Meena Kandasamy interview: ‘I write poems to chronicle, and to bear witness’

‘The oppressive regime is the poet’s intimate enemy — there is no aspect of life that escapes its rigorous incursions, its sanctioned oppressions,’ Kandasamy writes in the opening poem, ‘Dramatis Personae’, which serves as a Preface to the collection, in which she also foregrounds the personal and the political, and notes with dismay: ‘Her country is a dream colouring itself. HER COUNTRY is, at this instant, a nightmare.’ She makes a poem out of every hurt, insult, caste slur, indignity, apprehension and betrayal. In a poem titled ‘A Sapphic Scar’, responding to a fellow writer terming her presence at a writing programme as ‘denominational,’ she writes: ‘Being seen as denominational sets me alight / makes me write word after word in rage / leave behind this body of work / so that someday, in another time, someone else will read me and say / she deserved her place.’

In this interview to The Federal, Kandasamy talks about the place these poems come from, the terrains of her previous two volumes, why her country is deeply personal to her — like language or being a woman — and her imperatives as a poet. Excerpts:

Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You is all about resistance, desire, and political dissent. Could you talk about how these poems are your responses to the little tragedies unfolding around us?

Most of these poems were written from 2010 onwards. They were my responses to, among other things, the Delhi and Hathras gangrapes and killings, and the CAA NRC protests. It was important for me as a poet to speak out, to channel the kind of anger that is building up among the people and to express this in quite a damning political way. It was also important to talk about the philosophical basis of our fight and struggles. It’s not merely about venting pent-up anger or engaging in online battles; rather, it’s about addressing deep-seated structural issues and oppression. In so many ways, these political poems came as a result of standing up against such injustices.

What is the importance of poetry for me? It is important to ask this, especially considering that during this period, I’ve been writing fiction, essays, and other forms of creative work. When I watch what neoliberalism is doing to us, and witness the denial of genocide and the manipulation of language by think tanks, and the manner language is used in the garb of public policy (it’s actually extremely anti-people), then it becomes imperative for me as a poet to wrest back control of language to tell what words mean, and how they’re being subverted. And to reclaim the space for words and language. I think it’s very intrinsic to my work as a poet.

In what ways is this collection different from your previous two: Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010)?

The three collections are really disciplined. The first came out when I was 22 years old. A lot of these poems were written when I was 17 or 18, a teenager. And, then, the second one happened when I was in my early 20s; when love took shape amidst angry strokes of revolutionary poetry. In the first collection, I am somebody trying to find her voice, and her space in the world — grappling with issues of identity, belonging, falling in love, and handling heartbreak. That’s possibly the most vulnerable collection, compared to what I think the second collection was like; the latter was very dramatically organised. I set about addressing the fact that Hinduism has often proven itself to be misogynistic. In fact, I find misogyny affecting all aspects of life. I wanted to take Hindu and Tamil myths and recast them from a feminist perspective.

I thought about how to create something feminist without merely adding to the canon. I wanted to challenge the stories that have been told to us to put us into submission. I wanted to reclaim those stories, to retell them in a way that empowers women, to reinterpret what actually happened. I wanted to create space for feminism in these myths, to offer an alternative, liberating feminist version. I wanted to convey that it’s okay to talk about myths, but let’s talk about them in a way that acknowledges they don’t mean the same thing to everyone. It’s really important to critique the religion you are born into while also embracing it. I reject any sense of superiority, any form of oppression, and any attempt to box me in or label me. I am free to reimagine it the way I want. It’s a kind of democratizing process — asserting that it’s as much mine as it is yours, and you don’t get to dictate its meaning. 

How do you see your poetic voice evolving across these three volumes?

Ms Militancy became a cult feminist classic; it has gone into six or seven reprints already. And it’s not a small thing for a book of poetry to be constantly reprinted, right? Once the book achieves all this, it inversely affects you because then when you write poems, you know that you’re a public personality. You carry this image along into the new work. So, the third collection comes from a place where I was much more publicly visible; I was a witness. I had written approximately 60-70 poems in the last decade, and was trying to make sense of them together in a collection, against the backdrop of the rise of authoritarianism, fascism, the silencing of voices, targeted assassinations of thinkers, and the extreme rise in violence against women. I managed to extricate the poems that actually worked together. After I chose the best poems that are representative of this time, I realised the collection became a testament and testimony to this period.

Once I selected these poems, I pondered over things that meant the most to me. I reflected on the role of poetry in this system and the concept of revolutionary love in it. Raising a family is also revolutionary love in one way because it is not easy given the circumstances, but you’re also in love with other people. It cannot happen without all of us looking out for each other, caring for each other. And then there’s the section about the friends and the anonymous people whom you meet in the path of resistance and dissent, with whom you forge very strong solidarities. That solidarity becomes the basis for your friendship. Many of my friends ended up in jail. And I wondered: How do I write them into history? The most important character that comes in last is my country. I lived abroad for close to a decade, but regardless of where I reside in the world, India remains deeply personal to me. Like my language or mother tongue or me being a woman. The erosion of democracy’s fabric in the country deeply affects me; these poems come from a place of both love and betrayal.

How do you settle on a particular form for a particular poem? Does the subject or the theme of the poem have anything to do with it? What do you wish to achieve with your poems: provoke, make us see what we must, or change how we see what we see?

As a poet, I’m agnostic because I really think the content of the poem often decides the form; the content decides the length, the tone, the pacing and so many other things in the poem. That’s how I think everything works. My primary intention is exactly as you say: I write poems to grow, to chronicle, and to bear witness.

How do you approach the intersection of the personal and political in your poetry?

I was born into a family that had very strong political affiliations. I grew up with people who were deeply committed to social justice and the issues of language and federalism. I was raised to understand that all of this was something that affected you deeply. That the discrimination of caste, for instance, was what allowed some people to come up alive and oppressed other people at the same time. So, there was no disconnect between the political and the personal. For the last 10 years, I’ve been with a partner with whom I share two children. He is a socialist and his life revolves around politics. And the other day, I felt this really starkly because my children were demanding that I tell a funny story. And I just couldn’t think of anything to say. I was at a loss. I was trying to talk about the farmers’ protest and my child looked at me, wondering when the funny bit was coming. And then I realised the way politics is all-pervasive is quite striking.

I have grown into the themes that I write about. So, in a way, they have started coming home. When I was younger, caste and feminist issues were very important. So was the national liberation struggle. When I moved to the UK, I realised how Brexit affects our life or how Europe looks at refugees. These are political questions that start surrounding you, affecting you; it affects your right to reside, the money you make, the jobs you can apply for, and the stability and nationality of your children born in a place. There’s no way you can be disconnected from what is happening. It’s all that it takes to understand that every aspect of the personal is politically motivated. You just need to open your eyes a little bit to be a little bit more self-aware.  

What role does desire play in your portrayal of resistance and defiance?

It’s impossible to brainwash people if they’re given to love, desire and care for each other. But, unfortunately, the level of brainwashing is that they’re so ingrained in hate. And, therefore, I find love — desire is one of its most potent manifestations — is something that has the power to resist fascism and its onslaught. With the kind of communal polarisation that’s happening, if we stop relating as human beings, with love, desire and affection towards each other, this is where the differences become solidified. This is when it becomes easy to divide us as a people. That is what is manifesting itself today. It’s not just about love, but also a question of hate? What should you actually hate? Should you hate each other? Or should you hate an oppressive system that has waived off loans for corporates to the tune of Rs 14 lakh crore in the last 10 years. This is people’s money. I firmly believe that people have to counter hate with love, and this is where the charm of Rahul Gandhi’s muhabbat ki dukan (shop of love) comes. It is important for us to reclaim love as a transformative, revolutionary force.

The collection focuses on family dynamics against a backdrop of political unrest. How do you relate the personal narratives to the larger social issues you address in your work?

Whether you look at a left-wing thinker like Lenin or you go to the most fascist Nazi person like Hitler, everybody understands that the family is the basic building block of the state. If you look very closely at how fascism develops, whether it’s Mussolini or Hitler or some aspects in the present regime, you notice the need to constantly monitor this unit, to make rules or regiment unit — and it’s a very cis-heteronormative unit of family, where childbearing of certain number is also built into. They think that the fundamental unit of the state or the Hindu Rashtra is being built before it. The family itself is a contested terrain; sometimes, the argument is that families need protection, therefore, women don’t need divorce. Families need to reproduce, therefore, women don’t have abortion rights. Families need to stay pure. Therefore, you don’t have inter-caste marriages. There is the incursion of the state into the idea of the family; if you’re living together, you have to register yourself. There is literally no autonomy because you cannot spend your time with or raise a family with those you love. There’s only one kind of family that the state approves of. And everyone else is met with either violence or rejection by the system. It’s so important that we address this.

Freedom of expression is a recurrent theme in your body of work. In what ways do you see this volume commenting on the current state of freedom of expression in India?

According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index, India ranks 161st out of 180 countries. We are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel. So, is there anything to comment about the state of freedom of expression? No. I think it’s the worst time because more than 154 journalists have been attacked in the last couple of years. The freedom of expression is failing, but what’s crazy is that social media is literally in a chokehold today. X (formerly Twitter) has been told to withhold accounts. Facebook or Meta has shown that it’s been compromised. If this is the state of social media, the mainstream media, on the other hand, has been bought over by the big corporates: Ambani owns the media and Adani is the primary stakeholder in NDTV. Since newspapers survive on government advertising, even if there are journalists who are fearless, where do they write? Where do they go with their stories? There are a few portals leading the charge. Otherwise, it’s quite bleak. You might do the most groundbreaking stories, but if you cannot find the platform that will amplify what you have to say, then it’s very scary.

What do you perceive to be the most crucial challenge for poets and activists in India today? How can poetry help?

I don’t think that we deal with the state; it is the state that is dealing with us. We are basically calling out the state. I think that’s where our relationship with the state ends. I’m not a grant writer. I’m not someone who’s applying for awards from the state. I don’t engage with the state in any way except as a critique of the state or as a critique of the oppression of the state machinery. Do I see poetry overcoming some of the hostility or oppression of the state? No, I don’t think the job of poetry is to overcome anything; it is not to overcome pain, heartbreak, the state, abandoned childhood or trauma. I think the point of poetry is to lay things bare; it’s to speak the truth. And to disrupt very uncomfortable silences.