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Summer Reading
It is only as I prepare to move between apartments, write a dissertation, and enter the last year of my dissertation that the artificial constructed nature of this reading list seems like a beautiful refuge of kind.
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Visceral Gestures: Writing Susumu Kamijo’s Art
Some months ago, in a haze of art talk and chats about Samuel Beckett and Kobo Abe, I told Susumu Kamijo that I would love to write about his art. It was an impulsive thing to say, considering that I have never written about any art that I have loved or hated.
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archive day 1
lessons from day one at the Marbach archive – The thing that you are looking for may not actually be there but it is more important to understand why is it that it is not there. What do you do with the things you find there? – The archive is a curated experience. What are…
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some concrete poetry
I am preparing for the archive visit that starts tomorrow and found myself trawling through (what else?) the immense data of JStor to look for stuff on Carl Weissner. And out of nowhere the fabulous concrete poetry journal came to the screen.
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Knausgaard’s Playlist
Somewhere in the midst of reading Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Death in the Family, in the section of the party in spring, a deep ache to listen to all the albums that he had put together “written in my own childish capitals on the spines”
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objects of research: Titania Palast, Berlin
As I start digging into Indian poetry’s publishing circles and connections, I find myself within 20 mins from Titania Palast in Berlin. I take the S-Bahn, across the former borders that divided the East and West sides of Berlin, and end up at a generic Kino in Berlin.
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objects of research: Indian Oil
One of these days, as one does, we come across a relic. It is a relic that feels alienating precisely because it is not our past. It is a past that we have not lived through. We cannot look back. This is the past of our grandparents, at best.
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day something: interviews and poems
I have long been a follower of Vivek Narayanan. One afternoon in Delhi, the poet Michael Creighton introduced me to the poetry of Narayanan and there has been no stopping since. Narayanan’s work interests me not just because of the intense craftsmanship that he has about his work. It is also how he manages to…
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day 10: how to speak poetry
maybe we should meet as complete strangers Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be…
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day 9: the unbearable liberty of minimalism
The issue of social networks is not that it traps people’s productivity but also that should one be anything but a male/white/western/straight user, chances are that you will find your mental health affected by the indulgences these websites allow the most abusive/racist/sexist/violent of users. This is, then, not something that can be helped by going…