KARAN

Shivani, thank you for these enchanting and haunting and unforgettable poems. I still remember reading “Family Trait” the first time and being totally blown away! I immediately wanted to read all other poems of yours and am so happy to delve deeper into your work. I’m struck by how you weave fable and everyday reality into something entirely fresh. Let's begin with the process question. How do you approach writing a poem? Do you start with an image, a line, or an idea? Do you have a writing routine? And most importantly, what drives you to write poetry?

SHIVANI

At one time or another I have started with all of the above: image, line, idea. Sometimes just a word, because I like the way it sounds, or feels in my mouth, might inspire me to construct a poem as a home for the word. There are so many ways into a poem. 

I prefer to write early in the day. The routine is simple – read, write; repeat. Sometimes I have a cup of coffee next to me and a one-eared black cat in my lap.

As to why I write poetry, I don't know if there's a simple answer. I've always been a reader, and I've always written creatively. I wandered into a poetry workshop sometime in 2008 (ish), taught by my dear friend and mentor, Rick Bursky. That class was something of an epiphany. I thought, at best, I might learn a different approach to the organizing of words to express meaning. What surprised me was how much I enjoyed reading contemporary poetry, and how enchanted I became with the infinite ways in which poets use language. I did not expect to fall in love with poetry. 

KARAN

Let’s speak about the role of specificity in surrealist/fabulist/magic-realist work. In “The education,” you write, “Everything I know about mourning, I learned from my father. A professional mourner like his father before him, he knew thirty-three different ways of appearing desolate.” That “thirty-three” reminds me of what Garcia-Marquez would say: “It rained pigs is not believable, but it rained eighty-six pigs that distant Tuesday morning is believable.” I’ve ruined it a bit by paraphrasing but you get the gist. Do you think about this dichotomy of believable/unbelievable when you write? I can trace your influences to say Russell Edson or Charles Simic or James Tate etc. but a lot of poets try to imitate that surrealism without any success, whereas your fabulism follows a logic that’s almost impossible to disagree with, and is deeply reminiscent of Bob Hicok’s surreal logic. You can tell I’m a fan but would you speak about specificity and/or logic.

SHIVANI

Specificity is everything, isn't it. I think, particularly in fabulism and magical realism – where some (many?) of my poems live – specifics are needed to ground the poem and invite the reader to come along for the ride. 

I love Edson, Simic, and Tate! I'm also a fan of science fiction/scifi-fantasy. I grew up reading Aesop's Fables and Anderson's fairy tales and later, in my teenage years, Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, Le Guin, Frank Herbert, Terry Pratchett, to name just a few. In good sci-fi, of course, the magic is in the world-building. The unfamiliar and self-contained universe as a stage for all the dramas and stories of its inhabitants. You can see where I'm going...for me it wasn't a huge leap to go from reading sci-fi to writing surrealist poetry. I think poetry lends itself to the surreal. 

KARAN

Your poems often reimagine fairy tales and myths through a contemporary lens. In “Where Snow White is laid to rest,” you write of the dwarves, “The tips of their cigarettes glow brighter than the fireflies at dusk.” What draws you to these retellings? How do you approach making these traditional stories speak to modern experiences?

SHIVANI

I think what drew me to this particular retelling was that I saw a “gap,” an opportunity to fill in some details around a small part of the story. I remember flipping through the picture book as a kid and being moved by the sadness of the dwarves. I wanted to give their grief a place to exist. 

KARAN

The theme of origin appears repeatedly in your work, particularly in your numbered “Origin story” poems where the speaker is “carved from the trunk of a sycamore tree” or “cut from a bolt of cloth.” As someone who was born in Mumbai and grew up in Singapore before moving to New York and now living in Los Angeles (Wow!), how do these multiple origins inform your poetic sensibility? Even more than culturally, I’m curious about how we’re influenced by our geographies, though I imagine our cultures are largely determined by geography.

SHIVANI

As you note, I was born and raised in different countries, different cultures. So the idea of an origin story, mine in particular, has always fascinated me, even more so since becoming a parent. My children will have a different origin story than mine. 

KARAN

Kind of a continuation to the last question: As someone who has moved between different careers — from attorney to business owner to poet — how has this variety of experience influenced your writing? Do you find that these different perspectives enrich your poetic practice?

SHIVANI

You forgot amateur classical pianist. Ha. 

Yes, absolutely. I think as writers we get very good at mining our experiences for our work. 

KARAN

In poems like “The mannequin” and “The Woman Who Is Sawed in Half,” you explore questions of identity and doubling. You write, “I’m never sure which of us is real.” What draws you to these explorations of fractured identity? Are we all fractured now because of hyper-hyper modernization/late-stage capitalism/social-media etc. etc. etc. Is there another way to be?

SHIVANI

I think of my own identity as fluid and in a perpetual state of fragmenting and reconfiguration. Like a jigsaw puzzle continually breaking apart at the fissure lines and reassembling. The individual pieces stay the same, but maybe the shapes change, and attach themselves differently to each other.

Its fun to explore. What if every fractured piece had a voice and wrote a poem? How endlessly entertaining!

KARAN

There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. Of course, as with all great poets, I see all of these elements in your work very clearly, in fact in almost each of your poems, which is why they’re so magnificent. But where would you place your work within this framework, if at all? And do you see your poetry moving into a different direction?

SHIVANI

Formulating an answer to this question requires that I "zoom out" and contemplate the larger picture, which is not my wont. The truth is, I just write one poem at a time, in a way that moves me. My allegiance is – has always been – to the poem. I have no agenda beyond this. Except that I hope people might read my poems and, if I'm very lucky, even enjoy them. 

KARAN

Your poems have such a distinctive voice — surreal yet intimate, fabulist yet grounded in emotional truth. You create worlds that feel both mythical (Edson) and deeply personal (Hicok). In one poem, we have a professional mourner who knows “thirty-three different ways of appearing desolate,” and in another, we have moths that cast “shadows on my skin like kisses.” What do you think about the capital-V voice? Is it something you consciously developed, or did it emerge naturally from your particular way of seeing the world? When we read your poems, we feel we’re meeting someone with a unique way of transforming reality — how did you arrive at this particular alchemy? And do you think poets should be obsessed with the idea of “finding their unique voice”?

SHIVANI

I don't believe poets need to be obsessed with the idea of finding their unique voice, no. I once tried to write a poem in the voice of a poet I really admired. When I took it in to workshop the feedback was that it still sounded like me. I relate this story to make the point that we're all unique, there's no getting away from ourselves even when we try. I don't have a formula for developing my “voice.” In my own experience, "voice" emerges after the fact, almost as a by-product of giving oneself over to process, which involves practicing the craft of writing over and over and over again.

KARAN

In “Exodus,” you write, “My mother told me I was born with the map on my back... Your spine is the river, each vertebra is a path we could take.” The body appears in your work as both map and story. How do you see the relationship between the body and narrative in your poetry? What’s interesting is most people who focus on the body in their work are usually doing it in two ways — either to explore sexuality (eroticism, etc.) or as a way to consider mortality (chronic illnesses, etc.). So, basically, Eros or Thanatos, the magnificent twins. Your poems are considering the body in a third way — I’m not sure what this is but perhaps as a repository of cultural and familial memory? What do you think?

SHIVANI

I like it! "Repository of cultural and familial memory" feels right. Our bodies do tell their own stories.

KARAN

Congratulations on your forthcoming book, The Required Assembly! Tell us about the process of putting this collection together? 

SHIVANI

Thank you! The process was quite straightforward: I wrote a poem. Then I repeated the process until I had enough poems for a collection. Tom Lombardo, the poetry editor over at Press 53 was instrumental in helping to organize and order the collection. 

KARAN

We ask our poets for a poetry prompt at the end. Would you provide a prompt for our readers, to help kickstart a poem?

SHIVANI

Open a book to a random page, doesn't have to be a poetry book. Write down the first word you see. Do this until you have a list of 15 or so words. Write a 15-line poem using each of the "found" words on a different line. You could do 12 words/12 lines, or longer or shorter as you'd like. 

KARAN

We’d also love for you to recommend a piece of art (anything other than a poem) — perhaps a song, a film, or a visual artwork — that you find particularly inspiring or that you think everyone should experience.

SHIVANI

I play a lot of Chopin's works on the piano. He is on my list of top 3 favorite composers of all time. His Nocturne in D flat major (Opus 27 No. 2) is magical.

KARAN

Finally, because we believe in studying the master’s masters, we would love to know which poets have influenced you most throughout your career.

SHIVANI

There are so many! And you've already guessed some of them...Russel Edson, James Tate, Charles Simic. To this list I would have to add Nin Andrews, Claire Bateman, Marvin Bell, Peter Johnson, Laura Kasischke, Dean Young, Anne Carson, Rick Bursky, Czeslaw Miloscz, Ron Padgett, AR Ammons, Li-Young Lee. I could go on, but I'll stop here in the interests of brevity. Mark Strand, Mary Ruefle....