Episode 34: Debut Books: On Feeling Nothing

September 19th, 2019
Hosted by Brian Birnbaum
Guest: Meher Manda
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcript by Jon Kay
Podcast Assistant: Dylan Thomas

Welcome to the 34th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by your favorite rioting creatures. We're happy to welcome back our friend and wonderful writer, Meher Manda, to the podcast. We're talking all things debut books with Meher, as she released her first chapbook of poems on September 7th and host Brian Birnbaum's novel Emerald City was released this past Sunday! However, despite how exciting debuts can be, sometimes they can leave you feeling more empty than full. Join Brian & Meher as they discuss why that is and more. 

>> Brian: Welcome to the 34th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot, a literary press for books that matter. I'm your host, Brian Birnbaum. I'm here today to welcome back Meher Manda. Meher is a poet, short story writer, culture critic and educator from Mumbai, India based in New York City. She earned her MFA from the College of New Rochelle where she founded the Canopy Review. She is the co founder and co host of An Angry Reading series in Harlem and the author of Busted Models, perhaps the greatest title of anything ever made. A chapbook of poems from No, Dear Magazine. And yet also looks awesome. I gotta add that too. 

And before we get started, I'm going to say today's brand of fuckery is brought to you by the cake left over from the magnificent Animal Riot launch party. Thank you, Katie, for putting on the greatest party that has ever been partied. And a little story about the cake. It has a picture of me like keeling over and it kind of looked like I peed my pants in the picture is kind of funny. So we originally wanted the novel cover for Emerald City on it, but Wegmans we got the cake from Wegmans, which is hilarious. They called and said that there was a copyright issue and we said, No, that's impossible because we own the rights to this book. And so we demanded, like yuppies, demanded to speak with the manager. We're not yuppies. We're poor. We demanded to speak to the manager, and they got on the phone and said, No, we just don't want a print a cake that has a gun and a joint on it. We're like, All right, fair enough. And I was like, Yeah, we should take this to the Supreme Court, you know, avenge for the, um the Supreme Court ruling that did not go in our favor. In our opinion. And also, furthermore, Meher were you the 1st to cut out the cake? But no, you cut out my crotch.

>> Meher: Yeah. I'm a little shameless. I'm not that shameless.

>> Brian: Yeah. Were you ordered to, or did you just do it on your own volition?

>> Meher: No. So I circled the cake several times and she kept saying, Katie, who is the greatest party organizer of making things happen... Yes, that was a baller publication day party press launch.

>> Brian: Thank you Katie.

K: All that fun stuff. She kept saying eat cake, eat cake, eat cake. So I circle the cake, But nobody cut it. And I realized that there are processes to these things And I didn't want to be the initiator of such processes. I kept walking back to my station wherever people were hoping that somebody cut the cake. And then finally, Chelsea comes to me bearing, you know, a small piece of cake. So I'm just like, Okay, this is my chance. And then I go. And then I realized just on the spot that I want the crotch and Katie...

>> Brian: So Chelsea did it.

>> Meher: Maybe she did. And then I said I wanted the crotch. Katie very generously offered, as you know, all good partners do, offered her partner's crotch to me on my plate.

>> Brian: I feel very uncomfortable. There's a lot of jokes coming in my head that ruin my reputation. That I'm not gonna say. Okay, I will. Okay, let's end this cake cake cake, cake cake as Jay Z would say. Oh, apparently, you told my mom that you ate my crotch.

>> Meher: I took the crotch. I convinced the next person who came for the peace to take your head and then all that were left were your feet. So the whole cake was intact. Save for one side piece. But you're, you know, bust and crotch were butchered out. And then your mother was closed by on this other lady whom I don't know was close by. And she signed off to your mother that you were missing from the cake that you had been cut off. So then your mother had, you know, she covered her mouth. She was like, horrified, like, slightly amused horrified.

>> Brian: Maybe mortified.

>> Meher: And she looked at me and I pointed to my crotch and pointed to the plate. Your crotch was on my plate. And so this lady, who was the communicator, comes by and I say, you know, take the legs

>> Brian: Literally lost in translation.

>> Meher: Yeah, I'm just, like, take the legs because those were the only thing left. She was like fine so she could eat your legs.

>> Brian: Yeah

>> Meher: That's how we got you off that cake.

>> Brian: It's beautiful.

>> Meher: It's very macabre and it's very in tone with your novel.

>> Brian: Yeah, it's exactly how I wanted it to be. And the interpreter for my parents that night has worked for Michelle at CWP before and she told me. And she used to work for my dad back in the day. So it's all full circle, I guess. It's like a curved shape. Let's move on. So, yeah, we're here to talk about debut books or chapbooks. In your case, you want to talk a little bit about your chapbooks?

>> Meher: Sure. So, um, this book is called Busted Models,

>> Brian: Which is again the greatest title for anything ever made

>> Meher: Fun fact, nobody knows this. It is the title of the first ever short story that I wrote in my first semester of the MFA program.

>> Brian: Oh so you recycled the title.

>> Meher: Yeah, it's a title that I thought was really stupid at the time until the story got workshopped and everybody's like This is a great title and I thought, OK, cool. So this is apparently a good title, so I'm gonna hold on to it. That story itself lost its favor with me. I loved the story of the writing has lost its favor with me. So it's a story that I need to repurpose and rewrite entirely at some point. So I, meanwhile, was working, have been working on a larger poetry collection, which is titled "Some of Many Women." And I've been working on it for about a year and 1/2 or 2 years almost, and that sort of taken over my life. And I knew that, you know, given the nature of poetry publishing as is, it's hard to sort of get your foot in the door and get your stuff out there organically. Just getting your first book is, you know, if it's not through a first book award, it's a little tricky, and I realized a chapbook would be a great way for me to get something out there and also to acknowledge that a larger work exists behind it as a backbone. So I was sending out... I sent out a few chapbook submissions, and I needed a title and obviously couldn't use the main book title. And I thought about it and I read through the poems that I chose for the chapbook submission and realized all of them like the larger collection, too.... but all of them, in particular have a great irreverence to higher authority.

>> Brian: Okay.

>> Meher: There's a lot of you know they defy higher authority, the critique, higher authority, and they also challenge the concept of authority. And the title from the short story just came back to me, you know, because the idea of Busted Models is just the the foundational idea of that story was also that, you know, the elders don't know what the fuck they're doing, you know? And this concept came back to me while I was reading this poem and I was like, Yeah, that's my title. I name it out whatever the fuck I want. Who cares? So I did that, and that's how it came to be called Busted Models. I sent it over to a few places like it's a sort of a test drive and No Dear Magazine got back to me sometime around March of this year or April and they said they would like to publish it, which was very exciting. For the listeners who don't know, No Dear Magazine, they're an independent, you know, chapbook publishing press. They put out, you know, poetry journals. And they also do debut chapbooks of poets. They did Marwa Helal, you know, they've done a bunch of chapbooks, most notably Marwa Helal debut chapbook and they're run by the very spirited Emily Bran, who's really into is amazing in a great team of editors and they have a very inclusive voice in terms of the kind of work they put out was very excited to join that coterie of writers.

>> Brian: Take notes, everyone. Yes, there's a lot of juice.

>> Meher: Juice. Yes, I was excited to join the coterie of those writers. So No Dear as a sort of a chapbook series. Every year they put out four chapbooks in within a season on all those four chapbooks, have a theme, and that theme sort of is dedicated to, I would imagine the choosing of the chapbooks, but also the covers. All four of them have the same cover with, of course, the names and titles appropriate to the specific author. So this specific series is called Archival in Remembrance, and the cover is this brilliant... The best way to describe it is that it looks like one of those vintage library checkout cards.

>> Brian: Yeah, you know, the cover is fucking just fire. I love it so much.

>> Meher: It's gorgeous

>> Brian: And it's so like quaint and yet, not in some like, conservative way quaint. It's quaint in a way that's just like, very... I don't know, like Blue Stocking, sort of like just bookish way. I don't know. I just love it.

>> Meher: Yeah, in poetry, especially, you talk about because there's so many forms of poetic writing that exists.

>> Brian: We should real quick. I just want to say before you get into that, where can you buy this so people can look at the cover and then buy it after they see the cover.

>> Meher: Yeah, on No Dear Magazine's website available for $12. And I believe it comes up to $15 if you order it online with, you know, the delivery charges and stuff. I believe that No Dear, also puts up copies of the book at a few indie bookstores in the city. But I don't have the complete information about that.

>> Brian: Okay, Maybe we can add that after.

>> Meher: And, you know, we could also come over to my website. It will be redirected from my websites writing page, so it's also listed there.

>> Brian: Meher Manda writer?

>> Meher: Unfortunately, it's not that cute. It's meherwrites.wordpress.com

>> Brian: Beautiful. That's cute.

>> Meher: I lost mehermanda dot wordpress dot com due to a silly mistake. So it's like it's dead. WordPress won't let me have it.

>> Brian: Alright, So you were saying

>> Meher: Yeah. So, you know, in poetry, you want to choose a form that fuses, you know, imagination with content. You don't want to write something as a prose poem just because you don't want to write something, you know the haiku just because you want that to be married to what you're trying to say and I feel like this cover does that. It marries the theme of archival in remembrance, too, like making it a collective voice, the four chapbooks. And I think it's very and that's what I love about it. That's not gimmicky cover.

>> Brian: And in a more lowbrow way, I'm just gonna do some death of the author kind of shit and say, This is how I see it. It's kind of feels like you're stealing a library card, which is pretty irreverent. Or a book. I don't know, something like that. You get what I'm saying, but yeah, So I heard you read some of it at your launch, and your incredible grasp of the English language is, you know, itself is worthy of purchase

>> Meher: That's very exciting coming from you.

>> Brian: Well, wow, that's flattering.

>> Meher: You have a very incredible vocabulary. So it's like, you know,

>> Brian: I would say I know a lot of words, but how to use them is another story. So to speak. I do think it's really important that, you know, sometimes at points... and this is how I know you're a poet. Because your poems can be dense and in a way that's not turgid and pretentious, like dense in a way that there's so much packed into, like every line in the most poetic way possible. You know that that's the point of poetry sometimes is to be very economic with your words. But like at some points like because the syllabics or like the belletristic quality of it, I would just kind of get lost in the aural atmosphere of it. You know what I mean? Which, like, kinda feels like I'm cheating it just because there is... because I know the purpose of your poems are so much more about the content then, Then the way they sound, you know? There is a sort of poetry it out there that, like at its worst form, becomes like a word salad. That's like basically got this quote unquote nominal belletristic quality. It sounds pretty, you know, whatever off the tongue, so to speak. But like I don't know if it's the way you read it, but yeah, I was just like, Wow, I can't I can't read like that. Like, you know, like, I feel like such a shit reader compared to you.

>> Meher: I heard you read last night. You can read very well.

>> Brian: Maybe it was because I was reading someone... I will say right now that last night at the launch party I didn't read from my book, which was really fun because I got to read from an incarcerated writer. I hate the fact that I hate the phrasing of all this. Like I liked, I would. I wish there was a way to just say a person who writes who was in prison, but that sounds just weird. But anyways, this dude Saint James who was in this bluegrass band, Saint James Harris Wood, he was on this bluegrass band. He got addicted to heroin and, like, found himself in jail. You know, that whole story the prison industrial complex treats addicts like, you know, like criminals. Unfortunately, but, you know, I won't judge. I don't know where this guy's been. Blah, blah, blah. But his writings fire and like it is it. I hate to say it, but like I've become so much of a better reader, but it was somewhat easier to read someone else's stuff. There was a less self conscious aspect to it, and I was so enthused about his stuff that I was like, I could really get into it, You know what I mean? Um, I don't know.

>> Meher: It's always, um, I think... The way I think is I don't see people necessarily as good readers and good writers and bad readers and but good writers in that space. I always think that How do you take to a word? I'm just very seduced by people who can speak a word the in a way that other people can't speak it, and that could be speaking it to paper or speaking it to an audience, but who can just hold a word and take its cadence and translate it into a larger meaning. So, to me, it was irrelevant that you know, whether you were reading your own work or somebody else's. Because, yes, it was a writer who does not have the access to come into a literary space and present his own work. But at the same time, you had animated the story for me and I was completely... I was hanging on to every word I was hanging on to every... and which is tricky, especially with prose, because you're reading a lot, you're listening to the same voice. It's very easy to get, you know, sort of get caught up and lose yourself.

>> Brian: And everyone remembers what like what's around them is more alcohol and pizza and cake.

>> Meher: I was just so and I realized that that's the mark of a good... I hate the word wordsmith because it's so pedantic and it's so kinda cheap. But I think the idea of a good purveyor of words, which is a Animal Riot phrase, and that if he can translate a word and animated with a lot of meaning, whether it's your own or somebody else's.

>> Brian: Yeah, I think a lot of it is just like buying in, which is what I appreciated about your reading is like I really admire. I think it's so important and I'm working on this but to like buy into your own stuff like you wrote this. And like I am proud of the book I wrote. I worked on Emerald City for six years and I did my best. Like I put out the best thing I could, and yet I'm still... there's like unlike 92% there, but like they're still, there's a couple of moments where I find myself reading and I realized myself and there's that self consciousness in the back of my head. I'm like, Are they enjoying this? And then I kind of come out of it just a little bit, and I'm like, not the character anymore or something like that. You know? I'm getting better, but I know exactly what you mean. There's so many different ways to own a word and like you got people like we've had Aaron Poochigian on this podcast, who's one of the best readers I've ever seen in my life. And it's like, but that's like the like, the exhibitionist sort, and that no exhibition is a bad word. That's performative performative that has like a pejorative aspect to it. It's not because it's it's beautiful, and then you have, like someone like David Foster Wallace, who's reading this like hyper intelligent like shit and a really shy way and everyone in the crowds just like cracking up because it's, like, so funny and he, like, doesn't break.

>> Meher: David Sedaris also does that.

>> Brian: Yeah, right. And then you have someone like Zadie Smith was like, very stoic, you know, and reads with this like, kind of like elegant cadence, you know, and there's just so many different ways to read, you know what I mean? But I appreciate all of those forms, you know, they're all really beautiful

>> Meher: When I teach poetry to my students because they all especially undergraduates, are fed all of you know, the slam, visually performative, arresting videos. And they come in with that idea of poetry reading. So the first radio I always show them is so Suheir Hammad's... I think the poem's called Post 9/11 Blues. And so here Suheir Hammad, and this poem was also about as a New Yorker, knowing that that moment, the moment of 9/11 shifted everybody's lives forever, but also the lives of her own brothers who were fighting for America in the armed forces, you know, but knowing that as Muslim men, they're suddenly their lives get shifted in a way. And if you see that reading, there's a lot of a video of that, there's a lot of tension in the space, and she's reading it in a very like I said, Not stoic, but very, you know, subdued. It's very it's arresting, but it's controlled. It's retained to a common core of a voice, and she lets her sort of nimble voice just carry the poem through. There's no hand movements. There is no, you know, extravagant performative activity as the situation in the poem demands. That's what I ask of my students in that reading is such a frightening and terrifying aspect and reality of our desire to write and present our work to the world. But it doesn't have to be that if you're not that person was a natural extrovert with a natural who takes to the stage very naturally, the reading doesn't have to be that kind.

>> Brian: You can you can be yourself.

>> Meher: You can be yourself. All you have to do is read slowly and be clear, audible and take your pauses. A pause makes and breaks a reading. It's true. You like that moment when you're supposed to let a word hang in there. When you know that this and end means that I wait for a response and then move on or when your voice is slightly supposed to rise, or it's likely supposed to speed up just knowing those little intimacies with the text.

>> Brian: Yeah, I had no grasp of that. I was so terrified when I first started reading, I was trying to speed up that points. I would stumble over words. I was just trying to get through it and I was so fucking nervous. Like it was just a disaster. And now I'm at the point where I'm still not as good as I'd like to be. But I'm better.

>> Meher: You're great.

>> Brian: Thank you. I appreciate that very much, especially because oh, Katie, over here literally when I first started reading was like, Yeah, you suck (laughs). I needed to hear that because it is something that like, Yeah, you do have to just get up in practice to like at some point, it is a kind of it is a performance to a certain degree. And even though you should just be yourself, it does... just like growing up and going through puberty and finding your identity or whatever Cliche bullshit. Whatever platitude is there. You do gotta kind of just get up and do it. But I do want to ask you something real about about and I won't just kick the can down the road on this one like, because I'll answer to this, too, but something that you mentioned about how bringing you back to, like, you know, a debut work coming out. You know, this chapbook and you said, like how great that night was, But then you felt like the whole... It's like, almost like it ended. And then you were like, Oh, I felt nothing, you know, after that night ended or something, or whatever it is. I think that's common, like I remember even before the launch party or something. When I knew the book was done, people would be asking me like How do you feel? How does it feel that it's coming out? And I would just be like in the back of my head. I just want to write another one like you are something like that. But like, I don't know, I want to hear how you feel about like, What? What is that like for you?

>> Meher: You know, also with the awareness that yours is a full length book and mine's still a chapbook. Not in any way to trivialize a chapbook, but with an awareness that a chapbook does not contain the full breadth of what this subject matter was dealing with.

>> Brian: Yeah, it's part of a larger...

>> Meher: It is part of a larger whole, mosaic. But I always imagined, because to write and publish something that has my name on the cover was such a... call it masturbatory. It was such a dream for the longest time, as it is for every writer. It's just it's been an obsession.

>> Brian: I read that in the prison writers that I like, communicate with, they all say the same thing. It's like they want to be known. They want to be seen. They want to have their name on something. You know?

>> Meher: I respect writers a lot who are all about the process and not about. You know. Then what happens after.

>> Brian: Glory?

>> Meher: Glory but...

>> Brian: Glory is just an operational term.

>> Meher: Yeah, just like having the name on something doesn't necessarily signify glory. But it also feels like it's an...

>> Brian: Accomplishment? Whatever you wanna call it, you know?

>> Meher: Yeah. And I don't want to make it seem like writers are in anyway, you know, just that it trivializes the pursuit of craft for feeling that way. Because scientists in a laboratory are vain if they're working on an experiment, they want the results.

>> Brian: But I also wanted to just bring it up because, like, we're not psychopaths for like, wanting our name. Not marking our territory like dogs.

>> Brian: On the other hand, like psychopaths kill people and don't feel anything. We're not psycho paths because we publish something and then that feeling is just, Wait, where's that feeling that I thought was gonna be there? For me Was that realization that like, Oh, yeah, I really do this because I love doing it. We were talking earlier, I brought up that everyone has to go through this Siddhartha journey. You do have to go through it. And I do think it propels you to write. That first thing is that idea that you're gonna publish it. And it's important. Like that ego aspect is important And it still is important, even after you publish that first thing like you're human, like you have to address the ego and maybe you have to tame it or something. But yeah, there is that realization. Once you publish something that, nothing's changing, you just finish this thing and you're gonna know some more people. You're gonna know a few more people. And that's what's great about it. Really. You know, you're gonna know a few more people.

>> Meher: I think architects don't sit in their little room and make elaborate floor plans to never want those floor plans to become a real building. They want a building.

>> Brian: Yeah, What would be the point? Right. Exactly?

>> Meher: They do not just want to sit there and draw art. And I can imagine that the day the building is launched or whatever, the thing for a building's version of a book launch.

>> Brian: The ribbon cutting. Whatever the fuck they do when that happens

>> Meher: When you know you've worked on it so hard. But they get like a celebrity to cut the ribbon or a politician, and you're like, You know, I'm sure that feeling there is a disjointed feeling, but I imagine that months later, when they walk down that street and they're like, That's my building, I see it there. I think that night because, you know, my book was being celebrated and all my dear friends were there. People who have supported this work. People have supported me in any way were there, and they wanted to celebrate it. It's also the idea that this is too much. Maybe this is not even worth. There's also that at the back of your head and then you hold the book. You don't really feel anything. You're like, uh, whatever. But I have to tell you this, this is something you don't know. After I told you that I didn't feel anything about the book. I was just like, you know, whatever, whatever.

>> Brian: There's always another thing.

>> Meher: There's always another thing. I've been at Harshal's and Harshal's copy... cause he had pre-ordered and his copy came in and his package was like, next to me on the living room. I was sitting at the couch, he was doing something. And so I opened it to see and then I look at it and then I read the first poem and then I read the second poem. Then I read the whole book. I mean, it's a chapbook. It's only like 25 pages. I read the whole book and I had this very strange moment at this particular poem where I kind of choked up and it realized, Oh, this poems good.

>> Brian: But that's where you remembered why you did it. It's not like the exhibition of it or like, you know, any of that vanity. It's not going to fill you up. It's when you read it again and you're... And that's why readings are cool. Like when you got to do the reading. It's like, you're like, Well, like, yeah, like, I am actually proud of this. I think it adds value. I think this is why people are here. This is why they're talking to me right now. You know what I mean? That's was you know with the launch party last night, that's when I felt good. Like the you know, we were talking before when I had to, like, kind of shift and like it felt like I was wasn't able to treat people like human beings because everyone wanted my attention at certain points like that's that felt shitty. But like the fact when I had conversations about how they felt about it, the people that had read it and stuff like that. Yeah, that that feels really good, you know?

>> Meher: Yeah. I can totally imagine you two months from now working on the next novel. You know, eating at work. You're just sitting there and then you spot your book across the room on top of your shelf. And there'll be that moment where you and there's nobody else in that moment. No reviews in that moment. There is nobody listening and clapping. There are no lights. There are no photographs there, no videos, there's no instagrams and nobody will capture it. You will just look at your own book and you'll think damn. It's like your baby. You built it.

>> Brian: I will say no, you're very right. And I will say I brought an ARC with me when I went to rehab because I at that point I had never been lower in my life. And I brought an ARC with me because I was like, At least I've done this. And it was like like my little talisman. I could just like touch it and like, be there. And then when people at like when I told people I was a writer and their people were like, damn like That's crazy, you're a drug addict and you fucking wrote a book (laughter)

>> Meher: You were like, have you ever heard of Denis Johnson? Or countless others.

>> Brian: Yeah. I was also it was also yeah, it was strange because I was like, Are you like they had all these photographs on the wall of celebrity addicts.

>> Meher: Did they put your photograph up?

>> Brian: Are you fucking kidding me? Ridiculous question.

>> Meher: You're a celebrity author.

>> Brian: We are talking about Anthony Keidis level.

>> Meher: How many people are Anthony Keidis level?

>> Brian: Quite a few. There's a lot of them out there, you know? We got the Amy Winehouse's and Eddie Murphy's. Anyway, should we should we do a reading?

>> Meher: Listen, if it was my rehab, I would put you in. I would say, this author was with us.

>> Brian: Oh, wow, that's really flattering. And also, I have to say that, at that point when, uh when I look over and Katie's at work and I see my book, I'm gonna get a text from Katie being like the fuck are you doing looking at your book? Do something for Animal Riot. Read David's book.

>> Meher: As is the natural course of literature. Onto the next

>> Brian: I was talking to you about this before. I am very excited because I for the first time in years, I'm working on a short story. I've really never been that big into short fiction. I'm writing a short story. I've got a couple essays in mind, but, you know, I've published a bunch of essays and like, I've done that and I still love it like I love that I've discovered nonfiction. But yeah, it's crazy like and I don't think I would be doing it if it wasn't for the fact that I'm like, Okay, I've been published. You have to walk that Siddhartha path. That's sort of an illusion, but isn't like it's the only thing that's gonna get you to that sort of equilibrium, you know, so to speak like you gotta walk it. And now I'm like, Oh, I can just write a short story and, like, live longer And then I'll start my novel at another point. I don't know.

>> Meher: You know, This reminds me of that... I was reading Salman Rushdie's reading. His Joseph Anton,

>> Brian: I need to read him so you'll stop fucking nagging me about reading him.

>> Meher: He's my David Foster Wallace.

>> Brian: Here's some real synchronicity or, you know, fate, determinism, whatever you wanna call it. Whatever you believe in, the god of your own understanding. After you told me to read him and then my friend Jake, whom I thanked at the party last night, like and I sent in that video, he was so happy. He had been texting right after that. He was like, Have you read this thing by Salman Rushdie yet? And I was like, All right, the universe is speaking to me right now. I got to read this fucking dude.

>> Meher: So he writes Joseph Anton because that's all about his fatwa. Years when the fatwa was imposed on him and the guy had already won the Booker and he'd already had, you know, you know, he had shame. And then he had The Satanic Verses, which was a hit which had been nominated for several awards and but then the fatwa happened. But through that entire time he was writing, he was churning out books like a factory. I mean, not like a factory and that it was a brain dead operation, but it was a completely... He was constantly imagine what can be his next story. And it's particularly fascinating because this is a guy who's movement has been restricted. He can't move around, he can't access public spaces. So in many ways this dials back to the Pen America, you know, Pen America partnership that all the reading series are doing for incarcerated writers because that this idea of like this is a guy not to say that he was in a prison, but in that he was his movement was restricted, his freedom was restricted and this guy was constantly at it. He was constantly... he churned out like four books in that in that 10 years on and I realized that that's what writers do. If there is glory, you love it. You take it, you sit in it on. Then you move on because like it doesn't feed, it doesn't feed you. The act of writing the report to paper is what feeds you.

>> Brian: That's a very good way of putting it. There's no nourishment there. It's like eating cake.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, We're still eating cake. I'm opted out because I've had a lot of leftover pizza and yeah, and like, honestly, I hate to make a judgment here, like especially about someone who was so sad and ended up ending their own lives. But like one of the failures I do see with that, perhaps a failure of DFW's is that I think there was still always an element of, like getting something at the end of the line there, you know? And I remember, like someone writing about him at his launch party for Infinite Jest. And he was Everyone was having a good time, like, you know, and I think maybe his editor, Michael Pietsch or something wrote this. I forget who it was, but he was like, upstairs in a room, just being like, is this it? And it's like and then he didn't write. He couldn't finish the Pale King after that. I do think if you lose sight of the fact that this is like, you either understand that, like you're in flow, like, you know, because this was another dude who was a recovering alcoholic, you know, like so he can relate. So, but yeah, I don't know. She would should you should you read now? Should we do a reading? Do you want do you want to do a reading? Is there anything else you want to talk about? About a debut work, novel, chap, book, whatever you want to call it?

>> Meher: I think you know, a question that I would ask you is you know, there's this whole gestation period of writing.

>> Brian: Yeah, that's the Let's come with one of the hardest parts.

>> Meher: Which is the hardest part. And there's this...

>> Brian: Maybe the hardest part. Maybe the end is also very hard.

>> Meher: But I think the whole process is to be really honest, even the day it gets launched. Sure that you're overwhelmed. Your supported, You know,

>> Brian: There's a sweet spot when you're drafting where it almost starts to feel easy. Or not, like, overwhelmingly difficult is the better way of putting it.

>> Meher: First draft is the most optimistic part of right. Because there's no hopes, no dreams. No, You know, there was ambition, but there is no expectation. Right? And there is just pure, you know, processing is just churning out. It's just letting the words or the story

>> Brian: And you're just constantly discovering.

>> Meher: Yeah, And then once you have the first draft down, everything after that is awful. Because now, suddenly you've prescribed an expectation based on that quality, anything. Okay, now we're fucked. Now we have to go from here to make it the best version

>> Brian: For me that that process kind of starts itself over several, several times throughout. Because, like, you get excited like a like a third draft, you're like, Oh, like I got all this like narrative, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then you hit that place where you gotta fix it all again and you know, but anyway, you were saying so in the gestation period.

>> Meher: In the gestation period and this is I ask this because it's funny you said you wanted You're working on a short story because I've been bitten by the novel bug.

>> Brian: Ohh this is exciting.

>> Meher: For the last month and 1/2. I don't know how much of that is the fact that I've been working on a poetry collection for two years, and I'm just sort of tired of writing poetry, of thinking, poetry of speaking portrait and for some reason, maybe reading Rushdie and like just that there's the story that refuses to leave, but it's on a fully formed story. It's the germ of something that could grow into something bigger. How do you reread your work and rephrase your work and reposition your work without... with kindness to yourself.

>> Brian: Wow, that's a really good question. I did not do that for my first novel. I was not kind to myself. And Katie knows that more than anyone. Yeah, it was constant, like elation while I was writing and then, like, Holy shit, there's so much fucked up that I want to fix and it's I'm not gonna I'm not gonna sit here and dramatize it. It wasn't like, Oh, I'm like I'm a piece of shit writer all the time. It did get to that point sometimes, like I would sometimes be like, Oh, I'm not. I'm not worthy and stuff like that. But it wasn't, like, always like that. It was more like am I cut out for this. Oh, I got this rejection from this agent or something and like it's like it means it means that I'm not good enough and like, this and that and like And so, like, I'm trying to bring it back to your question about the process itself.

How to not do that. Because I do think that's important because at some point, when you're doing that, you have to come like have this paradox of the desire for perfection and the knowledge that you're never going to be perfect. You need to reconcile that paradox because if you don't, you are gonna drive yourself insane. And I did drive myself insane. We all know that I've told my story of where I've been the last couple months. I did drive myself insane. I did, and it's not all because of the book, but like, Yeah, there was a lot of it. There was like, I'm I worked until 3/4 in the morning and like I did that using substances a lot, you know? And it was a drive for perfection that was not healthy. It just wasn't. I think the best way I can answer that is that you have to be doing it to nourish the product and yourself. And how to do that is to be constantly focused on... when you're sitting down are you obsessing over something to the point where you feel that, like twitch in your head and like you're reading a line like 100 times and you're out getting anywhere? Katie would see me doing that sometimes at the end of a session. I would literally be looking at the same sentence for like, I'm not kidding. It's like at some point it would be like two or three hours, and it's like That's fucked up.

You can't be doing that like you have to be able to separate yourself. So whether that's in a microcosm of a single writing session and like you're looking at a single line or if it's more like in a macro sense of, I've only given myself one day and I'm not really getting distance from this section I'm looking at. And I know there's something that I don't like about it. I really need to step away, maybe work on something else. And I'm trying to put this in a way that doesn't sound cliche and just be like, you know, just be fucking chill about it, dude, like, relax. Because we're never gonna be like that. But at the same time, I really do mean that if you you just got to keep in mind that if you think you're gonna finish this tomorrow, you're just fucking kidding yourself and you're doing it for the wrong reasons. I took six years on my novel and it might maybe even should taken longer because I killed myself doing it nearly, you know? But, you know, do it first in a way that's just consistent and healthy and that you're taking care of yourself and that you're not trying to finish it tomorrow. That's my only suggestion. That would be my mantra. Don't try to finish it tomorrow. Just work on something today. Have a good time doing it. Make sure you did the best you could that day. Whether it's a sentence or 3000 words, you know, I don't know.

I hope that's good advice. It sounds like it sounds like, really kind of like amorphous or maybe like, you know, nebulous. And I don't even know if I can take that advice myself because it's hard, like I'll sit there and obsess afterwards. But, you know, Garth, one of my professors at Sarah Lawrence, he wrote "City on Fire" and everything. He literally said, like he wakes up in the morning, he writes, and then he does not think about it for the rest of the day. Not at all. Like he just doesn't think about it. That's how he drafts. And I couldn't do that. I would just obsess about what I could fix, So I don't know is there? Is there another question that I left in that?

>> Meher: It's interesting because you said you are capable of obsessing over the same sentence for three hours. With me I'm incapable of doing that.

>> Brian: I don't think that's a bad thing,

>> Meher: But I also then reject everything that around it, and I sort of push it into a hole. And I take that very personally. I take that as a personal failure, like, Oh, that sucked. Hence, you are not a good writer. Like the beginning of the podcast you spoke about my poetic voice, and I have struggled with calling myself a poet. I still struggle with calling myself a poet because I'm of a narrative writer. That's my style. Because I am originally a fiction writer. I'm a journalist. I'm a prose writer. It was something I always did as a break from fiction until this project came to me. And until this project took over, I never wrote poetry with the intention of building a collection that was like one straight poem here, one straight poem there. So to me, the kind of voice that to some poets come so naturally, even when their speaking like cough, cough, Devin cough, cough. Even last night when he was giving a speech. It's like he's such a poet. It was so obvious what Animal Riot was gonna pick in that contest because he's a poet.

>> Brian: He speaks in dulcet tones.

>> Meher: Yeah, it's gorgeous, and it's also infuriating, like amazing. And I love that. And I always struggled with not having that myself until now, at least with poetry which happened because of a great workshop I took with the Port Vincent, is that, you know, im allowing my poetry to be intentional and consider considered and thought off without that necessary natural voice coming in. And I'm trying to marry my form with my message and like, be very even, like mathematical like be a mad scientist about the process.

>> Brian: So do you feel a measure of guilt about that?

>> Meher: Not necessarily. I just take it as a personal slight when I can't figure something out because this is why I've never written a novel or even come close to writing one. I am very first draft writer.

>> Brian: And then do you feel overwhelmed? It's like there's so much that you feel like shit about that you're just overwhelmed?

>> Meher: I feel like for me at the writing process and editing process is about perfecting, yes. But if the magic is not there in the first draft, I refused to even consider it. So...

>> Brian: I feel two ways about that, because I can say the same thing. But I might feel like that about things I've... Yeah, I've written countless things that I've just abandoned because I felt that way. But at the same time, maybe there's a feeling you're trying to capture that's actually never going to be there. Because I've never written a first draft that I was like, Oh, yeah, this is fire. If I just do this, this and this, it's it's good. Even if I feel like that, I give it to someone else and they tell me they set me straight. They're like, do what the fuck. You think you're fucking James Baldwin? I can't write a fucking grammatically correct sentence half the time. When I'm drafting... because my head is buzzing so much, You know what I mean? I think there might be an aspect of you need to allow yourself to have fun when you revisit it the second time, cause there is a feeling that I get when I read a first draft that it's not... So basically, when I approach a draft now, when I was younger, it was overwhelming. So I was like, Oh, man, because I'm trying to get something published.

That goes back to my mantra of don't think you're gonna finish this tomorrow. But now, when I approach like a first draft, it feels like Oh, this is gonna be so fun. Now I'm going to get to turn it from something that's not that good. Now I get to see what I get to do with it. You know what I mean? And so maybe some of that is missing from that feeling. Some of that feeling is missing. When you approach a first draft, it's all I expected to be here. But it's so far down here. While I was, maybe it's because I've been writing fiction so much longer than you. Maybe not longer, but so much more than you, you know? And if I started writing poetry, I'd probably have the same feeling as you. It'd be overwhelming. I would be like this is so bad. I don't even know how to make this good.

Now when I approach something that I've written like I can already feel the short story that I'm drafting, I can feel how shitty it is. But I'm excited about where it's gonna go. I'm excited about the possibilities. You know what I mean? So I don't know. I don't think I can speak that feeling into you. But at the same time, maybe me saying that will spark like you going down the path to like getting that feeling, You know what I mean? Because I think a lot of writers feel that way they get just get so dejected by what they put on the page. And it's this irrational thought that you're gonna write something brilliant right away. And maybe if you especially if you've been working in another form, not even in writing, like as an athlete when I was younger, I was just so naturally good that maybe when I started writing, there was this expectation that I was gonna be an all star. And I felt like that when I started writing, I had this bravado, and then everyone told me how much I sucked. And I was like, Oh, fuck, I feel like shit right now, you know? And it took me a while to kind of build myself back up and like, be like, Okay, I gotta keep working on it, you know?

So it's not just within the draft. It's like in all areas, like, what else are you good at that. You have that expectation that you're gonna do it. It's gonna be great, you know? But looking at it now, it's like it's like, Okay, I wrote this draft. I don't care how good it is right now. Do I care about this project? Is there something that I'm trying to say here, like those are the questions that I ask myself Now It's like, What am I trying to do here that will tell you more whether it's worth pursuing than is it good right now? You know, in a vacuum would someone read this right now like, it's like, are you when I guess another way to put it. Not just, like having fun with, like, revising it. But go back to that question of why am I Why am I writing this? You know, it's like, Do you still get excited about that? I don't know. I just I said a lot of words about that. I think it's time for you to read. I just went on a fucking excited rant about the process. I got way too jacked up right there. (laughter)

>> Meher: I'm glad I got you there. I'm

>> Brian: ready to start writing.

>> Meher: Okay, so All right. I'm gonna read poems I've never read so that it doesn't feel like stale to me and it doesn't feel stale to the world at large.

>> Brian: I've heard a lot of writers say that when a book comes out for them, they like they like you know what? I'm sick of reading this. So fuck it. You guys were getting this tonight.

>> Meher: Yeah, it's beautiful with the novel cause, like, you know, everything is prose. So you can shift your way around. With poems like some poems read well and some don't

>> Brian: That's true. And, you know, to the other to the to another point, I would say that the novel's hard because context. If you just drop some, You know, if you just drop in somewhere, someone's like, Where the fuck am I feel? Like I'm gonna fucking like Kubrick movie, except I fast forward in the 1st 35 minutes. (laughter)

>> Meher: Okay, so this home is titled "Turf". I mean, the context is in the poem, but just for the sake... so Bombay local trains are infamous. You should Google images of Bombay local trains during rush hour because there murderous. So to make things easier, but not really, you have specific compartments that are allocated to women only because they're so crowded that there is no way. It's practically... it's unimaginable to have to, like fight a bunch of men and try to get into the compartment and then feel all of your parts of the body being touched so that certain compartments are allocated to women only. And I've spent a good amount of my adult life traveling in them, and there's a certain space about that. So it's a poem about that. It's called "Turf". It's Mumbai Circle 21st Century.

====================

Be sure to check out Meher's chapbook "Busted Models" on No, Dear Magazine. Buy it here. 

====================

>> Brian: Wow. Yeah, let's do one more. Have you fallen into the friendship of treachery?

>> Meher: Yeah, the kind of fights you see in the women's compartment of a local train is bestial. I have seen women pull each other's hair.

>> Brian: That's fucking crazy.

>> Meher: And because there's no space and it's awful. And I feel for all of them, even the one who, like put drops the first punch.

>> Brian: Just to be driven at that point.

>> Meher: She doesn't know any better. We don't know any better. This'll one's titled "I Buy Mangoes to Lunch", which was published in an issue of Lumina that you were also published in. So exciting.

==================

Check out "I Buy Mangoes to Lunch", Lumina Spring 2019

https://luminajournal.com/

==================

>> Brian: Amazing.

>> Meher: Thank you.

>> Brian: It's very interesting. The two poems you just chose, they're very, um... they feel almost under the microscope. Not moments like, especially that 2nd one wasn't a moment by a long shot. But like in terms of subject. A lot of your poems are very big, you know? Would you agree with that? The scope of them can be very big. I enjoyed hearing those. That was kind of like a different as a little bit of a different side of you.

>> Meher: Yeah. They're softer.

>> Brian: They are. So yeah, they were a little softer. Especially that 2nd one.

>> Meher: Yeah, I'm trying also, I think as a political person and as just even a writer, that not everything has to be a grandstanding... uh, you know, narrative. The second poem, especially, is so important to me because the mango is like the Indian mangoes... so some of the names, some of the kinds of mango in there that you get in India, which is, you know, not to take away from my Latinx, you know, family, people, friends. But if you've not had an Indian mango, you've not had a mango. Yeah, it is just the greatest tasting thing in the world. And within that spectrum, there are different tasting mangoes on one of my first ever awful periods happened after eating a mango. And then I quit eating mangoes for an entire summer.

>> Brian: You thought it was like cause and effect or something?

>> Meher: Yeah, because I associated that really painful period and that the way of my family also perceived that period, you know, the puberty coming of age as, like, a very symbolic thing to ripeness. And, you know, mangoes. If you had a lot of mangoes, they give you pimples. It can prepone your periods. You hear all of these things. And to me, just the idea of, you know, the lust for fruit versus you know but especially women's body learning to show desire before they understand what desire is. The swelling of breast, the swelling of the body.

>> Brian: That's what a lot of your poems are are the experience of women, you know? And there was a touch of personal experience, more so than in some of your other poems. Poems that are that can be a little more, not just political, not just for a cause, but for a population. A demographic, you know? So, yeah, that was really cool to hear. Thank you for sharing. That was awesome.

>> Meher: Are you're gonna read?

>> Brian: I'm not gonna read. No, I'm gonna close it down. Yeah, the people will call if they want. People will come calling.

>> Meher: They know where to buy my book.

>> Brian: They know.

>> Meher: Emerald City by Animal Riot Press.

>> Brian: Yeah. There you go. Animalriotpress.com or on Amazon. Okay, I'm gonna close it out. OK, that's it for today's episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and review on whichever platform you're listening you can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @animalriotpress  or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the 34th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot with me, your host Brian Birnbaum, and the wonderful brilliant Meher Manda. Our transcripts for our deaf and hard of hearing animals are provided by Jon Kay. And we're produced by Katie Rainey, without whom we'd be merely two of Shakespeare's 1000 monkeys banging on a typewriter.