your phone: You were celebrating – God knows what. But still, Thank God you were.
Devaki Devay is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. Their work can be found in several literary magazines, including Barren Magazine and Peatsmoke Journal, and has been included in Best Small Fictions 2023. Their debut poetry chapbook, LOOKING IN LIGHT, is out with Bottlecap Press.
face down on the street. All the way home I thought
about being lonely. I said hello to the old man in the lobby;
he told me my legs were lovely, that my husband had better
watch out.
Alice Louise Lannon is Scottish poet and writer of creative non-fiction, currently living in Vancouver, Canada. She holds an MLitt in Creative Writing from The University of Glasgow. Her publication credits include: Wet Grain, From Glasgow to Saturn, Querencia and Last Stanza Poetry Journal. At the moment, she is working on a book about the sea & storytelling & women’s narratives.
in a search of arms, I found pebbles along the way: unwanted truths that I threw back to the water
you are lonely
or maybe I misheard. How deep in the forest are we again? the clouds have gone green since, and the mud, perpendicular.
Begüm is an aspiring psychologist, who has been writing poetry for a few years now but only recently started to publicise her work. Most of her pieces are inspired by people she loves. She is now working on getting her first poetry book published.
The debut chapbook by Jasmine Flowers reaches for horizons near and far
Jasmine Flowers, Horizon (Flower Press, 2021)
Landscapes can be hard to tell apart. In her debut chapbook, Jasmine Flowers orients, disorients, re-orients – and thoroughly entertains her reader.
The long poem starts with voices ‘as they mingle in the wind’. Within two dozen pages, the reader traverses stars, miracles, ‘time, dirt, bone, wind, ash’, a fountain of youth, a leaky pipe and ‘the inkblot borderline’. The journey is as dizzying as you might expect.
The sand is gritty — tiny rocks, shells, and bones. Is this hell or paradise? Beach or desert? One sand or the other? Is there even a difference?
Lessons can be learned from life’s hardest moments. The aphoristic couplet that opens the fourth section – ‘The tightrope was flimsy, | which taught me a lot’ – is gloriously understated. The proximity of death, the challenges faced throughout life and the learning opportunities that emerge from even the worst scenarios combine in this striking image. The poet goes on to add:
Balance is a fragile line, and I don’t care for it. It’s never cared for me, and we like it that way.
Balance may a philosophical foe for Flowers but equilibrium is exactly what she achieves in her poetry. In front of the setting sun, the poet weaves carefully balanced images, subtle wordplay and a feeling that there is more to her words than first meets the eye.
Magic and the possibility of deliverance recur. Sometimes, however, these charms are thwarted. Asking for the world sometimes leaves the asker wanting:
Name a star or two for me. I named the universe: You.
In a world that seems ever more fragmented, fluid and overwhelming, the effort of naming is not a futile gesture. It is not easy, though. The reader is left pondering how we can ever define such vastness. What is left when every landmark has been stripped back and all we see is empty space? And what are we supposed to do with all the gaps?
I’m sitting here waiting, and I hope you notice — me — or the spaces in between the absence. Either one is fine.
For all the grandiose, galaxy-level language, the best writing is often the simplest. The poet succeeds when she moves from gigantic to everyday; in the second section, she disarms the reader with an image of brutal directness:
Does that make me a pencil? Is that why my life feels so smudgy?
Amid the ephemeral and the everchanging, ‘Horizon’ is a chapbook that cannot easily be erased.
Jasmine Flowers, Horizon (Flower Press, 2021). Available here.
In ‘Street Sailing’, Matt Gilbert looks anew upon familiar streetscapes. His reader can’t not keep looking
In a blog post announcing the release of his debut collection, Matt Gilbert wrote:
‘Unlike maths, or wordle, there’s no ‘answer’ to a poem – only readings’
Poetry certainly resists the neatness of a single irrefutable solution. Instead, it invites readers to think beyond the obvious and acknowledge the plurality of possibilities that could exist.
That’s not to say though that a poem can’t be a puzzle. A puzzle in the sense of a brainteaser, a head-scratcher; a foot-tapping, eye-rolling, knee-jerking conundrum; a challenge, a problem. The world of poetry has many problems.
Even if a poem can’t be solved, it can have answers. These answers are less likely to be 43 or TOAST than another poem sparked into life by the original or a feeling too complex to put into words. A poem’s solution, however splintered and plural, is there in the text. Where else could it be? To find it: don’t not keep looking.
‘Street Sailing’ abounds with linguistic games, which pop onto the page like ‘terse notes sent rattling up through buried pipes’. The title already makes the reader do a double take: how can we sail through the street? Is the alliteration so alluring as to prevail over sense?
The answer is yes – and no. The wind that propels Gilbert’s vessel is rhythm and melody, ‘floating for no reason | until the cuff began to form, | sprouting from that plastic seed…’. But sailing the streets is not merely wordplay; it is an ideal metaphor for how the collection asks its reader to look again at familiar sights. Discovery comes in stages that slowly reveal themselves: first, ‘a sleeve, arms empty | followed by pocket, collar, yoke’.
The poetic game does not have winners or losers; the joy is in the taking part. In ‘Street Sailing’, everyday scenes are taken apart and it is the reader’s job to reassemble them.
In ‘How to flatten the moon’, the poet combines a critique of modern life and its abundance of technologies with an anecdotal plea for the importance of poetry. The title could be taken from a clickbait blog post and, like this dubious genre, you have to read (or scroll) all the way to the end of the poem to get the answer:
… now ease the phone from your pocket, point it up towards our ancient friend, then click.
Now you’ve done it.
The answer is simple: a photo can flatten the moon. But what does that mean?
Given that poets have obsessed over the moon for millennia, there is a certain self-deprecating nod when Gilbert romanticises ‘the rounded milky glint | of our almost full fat | satellite’. Is the point then that, where photography flattens and dulls, poetry adds depth and revivifies? The poet’s repeated focus on the present moment emphasises the disconnect between living through screens and LIVING with eyes wide open and capital everything. Poetry is firmly in the latter camp: to write poetry is to observe, really observe; to read poetry is to read and re-read and re-examine everything through someone else’s eyes. Technology has made our lives easier but it has also overcomplicated something as simple as looking at the night sky: as the poet exclaims, ‘there it is, there it is’. Look at it!
Other readings are available. Flat does not have to mean bad. The final line is deliciously ambiguous: ‘Now you’ve done it’ could just as easily be jubilant as derisive, depending on where the stress lands. Capturing a complex astrological body in an accessible 2D-frame could be considered a modern miracle. In the ‘Editor’s introduction’, Matthew M. C. Smith extols the photographic qualities of Gilbert’s collection, exclaiming that ‘his poetry wanders, camera-like […] then zooms in, on the minutiae that most of us ignore’. Flattening boxes before recycling them helps more boxes be recycled.
It’s not just the moon that people fail to notice. Drivers are an easy, and justifiable, target: ‘Rush hour cars kept coming, | oblivious to all but road’, while ‘rasping corvids’ and a ‘lone indignant… sparrowhawk’ perform to an empty audience high above (‘Take the second exit’).
The image could easily be a metaphor for governments’ narrow focus on short-term economic growth, while climate catastrophe creeps ever closer. It could also be a critique of humanity’s treatment of non-human animals, whose suffering on farms and in slaughterhouses is kept well out of sight. Either way, there is hope: although the ‘petrol-powered | roulette balls’ keep spinning, the drivers are ‘desperate for their exit’. If systems can be adapted to redefine priorities, the drivers can adapt with them.
‘Rush hour cars kept coming, | oblivious to all but road’
Although some animals are ignored and others are deliberately obscured, a fox hit by a train is grimly compulsive viewing for the poet: ‘I couldn’t not keep looking’ (‘Foxed’). The double negative is symptomatic of humanity’s confused relationship with other species: most people don’t want to harm animals but neither do they want to stop using (and abusing) them. The presence of violence and death uncomfortably close to a shielded human space (‘the platform’s end’) is a reminder of the interconnectedness of nature and mortality – however hard we try to place ourselves above other life forms. Twinged by this sorry sight, the poet feels duty bound to convert his feelings into words: ‘In the absence of a ritual | I shall mark your empty legend’.
Putting into words the illogical act of staring at something repulsive seems a fitting way to describe why poetry exists. ‘Street Sailing’ is a puzzle with many readings and many answers. Matt Gilbert is a skilful setter, spraying clues, hints and red herrings all around his poetic landscape. Getting lost in this impressive debut is no bad thing.
We are delighted to announce our nominations for the 2024 Best of the Net anthology.
Needless to say, this is always an extremely difficult decision (we love all the pieces we publish). Best of luck to our nominees; you can (re-)read their work via the links below.
Issue 11 is coming soon. And it’s a special one for us…
Since we started Briefly Zine in June 2020, we have published 10 issues of quality brief writing and photography. We are delighted now to embark on the next chapter of our little literary zine: starting with Issue 11, we will be paying all contributors for their words and art.
Submissions will remain free. That will never change. Therefore, the payment won’t be life changing. Even so, we are immensely proud to be able to offer our contributors a small token of appreciation for their brilliance.
Thank you to everyone who has been a part of our journey so far. There’s a lot more to come…
Poetry competitions can be a controversial topic in the writing community. As a little literary space that hosts an annual Poetry Prize, even we have mixed feelings.
We want to do the best we can for writers and readers. That’s why, during the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2022, we asked entrants to answer some questions about poetry contests. The responses we received helped shape this year’s competition. Here are the results.
Our respondents
In total, there were 412 responses. All were submitted anonymously and respondents were aware that their answers could not be traced to their entry.
Almost nine in 10 respondents (88%) had not previously submitted to Briefly Write in any form (including Briefly Zine and other competitions). Respondents were asked to answer the questions generally, not specifically for the Briefly Write Poetry Prize (except for the questions summarised in the next section).
Careful or casual?
Last year, the most popular ways that entrants found out about our competition were online listings pages (24%), Twitter (22%), search engines (17%), other social media (14%), the Briefly Write website (5%), word of mouth (3%) and Duotrope (2%).
More than four in 10 respondents (42%) wrote their entry specifically for the Briefly Write Poetry Prize, while 41% submitted a poem they had already written but had never sent to another journal or competition.
The vast majority (85%) read the guidelines carefully, though some went straight to the entry form (7%) or had only a cursory flick through the rules (7%).
Show me the money
Most respondents “never” pay to enter poetry competitions (46%), ahead of 26% who said they “sometimes” pay and 24% who “rarely” do so. Only 4% said they “often” pay, perhaps unsurprising given that the Briefly Write Poetry Prize is a free-to-enter competition.
In terms of prize pots, the result was conclusive: the most popular option was 1st – 50% // 2nd – 35% // 3rd – 15%, which received close to half of all votes (48%).
A similar option that extended to paying fourth and fifth place (1st – 35% // 2nd – 25% // 3rd – 20% // 4th – 15% // 5th – 5%) received almost a quarter of votes (22%).
The option of having five equal runners-up each winning a tenth of the prize pot (1st – 50% // Runners-up (x5) – 10% each) was favoured by 13% of respondents. Meanwhile, ten joint winners was chosen by only 6%, just ahead of winner takes all (6%).
The rest chose “Other” and offered a wide range of opinions, including one who said offering any prize money creates a “vicious circle”. Others suggested donating the prize money to charity or indicated that monetary reward made no difference to them.
Raising the funds
We have been clear since we started Briefly Write that we will never charge entry fees. Financial barriers should not stop people sharing their talents.
We do, however, rely on donations to pay our website costs and prize funds. Every penny we receive is spent directly on covering these costs: we don’t take a penny out for ourselves as editors. Each year, we have increased the prize pot of the Poetry Prize thanks to the generous support of our readers and writers – and we hope to keep doing so.
One option we have considered as a means of raising more funds whilst also providing extra value to entrants’ experience of the competition is to offer some add-on features. This could include things like short feedback or extra insights into the judging process.
Things that respondents said would add the most value to their experience of a poetry contest (besides winning) include:
A personalised email with very short feedback (54%)
An email with the results before they are publicly announced (31%)
An exclusive Judges’ Notes email (30%)
A bigger prize fund next year (27%)
Some 17% said that none of the above would encourage them to donate, while 14% said they would be donating purely to support the competition.
To theme or not to theme?
Overall, respondents preferred unthemed competitions (53%) to contests with a theme (33%). The remaining responses (“Other”) mostly expressed indifference on the issue. The result of this questions is, of course, likely to be skewed by the fact that respondents were answering after having entered an unthemed contest.
In a follow-up question, vague themes such as ‘Be inspired by X / interpret Y loosely’ (68%) comfortably beat specific themes like ‘Write a poem about X / using Y / in the form of Z’ (27%).
Don’t leave me hanging
As writers ourselves, we understand how frustrating it is to pour your heart and soul into a submission… and then never hear back. That’s why we email every entrant regardless of the outcome of their entry.
It does take a lot of time to send all these emails so we wanted to check it was worthwhile. We asked how much people valued receiving an email to say they haven’t won a competition before the results are announced publicly.
Some 62% chose “I really appreciate it and it makes a big difference to my experience of a competition”. For 31%, it was nice but not essential (“I appreciate being told but it doesn’t make that much difference to me”). Only 4% would “rather not be told if I haven’t won”. This result is supported by a recent Twitter poll we ran.
Those who chose “Other” made suggestions that could reduce the administrative burden such as an automated email to announce the winners. Multiple respondents said that no response is fine so long as this is clearly communicated in advance.
Prizes and publicity
In the event of winning a competition, two thirds wanted to make the most of the opportunity for publicity (62%), while 12% opted for “Just pay me the money”. The large number that chose “Other” reflects a flaw in the question: the intention was not to make people choose between publicity and money but to see whether they valued extra features such as interviews.
Many of the “Other” respondents said they want both prizes and publicity. Some repeated assertions that money shouldn’t mix with poetry or expressed the view that publicity and prizes are secondary to eyes on their writing: “I just want to be read”, “I want recognition for my work” and “I want to inspire people” were common answers.
In the follow-up question, the forms of publicity that winners would most appreciate included the chance to have their poem published in an anthology (75%), online publication (71%), promotion on social media (51%), an interview about the winning poem (43%) and an online feature about the poet (42%).
When all is said and done
Encouragingly, 82% said they would still read the winning and commended poems if they hadn’t won. Likewise, 79% said they read the Judges’ Notes when they don’t win a competition.
The most popular material to include in Judges’ Notes was “Insight into what made winning poems stand out” (87%) and “Insight into what made poems fall short” (55%).
An “Overview of common themes / styles / forms” was appreciated by 50%, while 41% were interested in statistics about the number of entries. The few’ “Other” suggestions we received included calls for statistics on the diversity of judges and entrants.
What are our key takeaways?
We were delighted with the level of response and thoughtful engagement our survey received. The answers reaffirmed our commitment to running accessible, free-to-enter competitions that treat all entrants with the respect they deserve.
This year, we implemented the prize pot that received an overwhelming number of votes (1st – 50% // 2nd – 35% // 3rd – 15%), despite our own instinct being to pay more writers a smaller amount. This is something we will review again for future competitions.
We will continue to email all entrants regardless of outcome. In the past two years, we have received only a handful of rude responses or arguments about why we were wrong to overlook a poem. Although rare, even these few are dispiriting.
That said, we do always welcome (polite) replies with thoughts or constructive feedback on the competition. And if you would like feedback on your poem, we offer that service too: Briefly Feedback.
If any writers or editors would like to discuss any aspects of the survey, we would be happy to provide more details. Comment below or email contact [at] brieflywrite [dot] com
A stirring trailer builds the reader into a frenzy. The poems do not disappoint
Oceans can be overwhelming. To the untrained eye, an ocean is too vast, too wild, too changeable to be understandable. Elizabeth M. Castillo is an astute tour guide, for she is knowledgeable enough to know how little humans know of an ocean’s true depths.
Come with me; I will show you how the roots are fibrous here, like lace, like macrame, dancing across the dirt
In Not Quite An Ocean, deference to nature is assumed. Humans are nothing but a brief irritation on Earth’s back. ‘Beneath the mountain, Gaia sleeps, weary from the angry years of men waging war across her skin, and plundering her depths with impunity,’ the poet writes in ‘When Mother Nature will not Wake’.
The poet knows that nature has the power to devour humanity. In ‘Things that have replaced my Father’, she evokes ‘this dark cloud that I watch, helplessly, as it swallows him whole’. Mythical allusions reinforce the insignificance of individuals.
One of the collection’s best poems is ‘Storm Tower’, which moves quickly from an individual influencing nature (‘… as if coffee | spilled from your cup had stained atmosphere’) to the natural world’s desperate attempts to tell humanity to change its destructive ways (‘Words are | travelling to you, a message, swollen, begging | to be deciphered’). In the end, the poet urges realism: ‘Steady yourself. Gather your clothes | and wits about you. You can’t outrun the storm’.
If that all sounds pessimistic, it is not.Not Quite An Ocean is a collection that breathes life into wearied souls and offers a brief vision of harmony.
The collection is a rallying feminist cry: ‘The earth was held between two breasts / warm | and safe from the beasts inside’. Only by acknowledging that we are children of Mother Earth can we live peacefully within nature, instead of using and abusing her abundance.
Especially moving is ‘For Sarah, and all those whose names I’ll never know’, in which the countless victims of male violence are remembered:
Prisoners of war, victims of the Congo saga. Mauritian wives, Mauritian daughters, cowering in their kitchens. Desaparecidas, at Mexican borders, in Argentine towns […]
The poem’s refrain (‘What do we have to do for you to stop killing us?’) washes over the reader with rising intensity. Anger and purpose and the hope of something better are contagious; the prospect of a better future is threaded poignantly into a crescendo that compels the reader to rise up and take a stand.
Castillo’s stylish, imagistic poetry brings people in and invites them to think beyond the page. Like the seasons, the collection offers a varied, sometimes unpredictable, reading experience.
Unsurprisingly for a seasoned fiction writer (see, for example, ‘This thread’, which appeared in Issue 4 of Briefly Zine), prose poems play a starring role, sprawling across the page, defiant and untameable. The poem, ‘In summer I am beautiful’, is one of many examples where poetic form enters into conversation with nature: ‘Winter where shadows creep and creep, where trees are naked, when hope decides to hibernate’.
Hope and despair come in waves. On the blurb, Not Quite An Ocean is described as ‘a paean to the feminine, to motherhood and to the natural world’. Certainly, female power is lauded and nature’s force celebrated. But the poems are far from triumphant.
In ‘When Mother Nature will not Wake’, for example, ‘There is vengeance inside this girl, but she keeps it under lock and key’. In ‘Who will hold the ocean?’, the burden is not shared and the Earth is starting to collapse: ‘Who will breathe life into her wearied sinews, shore up the arms that | hold the continents apart?’
It is a timely question. Unless drastic action is taken, the world’s oceans will contain (by weight) more plastic than fish by 2050. In 2023, the temperature of the world’s ocean surface has already hit an all-time high – a shameful record that will be broken again and again in the coming years and decades.
The cruelty and self-centredness with which humans have used the planet and callously abused other living beings is hard to express in words. Not Quite An Ocean does not quite condemn humanity in the starkest terms. But it does accept our collective guilt: ‘and I must learn the hard way: | the deadliest thing in here is me’.
Elizabeth M. Castillo, Not Quite An Ocean (Nine Pens, 2023). Available here.
Last month, Ankit Raj Ojha won the Featured Essay prize in the inaugural edition of Briefly Think for his essay,‘Becoming Poetry’. His reward? Some more questions to answer.
In response to the prompt, Where does the person end and the poem begin?, Ankit wrote compellingly about his relationship with poetry (‘the inescapable requisite’) and the possibility of a perfect state of equilibrium between poet and poem. The following conversation delves deeper into these topics, as well as spinning off in a few new directions.
You can find out more about Ankit and his writing here. And stay tuned for the THINK 2 prompt, which will be released later this year.
Daniel: Your essay stood out for its beautifully concise composition and fascinating, multi-faceted content. As you write, language can be a tool for play (‘I toy with words…’) and pay (‘It’s true that I look for paying magazines’). So, first question: did play or pay prompt you to write ‘Becoming Poetry’?
Ankit: Surely not pay; I didn’t see a win coming around the time I was writing the essay. Your prompt, I believe, was intriguing enough to stop me in my tracks and ‘make me skip meals’. I had come across it on Twitter and had almost dismissed the thought of reflecting on it, for at that time I could barely sustain a single thought long enough to produce a coherent piece.
But then I got into a chat with writer friends on Twitter on a similar topic, found myself uttering things that would later form some of the essay’s ideas, and was quick to delete my public tweets upon realising that I did want to write a previously unpublished piece on your prompt. Nothing is created in vacuum. This is how ‘Becoming Poetry’ came to be.
D: That’s true: poetry is always, in some way, a conversation or collaboration. The concept of previously unpublished is itself fraught given that words are always recycled, reconfigured, replayed, renovated (though plagiarism, of course, is real and harmful).
Your essay features words spoken (‘“Why can’t you just relax?”’) and unspoken (‘I half-reckon then abandon the urge to tell them’), which, to my mind at least, resembles a poet choosing what to set down and what to leave out. The deleted tweets are part of the story too: those fleeting words wiped away like they were never there. So, I guess the question is: how do you deal with all these silent and noisy influences when writing a poem? Are you conscious of the words you are choosing to ignore when you choose the ones you write?
A: I’m glad you asked this. It’s true: thoughts gush in from everywhere; words follow suit. Sometimes it’s the other way round: you have a word or phrase that tastes so good you are desperate to use it, so you devise thoughts to sneak the word into your poem. As for me, I have grown up largely on novels, and my feelers still come to rest on fiction (note to self to read more poetry). The consequence is that I often turn to narrative poetry. Some of my early poems I found a bit verbose and had to edit post publication for future reprints and for my own sanity.
I still love storytelling in verse, for the love of the form and also because it suits my diverse schedule that at present forbids long-term courtship with prose, allowing only short poetic flings. But I am now more conscious of practising restraint and refinement. I assume every writer has to go through the Clark-Kent-as-a-schoolkid phase where the young Superman must learn to wade through voices in his head, shut out the noise, and focus on what really matters. Sometimes you have to part with beloved words or thoughts for the greater good. Some of the jilted words may turn up another day, in another poem; the forsaken await their turn forever. The writing process, therefore, is every bit as stringent as it is spontaneous. Even the stream of consciousness insists on the chisel, for epiphanies too have to be tinkered with while writing.
D: That’s fascinating and really insightful what you say about the stream of consciousness. Poetry often feels more “personal” than prose, more intimate or even intrusive. When writing and editing your poems, do you ever think about how much of yourself you might be “giving away”?
A: If I may digress before approaching the question: intrusive is the word, yes. For me the poem almost always writes itself, and that too when it wants to, triggered either by heightened emotions or a recollection of past stimuli. I have a hard time consciously creating poetry from scratch. That’s why I struggle at prolificity – something I need to work on improving.
We were speaking of intrusiveness. When a potential poem does intrude, quotidian constraints melt away and I find myself skipping meals and chores – as I mentioned earlier – until I am at least done with the first draft, if not the final version. This fixation is possible because it’s personal: most of my poems are born of lived experiences and emotions, if not mine, then of those I observe around me. The rudiments of the human soul, I believe, bind us across space and time. This is the reason we feel writers we know nothing about: we rejoice in their victories; we are shattered even if it is their tragedy.
Coming to your question, every poem out in the world is somebody “giving away” a part of themselves. There are, of course, those “private” unpublishable pieces we create, safekeep and turn to for catharsis. Barring that forbidden zone, I think I am comfortable giving myself away, knowing there are takers who sing the same song. A poet, after all, is an acquitted gossipmonger. Now who wouldn’t want that licence?
D: A worthy digression! Has the experience of editing The Hooghly Review altered your view(s) on what is “personal” in poetry? I’m thinking especially about the magazine’s focus on ‘individuals and their lived experiences’.
A: Well, editing THR has rather reinforced my understanding of the “personal” in poetry. Let me illustrate this using the phrase you just quoted.
Whenever I read poems for THR, or any poetry in general, I often find the “personal” expressed in ways beyond what is usually termed a personal poem. A personal poem is, of course, an individual narrating their lived experiences. But it doesn’t necessarily have to appear personal; that’s the beauty of poetry, or of any art form. A characteristic of good art, as I am learning, is to defamiliarise our experience of reality, so that by the time we have managed to decipher the contents on the page, the revelation is both uncanny and reassuringly familiar.
Even the stream of consciousness insists on the chisel, for epiphanies too have to be tinkered with while writing.
Ankit Raj Ojha
As I said before, the reason we identify with writers and their works we know nothing about is because we see us and our own experiences in them. We are wired this way – to think and feel alike, and empathise with our fellow beings, possibly because of the collective unconscious we share, which Carl Jung says is the public folder of all memories, impulses and emotions common to humankind. I am also reminded here of Joseph Campbell, who said, ‘Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths’. Campbell surely felt the same way about humans – all of us feel and dream and create our myths alike.
That said, I do look for ‘individuals and their lived experiences’ at THR. But I welcome and marvel at the myriad ways personal tales can be recounted. Be it a confessional poem, a defamiliarised story, a surreal painting with words, the poet’s private lessons repackaged and served didactically, an inner battle projected upon the world to appear universal, a grand narrative scaled down to an adventure in the mind, or anything else that enthrals the reader with its singular way of telling a personal story: I appreciate the chance to read it all and learn.
D: Art, dreams, the universal… you’ve covered a lot in a short answer! I agree about reading and re-reading and learning. There are so many books, so many poems: too much to read in a thousand lifetimes. So, I guess that brings us back to your essay and the colleagues who ask, ‘Why can’t you just relax?’ and your response, ‘I do relax; words are one of the ways’. Does becoming poetry involve an acceptance of the limitations and incompleteness of our relationship with words?
A: Nassim Nicholas Taleb has pointed out that unread books are far more valuable than read ones; he calls the former the antilibrary, saying that the unread pile keeps one humble and driven by curiosity. So, my answer is a yes. To be able to read everything is never the point; that’s a mad proposition. As readers and writers we can best serve literature by doing our bit, howsoever small it is. Remember what Borges said of storytelling, ‘Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.’
A poet, after all, is an acquitted gossipmonger. Now who wouldn’t want that licence?
Ankit Raj Ojha
Although I can’t afford to dismiss the longer form as Borges does, I would very much like to extend the analogy to the act of reading. You cannot read it all, but you can sample the entirety of it all in the select few. Now, selecting the select few requires one to be thorough, which is why I try to read widely across cultures, geographies, genres, identities, and so on. A writer is, first and foremost, a reader, and becoming poetry entails that you accept your reading limitations and still do your best while you are at it. By tasting some you taste it all. The “some”, however, must keep growing.
D: Those are very wise words… and an inspiring way to approach the TBR pile! This whole conversation has been hugely enriching; thank you, Ankit, for providing such fascinating insights into your writing, reading and editing. Any final thoughts to add on poetry, people, endings… or beginnings?
A: I’m equally delighted, Daniel. Talking with you has been a rewarding experience; thank you for the intriguing questions.
As for final thoughts, I have found, so far, that a writer’s life, even when peopled, is a lonely affair. Spending time with oneself helps observe the world and weave meaningful madness from random strands. As I am a believer in all things cyclical, I do not perceive definitive endings and beginnings. An experience for me can lead to a poem; poetry, in turn, may sire an experience seen in the poem’s hue. Art mirrors life; life mirrors art. But all of this is, of course, my opinion. To each their own.
Ankit Raj Ojha is a poet, assistant professor of English, former software engineer and former rock band frontman from Chapra, Bihar, India. He has a PhD from IIT Roorkee, works with the Department of Higher Education, Haryana, and is editor at The Hooghly Review. Ankit’s writings are published or forthcoming in eleven countries including venues such as Poetry Wales, Routledge, Johns Hopkins University Press, Sahitya Akademi, Outlook India, Stanchion, Briefly Write, The Broadkill Review, Roi Fainéant Press, and Dreich among others. He is the author of Pinpricks (Hawakal, 2022) and winner of the Briefly Think Essay Prize 2023.
See more on his Linktree, Twitter or Instagram. You can also buy his book, Pinpricks,here (India), here (rest of world) or directly from Ankit.
Born into the stream of life with no set course, winding our way from one point to another. Flowing and trying not to drown, lay back and float with our feet up, relaxed on a river running its course. The rapids come every now and then, a waterfall here and there, but most of the time we just gently move so slightly. We wake each day and follow our path of existence, working, spending time with loved ones, and most of our time sleeping, dreaming of what could be. We seek comfort and for most, that means succumbing to what is safe and not seeking the adventure we long for, the pursuit of our dreams, in other words, to be protected by what we know. Life is meant to take risks, to not seek an end of one and the beginning of another but to embrace the entirety. To piece together the nuances of our existence. We look for the waterfalls and the rapids for it is there where the stories lie, where our mundane lives become adventures to share. Those moments when our hearts beat faster and lose our breath, caution is tossed to the wind, and seek the excitement of what lives in the shadows, out of the light. If we are truly lucky, so much adventure takes place that there is never an end, but a series of hidden paths and tributaries meant to explore, each one with its own story to be written.
Life is extremely short, with many forks for us to decide which way to go. We should choose the adventurous path, we may get bruised but we will have fulfilled our dreams.
The prompt provided a new journey to explore.
After 31 years in banking, it was time for John Ganshaw to retire. New experiences enabled him to see the world through a different lens.
Briefly Write 