AWP21—Sumita Chakraborty

F***ing Shakespeare

Corraling the myriad ways Sumita Chakraborty’s poetry collection gets at the heart of grief all but flummoxed me. Its meaning is still washing over me. But I’ll say that poet Rishi Dastidar did what I couldnt do when she wrote that it’s “a book to hold close, an amulet that transmutes the intensities of grief into something uplifting, the attempt to keep hold of wonder.” We are thrilled to get to talk to her today about this luminous debut collection and many other things, if we’re lucky.

We were surprised to hear that Sumita’s introduction to creative writing and literary studies was in college. In her 13 years at AGNI Magazine, she worked in many capacities, eventually serving as poetry editor. It was in these positions that became accustomed to every angle of poetry publication before venturing in as poet herself. Sumita’s time at AGNI provided her this comforting(?) insight: no matter how talented and brilliant you are, your poems might still be rejected because of reasons beyond your control. We talk about her decision to publish her collection Arrow with Alice James Books, what it means to be a “sad girl poet” trying to be a “happy girl poet,” and how to honor and dismantle grief while somehow still managing to be playful. (Spoiler alert: she does it!)

Honorable Mentions:

• Poet, Lucy Brach Breido

• Rachel Mennies’s The Naomi Letters from BOA

• Cortney Lamar Charleston’s Doppelgangbanger from Haymarket

• Taylor Johnson’s Inheritance from Alice James Books

• Alice Oswald’s Nobody from W.W. Norton and Company

• Bridget Kelly’s Song from BOA

• Lucille Clifton’s The Book of Light from Copper Canyon Press