SM: I forget what we were talking about, because I was gonna say something to you, and you asked to start recording. 


RLU: Oh, sorry, yes, talking about roles, the imposition of heterosexuality, and discovering who you are.


SM: Queerness has felt way more political to me than sexual. Of course, a big part of it was my sexuality, but as I grew older, I realized that the act of being queer is about the way you see the world and about the way you think of others; not just your relationship to yourself and your sexuality.


RLU: I do feel similarly in that queerness is an approach to/ward beingness with other people. It’s about who we put our bodies next to, in terms of who we're attracted to and who we protest alongside. These words—think of others—is the name of the poetry project you started this year, where we sit together by Lake Merritt and read poetry by revolutionary poets of color. We discuss how the poems make us feel. These aren’t overly-intellectualized craft discussions, in fact most people who attend do not read poetry in their day to day lives, I would say. I have not encountered another occasion for poetry in public besides yours, which is called Think of Others. The discussions situate poetry in the every day, as a kind of quotidian fine art. In the U.S., we do not have a culture where we recite poems to each other, memorize poems, or rely on poetry to help express ourselves. You ask others to take photos, on film and digital, of the gatherings. This is such a contrast to the formal architecture of poetics in the U.S., which is formulated by stages, spotlights, microphones, doors that close, doors that have locks, and fees that must be paid to enter. What happens by the lake as the sun sets, is, in some ways, the highest expression of poetry, I think. Can you talk about the project?


SM: I guess the birthplace of all of this would be Fabulosa Books. They have this queer book club and while I was there I had picked up an anthology of queer poets of color by Christopher Soto. I had never seen something like that before, where the work of poets that I really looked up to was put together. Each of these poems were powerful on their own, but as a collection felt really significant. I wanted more of this type of work and to archive this kind of work, thinking about what would be helpful for me as a reader. As queer people of color and poets of color, there's so much violence and intention that goes into silencing and erasing our voices. I feel there needs to be intentional work and action to uphold and learn from these voices.


I came up with the name based on the poem by Mahmoud Darwish, Think of Others. The poem starts with, When you make your breakfast, think of others. Throughout the poem, there are different actions or situations that you find yourself in and then it adds the refrain, think of others. And then in the end—I forget the exact words—but it urges us to think outside of our own experiences. It feels like an instruction of not giving up on life. 


Human experiences are so vast and varied. This is a practice of unlearning, where we try to see the world through other people's experiences, outside of our own structures and understanding of the world. That's a practice I really appreciate and it’s something that I wanted to do with this space; I've learned so much by just listening to others. I think there's something to say about how a lot of the time when it comes to direct action, it can feel like we're doing this as a moral responsibility, but also to appear a certain way, to be a certain person. There’s a lot of focus on us. Think of Others helped me to reframe that around connections: who we can be to one another and who we are relationally beyond just the relation to self, which is very important, but is only a part, or like an aspect of who we are as a whole.


RLU: When did your political education begin? Has it always been connected to poetry?


SM: It’s changed so much over the years, and there have been phases where I've felt lost. When I felt like I lost my voice, where I didn’t have anything to say. It’s been shaped by geography: growing up as an AFAB person or being a femme presenting person in Kolkata, there was a lot of rage around how men would make me feel. The process of finding my voice or my politic has always been around injustices that people around me, or I, have felt. Inequalities that cause a lot of rage and grief, and then having a place to do something with it. I feel like I found my voice through the world of open mics or poetry slams. Performance poetry felt very freeing. Like you said, to construct ways of seeing or possibilities that are fluid and outside the predictable boundaries. Once I moved to North America for school, there was less focus on how unsafe I felt as a woman because I felt more safe in those aspects. Being in the east, you don't have a lot of personal space. You feel everyone's in your business. Then moving to the west, it feels so isolating. You're in a new city, in a new country where you don't know anybody, so nobody would even know if you ceased to exist. This was a thought that would come up a lot when I first moved. Then seeking community and learning about the broader community—those things play a bigger role. I don't know if that answers your question, but that’s how my political journey has been shaped.


RLU: That had to have been such a stark contrast, to go from a place where you're made to feel so aware of how you're moving through the world, maybe feeling unsafe in the body that you're given, then to arrive in a place where it feels like no one would know if you disappeared. The body almost meaning nothing. There's such vaporousness to being over read in one place and then being able to sort of slip between the cracks in another.


SM: Yes, like being over perceived versus not perceived at all. I've had days when I moved to the Bay Area where I was working in the SF office and my team was in South Bay, so I didn't really know anybody in the city. I would go into work and I'd come back home. I would realize that there would be days where I wouldn't have spoken a word to anyone. I would wonder if this were to keep happening over and over again if I'd forget how to speak. I would just call my mom and she would be the first person I would have spoken to all day outside of online meetings.


RLU: I think there's poetry to that. Your mom was the first person who you would talk to. She’s also probably the first person you ever spoke to.


SM: Yes. I would also like to share about how my relationship with poetry has changed over the years.


RLU: I’m curious! Please.


SM: Growing up I just always loved writing poetry, even in my own language. Then in my teenage years, I felt the need to speak my truth and the art form of spoken word felt very new and exciting. You could push the boundaries of poetry when it was spoken, and not just on the page. I spent some years being in those spaces, and it felt very empowering. Then over the years, I found myself looking for spaces that are accessible not only to people who want to perform poetry, but to people who appreciate poetry, understanding that poetry can be something that's very private to people as well. There are private poems that have saved lives, but not everyone interacts with poetry in the same way. Most of the spaces that I saw in the Bay Area were either open mic spaces or centered around generative writing. There was a lot of focus on the quality of the work being produced, which is great in its own way. But I also wanted to hold space for experiences that are participatory and in transit, where conversations can happen. The end goal doesn't always have to be creating or having something to say. It can be reading other people's work and seeing how that makes you feel. 


RLU: Usually the ways people engage with poetry is at readings. You sit in an uncomfortable chair facing the front of the room where someone is standing behind a dais. Learning together in a free and open space–that’s something I haven’t encountered as an adult. Like you said, there’s no pressure to bring anything but your presence. It’s such a relief not to have to think of anything smart to say. Poetry is so personal and it comes from our bodies. Poetry is alive because we are alive. Poetry has saved my life many times. So sometimes when I go to a reading and the poetry feels very flat or tonally one-note, it feels so antithetical to what I know poetry to be.  


SM: I deeply relate. Reading a poem can feel meditative. The act of reading a poem is an exercise in being present. It’s almost like a breathing exercise.


RLU: I feel very similar when I read a poem to when I pull a tarot card or go to pray. If I’m talking to God or hoping that God is listening, those all invoke the same somatic response, which is the regulation of my breath. There is a relief in just being here. 


SM: I love that you included it’s how you feel when you pray. The poem has definitely felt like a prayer so many times. 


RLU: How has it felt for you to share poetry on a stage? 


SM: It made me feel really alive. It gave me this sense of purpose. There was also this aspect of standing at a microphone. Everyone's listening to you, so you're kind of being put on a pedestal in the moment. Being on stage is like a high. It also feels really powerful to see other people perform and learn from each other. I very much felt like it's like this meeting ground for poetry and theatrics. Moving to North America and getting to see open mics being done in a different part of the world, and also getting to see the world that we idolize or see on YouTube is a cool experience. I was nervous to perform for the first time after I moved here because I was worried that people may not appreciate what I had to say. Because it's not the same part of the world, what I had to say may not be as relatable, but I think like our struggles and any form of authentic expression also connects us together, irrespective of where we are in the

world. 


RLU: Yes, and that connecting through authentic experience points to a quality of what is revolutionary. When I first encountered your project, I wondered what makes a poem or poet revolutionary. I wondered who makes revolution happen; if we know their names. I wondered if we can be aware of our touching the wheel of time of revolution’s turning. Maybe the question is how do we know we’re living revolutionarily? Revolution is activating. It is also daunting. How do we make sure that we believe we are powerful enough to effect and enact revolution so that we do not abscond this responsibility to anyone else? 


SM: That's something that I've thought about—what my politics means if it's not extended to my friends and community members. How do you translate all of this spirit for revolutionary love into these direct, unglamorous, everyday actions of community care? Showing up for one another or showing up when it's inconvenient for us. We have to remind each other that being a burden to one another is not a bad thing. We're made to think that being self-reliant,  independent, and not having to depend on others, is better, but you have to believe that we do heal in community. We are here to be there for one another, and it's okay to depend on others.


I think we really forget that, being immigrants and being away from home or family, the people who are biologically there to care for you. It's very easy to get into this mindset of, I have to take care of myself. At the end of the day, like you said, it's gonna have to be us, but we can be there for one another. If we're not able to be there for ourselves, it can be someone else who takes us through the day. That’s okay and it doesn't make us weaker or less of a person, or not a revolutionary. Being revolutionary doesn't always mean having to be strong. I was at Bound Together Collective and they were doing a reading of Love In A F*cked-Up World. Have you read it? 


RLU: Oh God, this book keeps following me around. I have not read it.


SM: Yeah, people have varying opinions on the book. Some people were talking about how meeting new people and being in community can cause so much anguish. I’ve definitely felt that as well. Back home, it felt so easy to communicate. I didn't always have to express myself as precisely and I didn't have to think as much about what I said and how I spoke. There was an aspect of unspoken body language and communication. All of that being taken out, and then having to speak in English with people that are coming from different parts of the world and have different ways of communicating can be challenging. But I think this is something to expose ourselves to—this discomfort—to overcome these feelings. 


And I get it. Being in community can feel heartbreaking. Sometimes you go through friendship breakups. Things don’t always turn out how you want. You don’t always get closure. But that's what it also means to be in community, that you can't control everyone's actions. You don’t always appreciate what they bring out in you. It’s a lot of hard work to put yourself out there and to do the relational work. 

RLU: I think it can also be emotionally turbulent because of the ways that queer people form friendships and relationships—often because we do need so much healing, and we are looking for community. Our culture is so isolating. Then, to be queer in this world is also inherently a little bit isolating.


But how can we change how we approach ourselves and approach one another? Can language do that? Is that poetry’s role? Or, one of poetry’s roles? Language can change how we think, change how we feel, and ultimately change how we act. But this morphology takes its time and can be imperceptible. I think it requires a certain kind of faith to believe that it's even possible. 


SM: In terms of movement work, I think of it like the butterfly effect, how a small change can catalyze something bigger. But I think every person has their own world, and we bring things into existence by relieving them or manifesting them. I think it's important to remember that our truth is just as important as the truth of many people. We don't always struggle though our struggles connect us. This is also why I think it’s important to have poetry, because a lot of the time we feel like we're so uniquely inseparable in our experiences, or that our sufferings are so unique. But then being seen by others feels almost like being saved, because you think that if someone else is going through something like this, it's not just me, so there's something to learn or seek out that's outside of myself, and that gives hope.