Episode 3: Sharmistha Mohanty's "Book One"
Today’s guest is Sharmistha Mohanty whose every book I’m tempted to devote an episode to! Everything she has written, I’ve loved, and been inspired by. It was tricky to come up with a bio note for her, if only because some call her a poet, some a prose poet, others a fiction writer. She’s also done translation, and has recently created a poetry installation for the Kochi Biennale. It’s safe to say she wears many hats—or an all-embracing one, under which she quietly creates art. Sharmistha is the author of New Life, Five Movements in Praise, The Gods Came Afterwards, Extinctions, and Book One, her first book, first published in 1995, and revisited and republished now in 2024. She works away from plot and narrative, and instead holds up for us in "Book One" the landscapes of the self, the potency of gestures, the limitlessness of the world intersecting with small particularities. With every book, she pushes the boundaries of prose and poetry, arriving always at "new" forms.