Devi S. Laskar is a poet and author of the award-winning debut novel The Atlas of Reds and Blues. Devi was asked to participate in Poets for Science, a participatory exhibit exploring the connection between science and poetry, curated by Jane Hirshfield, and the poem here is one of three she produced for the exhibit. We discussed the role of poetry in changing the conversation about climate crisis.
Can you give me a brief overview of the process by which you developed the erasure poem, “Resist”?
Inspiration comes in many forms. it can be overheard conversation, it can be a line from a poem, it can be the way the sunlight hits the windowpane and the shadow it creates. In this case, I was browsing the potential texts from the Poetsforscience web site, and I ran across this passage about the U.S.’s Paris climate accord withdrawal. I was inspired by my own anger to erase something in order to create something new. In the process of writing a poem for the exhibition, you can pick from the texts they provide or write your own. I thought it would be super fun to do an erasure poem (or three!) — but to leave the original text barely visible — to visually show that from boring text can come poetry.
What is your hope about the impact of these and other poems (or even your novel), written with a political angle or theme?
It is hard to have a candid conversation about anything these days — racism, climate change, politics – without people becoming defensive and feeling attacked. My hope with anything I write is that people are able to start a conversation about what’s happening on the page and that it in turn sparks real life conversations about what can be changed for the better.
How have you been impacted by political poems? Have you ever shifted a position or changed your mind from reading a poem?
My earliest memory of being impacted is Carolyn Forche’s wonderful book, The Country Between Us. It made me aware of the world outside of my own and it made me observe more closely. I was a reporter for a time, and poetry helped me look very closely at what I was writing about, whether it was fiction or non-fiction.
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