Professional Agitations: An Interview With Rita Mookerjee

Here we are in the last few weeks of National Poetry Month. All this month, I’ve celebrated with writing black-out poetry for team motivation at my library job, starting two new poetry collections (one of which being my guilty pleasure, Dean Winchester of Supernatural fame), curating a list of book recommendations for work…

But just because all good things must come to an end, does not reduce poetry or my fellow multi-hyphenate poet Rita Mookerjee to the background. This week, we talked about writing as a form of revolution.

Taylor Nunez: What is your process for writing a poem?

Rita Mookerjee: I usually freewrite for an hour or two. As I compose, I assess what kind of formal, syntactic, and rhythmic moves I want to make. I often title last.

TN: How do you know when you’re done writing a poem?

RM: A poem is complete when it shows a sense of urgency, comments on something original, and articulates a theme in whatever collection I am drafting at the time.

TN: What are your other creative pursuits?

RM: I act, dance (mostly burlesque), sew, and do watercolor.

TN: How do these pursuits impact your poetry?

RM: Dance has always shaped my sense of lyricism. I enjoy embodied poetry, so coming from an embodied art form helps me interrogate how I want to assign language to tactile sensation.

TN: What is the motivation behind your writing? What prompts you to pick up a pen--or to type it out? 

RM: I write in the spirit of anticoloniality, collective liberation, and unfiltered joy.

TN: How does your creativity inform how you see the world? Specifically: does it engage with the current reality? If so, how? 

RM: I grew up in a rural town in PA with almost no exposure to multiply marginalized people and certainly not multiply marginalized radical feminist artists. I wrote to keep from taking my life. I still do. The magazine I co-founded, Honey Literary, operates in the spirit of intersectionality so that others can see what it looks like to divest from oppressive structures and bullshit meritocracy to create something where those at the margins become the center. Burlesque is all about subversion, so my dances and costumes often play on tropes from white-centric sources. Recently, I danced as Eve in the garden holding the forbidden fruit. I know a lot of "Christians" in America would be livid to see a brown queer femme using Biblical imagery in a sexual context which is part of the fun. I like to turn cultural referents around so they have to look at themselves in the mirror. I consider myself a professional agitator.

TN: What do you hope that people will take away from your writing?

RM: Authenticity and vulnerability were not properties that came easily to me as a writer. I had to practice for many years to speak my truth. If writing is not brave, it's pointless. There is no more room for art that exists for its own sake.

TN: Lastly: who/what are some of your creative muses? How do they influence your craft process for both poetry and your other creative pursuits?

RM: Fashion, food, botany, and A24 films are my muses of the moment. I have a whole series of self-portrait poems styled after features of A24 movies, I especially love Ari Aster's work. I was always drawn to the costumes in Sailor Moon which I later learned were usually actual runway pieces from Chanel, Dior, and Mugler. As a PhD, food is one of my research specialty areas. I enjoy using food in my work, because it's a point of entry accessible to any reader. My mother has a wicked green thumb, and I inherited one as well. I collect rare philodendrons ...

TN: Is there anything else you would like others to know?

RM: Just make it up.

You can find more poetry by Rita published at The Normal School. Next month is National Mental Health Awareness Month; stay tuned for posts about poetry as catharsis and why you shouldn’t be the next sad girl poet. Thank you for reading. Feliz la escritura!