The Lounge Chair Interview: 10 Questions with Sanjeev Sethi
2 min read
Team Kitaab is in conversation with poet Sanjeev Sethi
The recently released, This Summer and That Summer, (Bloomsbury) is Sanjeev Sethi’s third book of poems. His work includes well-received volumes, Nine Summers Later and Suddenly for Someone. He has, at various phases of his career, written for newspapers, magazines, and journals. He has produced radio and television programs.
His poems have found a home in The London Magazine, The Fortnightly Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Allegro Poetry Magazine, The Galway Review, The Open Mouse, Otoliths, Solstice Literary Magazine, Off the Coast Literary Journal, Hamilton Stone Review, Literary Orphans, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, The Peregrine Muse, Café Dissensus Every day, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Section 8 Magazine, Futures Trading Anthology Three, River Poets Journal, Pyrokinection, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Jawline Review, and elsewhere. Poems are forthcoming in Meniscus, Amaryllis Poetry, Futures Trading, First Literary Review-East, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Drunk Monkeys, Harbinger Asylum and Linden Avenue Literary Journal. He lives in Mumbai, India.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. Why do you write?
It’s a need. My expression to a large extent is poetry. I see it as an extension of myself. I seek it in most settings. Poems are my response to stimuli. They help make sense of my situation. I wrestle for nuance by wrenching words and woes. Some poems dip into my emotional deposits, others document the demotic. The attempt is to arrest a moment of truth in a tasteful manner. In short, poetry is about my engagement with existence.
Tell us about your most recent book or writing project. What were you trying to say or achieve with it?
Bloomsbury published my third book of poems, This Summer and That Summer, in October 2015. The aim, as with any book of poetry is to share with readers slices of one’s life, colored and curated with poetic liberties in the hope it adds to their life. If not as elevated, then one aspires to open a window within the perusers that triggers a thought process or at least get them to smile as they connect with an idea or emotion.
