In the Spotlight: Preeti Vangani
Preeti Vangani opens up about loss, love, family, and culture in her debut poetry collection, Mother Tongue Apologize. Originally from Mumbai, Vangani’s poetry puts you into her mind as she reflects on difficult subjects such as the loss of her mother and the hardships of growing up. In her collection. Vangani experiments with form in the way she presents her words to the reader, making you feel as if she is sharing with you a precious secret.
I had the privilege of interviewing Vangani about her writing process, who influences her writing, and what draws her to poetry.
Your collection opens with an introduction by a judge for the RL Poetry Award, Robert Archaembeau, who points to the connections between your poems and the work of African American poet Amiri Baraka. Who are some poets, and other artists, who inspire and inform your work?
Yes, I make a direct reference to Baraka's line 'poems are useless unless', which inspired me deeply to write a poem with the same name. While writing this book, I was intensely moved by the works of Rachel Zucker, Dodie Bellamy, Erika Meitner and Terrance Hayes. All of these writers are masters in how they shape and twist narratives. Kevin Young's The Book of Hours was a revelation in how one can write about and into grief, so gracefully, so truthfully. And Tarfia Faizullah, June Jordan and Solmaz Sharif -- these are women who through their work consistently teach me how to approach writing with unflinching strength and power.
How do you decide the form of your poetry? I noticed that many of the pieces in your collection deviate from the “normal” form of poetry.
Every poem for me is a sort of obsession I am trying to shape into a body of language. So, form becomes like a vessel. I often gravitate towards writing confessionals and prose poems but when poems (which is so often) don't yield to linearity, I shape and reshape thoughts into as many forms as I can. It takes me several drafts until it feels quite right. In this project, some ideas lent themselves to visuals more easily than others. I was also heavily inspired by the works of Doug Kearney and Giovanni Singleton. Both masters in creating visual poems. For example, in the poem ‘Every 20 minutes’ the statistic of rape kept glaring me in the face and no narrative retelling could hold the shock for me. I kept imagining it as one way of keeping time and converted it into a clock.
How do you start a poem? Do you start with a person or thing in mind, or a word or a phrase?
What a great question. Most days I can't just sit down and begin a poem. I start by reading, really. Fiction, poetry, memoir, takeaway menus, literally anything. And then write down lines or phrases that tug at my own memory or life's experience. Or if I come across a question an author is asking that seems relevant to my own curiosities, I try to answer it. I play with these lines and questions, and in a sort of internal dialogue with them, the poems come.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer, and more specifically, a poet?
Six years into working as a marketing professional, I started doing stand up comedy and spoken word open-mics in Mumbai. Had never taken an Advanced English or Arts class up until then. But what I knew was that I loved the stage and I loved storytelling. With a full-time job, it was very difficult to immerse in art forms that meant working with other people -- I did a bit of theater but it was a big strain on my time, I did sketch comedy and improv which again relied on other people. And I wanted something that was 100% me and I could keep doing it on my own. So I took online poetry classes, and my appetite for verse was very soon out of control. That's when I guess, most tangibly, I knew I wanted to be a poet.
What is your editing process like? How do you choose which poems to cut from the collection and which ones to keep?
My editing process is like a very bad break up. Initially, I don't want to part with anything I've ever written. It all seems like precious words a mighty God has spoken. So I distance myself from the work and come back to it after a month or two. At that stage, I let it all go, more than half of it goes out and I go through massive rewrites, shuffles and such. Decision to scrap and keep -- I took those only much later for this book, after I'd generated enough to say, here are four poems that say the same thing. Then I make choices basis what will advance the bigger narrative in the book or engage a reader differently.
Do you have a set time where you write, or do you write only when the inspiration strikes?
I don't write everyday but go through periods when I do write regularly. In those heavy writing phases, it's usually in the morning after breakfast, ideally before having spoken to anyone, and in my bed. I have the most terrible posture.
It seems like your family, especially your mother, informed and inspired a lot of your work. How did you decide how much to include and how much to keep to yourself in regards to your family?
I am going to steal this answer from what the fantastic Danez Smith recently said in an interview published in Lithub: "Being a poet means an applied commitment to vulnerability." I talk about grief the way I do because the world as it exists with its pressures of 'get on with your life' didn't allow me to. The details in these poems are often incredibly personal, and about the passing of my mother. I don't self-censor anymore. I used to, and then I could see a sort of artificial coating on my poems. Not because they weren't good, but because the balance between truth and imagination was awry. So I try much as I can to keep both those fires burning -- the lived/observed and the beauty of language. The stuff that I keep to myself is with me because the feeling surrounding it is still not fully processed and I never want to be in a hurry to scribe out of anger.
Grief is something tangible in your poems. Do you feel as if it is something that you have to keep balanced in your writing?
I think my mother's death monumentally changed my outlook towards life. So more than grief, absence is the lens through which I view a lot of my life, not just the poems. I think honestly I need to be better at balancing it in my poems -- by which I mean I forget often that before her death, my mother also had a full and busy life -- and I forget to celebrate that. I want to find ways in my writing to honor the living and the living mess we all are and can be.
What do you find the most difficult part of writing poetry?
Being able to find stillness. But once it arrives, nothing else compares.
About the Interviewer
Sydney Logan
Sydney is a student, writer, and poet who calls Maryland and Boston home. When she isn’t tweeting or writing, you can find her snuggling her cat and figuring out how to make the world a more peaceful and equitable place. You can find her on Instagram at @syd.kristen