Interview: Tua Chaudhuri

Tua Chaudhuri's poem "3AM at Prince's Hot Chicken Shack" appeared in the February issue of The Collagist. She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA for Writers, and lives, teaches, and writes in Nashville, TN.

Can you talk about the inspiration for "3AM at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack?” What was on your mind while you were writing this poem?

When you walk into Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack and wander through the abundance of chicken paraphernalia to your yellow checkered table, you’ll find yourself faced with the following delicious decision: mild, medium, hot, or extra hot. Mild is said to be for those who have a palate for spice while extra hot might leave most wishing for the intervention of the nearest fire brigade.  I came to this poem after being taken to Prince’s on several late night excursions and dared to test my South Asian mettle on their spiciest fares. 

Growing up South Asian in the American South, I quickly learned that differences are fairly easy to spot whereas commonalities are tougher to come by. I’ve always had a fascination with finding those connections amidst glaring differences. Writing this poem I was thinking about how the South Asian culture is stereotypically associated with food, flavor, and exotic spices and ways to play with those stereotypes. I was thinking about my father who cuts small green darts of chili over even the spiciest dishes and how he would love this skillet-fried staple of Southern culture. I was thinking about how on first dates you search for that spark of connection.

The taste markers in this piece, from “the hottest deep-fried spices east of the Mississippi” to “her secret stash of curry powder: cumin and aniseed, cayenne and red pepper,” push this poem deep into that sense, as if as the reader I am there at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack or at the speaker’s mother’s kitchen. Often, sight is leaned on in writing, as it seems to be the dominant sense, but a poem in such a situation obviously works well with the sense of taste. How does the taste sense work for you, both in this poem and your other writing?

Many of my poems originate from memories and some of my sharpest memories are grounded in food, in eating, in tastes. Visual perceptions, though they might be dominant, can engender various levels of intimacy. By deploying different points of view, distances, and levels of focus, writers can manipulate their reader’s sense of sight and the level of intimacy generated by what they see. I think there is an inherent tangible intimacy associated with the sense of taste. The act of tasting involves consumption; involves internalizing something in a very physical way. I find the tension created by this assumed intimacy a useful springboard to introduce other types of intimacy in my poems.

The form of this poem strikes me as useful, the longer lines stretching with the sensual descriptions and memories. As it stretches near prose poem, both in form and in voice, where did the decision to line break come from and how did it develop?

I don’t find it useful to impose a particular strategy of line to my poems. I usually try various lengths and rhythms and find something that feels organic to the structure and voice of the poem through the writing and revision processes. In its earliest versions this poem sported much shorter lines and multiple stanzas. I think my initial thoughts in that regard was to instill some breathing room into the poem, offer the images space to expand. But I found that using shorter lines and stanzas flattened the poem out and made the sensory experiences in it seem less potent. When I put space in the poem, I filled that space with explanation and tried to make the connections and tensions apparent. The poem, in that state, sounded too mechanical, analyzed and linear in its thought. In revision I deleted much of the intervening narrative and lengthened the line so that the poem feels more like an onrush of sensory perception. I wanted to make the poem open out rather than cave in on itself.

In another poem of yours, “Upon Finding Ganesh in the Medicine Cabinet, he asks for Wisdom in Small Doses” at Desilit, there is a tension, but also a connection, between the speaker and the “he” in the poem because of the cultural differences, which reminds me of “3AM at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack.” Here, the boy both connects and disconnects with the speaker, it seems, through his attempt “to make my lips burn,” calling back those memories of the curry powdered dishes of the speaker’s youth. When writing, is this a common theme, and what other themes arise for you?

I like to walk borderlines in my writing, play with similarities and differences and illustrate that the lines are not so well defined or perhaps lay them out in surprising ways. There is a preoccupation with the tension between connections and disconnections in the figures in this poem and in my other writing but they are not all based in the arenas of heritage and culture. I’m interested in the emotions and dynamics of relationships, between family members, between lovers, between strangers, between cultures, between words. I’m interested in undertaking the challenge of transforming what is considered foreign or exotic into something that looks and feels more like home and placing the familiar in a context that makes it seem less commonplace. At the moment I’m preoccupied with how this can be accomplished through language, syntax, and line.

What other writing projects are you currently working on?

I’m revising and folding several new poems into my manuscript. I’ve learned so much in the process of taking a set of poems that I felt made a coherent book and tearing it apart to include new work. I’m continuously surprised by the myriad ways the placement of one poem next to another informs the form and content of both.

What great books have you read recently? Are there any upcoming releases you're excited about?

My writing feels like it’s going through a flux; it’s in that awkward moment of suspension as some hybrid of what it was and what it’s going to be. I’ve gone back recently to some of my pillars: Larry Levis’ Winter Stars, Elizabeth Bishop’s Complete Works, Agha Shahid Ali’s Rooms are Never Finished, and Marie Howe’s What the Living Do.  These are some of the poets that I come to again and again always in search of guidance on a variety of craft elements and always finding inspiration and practice to carry back to and struggle with in my own work.

I’m looking forward to reading C. Dale Young’s new book Torn. He has such an adept way of combining precision with intensity of feeling in his work, reading it always reminds me to be a more intentional and more fearless in my writing.

I also can’t wait to get my hands on Karen Llagas’ Archipeligo Dust, Dilruba Ahmed’s forthcoming Dhaka Dust and any new work by Lucy Tobin.  I had the privilege of working and learning with these poets at the Warren Wilson MFA for Writers and am excited to see how their work has grown and evolved.