Jeet Thayil: Had I not been a poet, I’d have been a mess

Jeet Thayil is not done with his ghosts but he has hung some of the pain out to dry. You dare place your hand and fingernail on it; it is only in a poem or two in I’ll Have It Here (HarperCollins), where you can hear a man’s howl. Thayil’s latest collection of poems, which comes after the death of his wife Shakti Bhatt in 2007, is also a collection of ageing and recovery of the self, layered with time's stamp on the world. It comes after novels such as Narcopolis, (2012), which won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and a 2008 poetry collection, These Errors Are Correct — after the latter, he had said he would not write poetry again.

That poetry has returned fiercely is evident in this collection with the Thayilesque signatures intact. The poet is present and disappeared in the same poem. There are poems that build up like the hit of a drug high. There are poems that whisk you away into some cul de sac and then get you back in a room to look at the self, the nation, and the world. There is, for instance, a poem in which Gandhi is imagined as a house lizard, a poem on ‘self-portrait as found in stockmarket headlines’, a poem on what it means to make, among other things, poetry in today’s India.... Excerpts from a conversation with Thayil on the kind of ride this collection has been.

"I was convinced there had been a break-up between poetry and me. Unwisely, I put this conviction into print, in the preface to a volume of collected poems…” Why did you send this ‘comeback’ notice after a personal tragedy?

This was published in a press release that accompanied this book. I thought it needed some explanation. I'd said, pretty categorically, that I would write no more books of poetry, yet here I was, with a new book. I think it's fair to say that you should not believe poets when they make predictions about their own work. Poetry has a way of returning or leaving without giving you much say in the matter.

Why is this collection called I'll Have it Here? What is ‘it’?

Everything.

Is there any inherent design, or an attempt to map continuity from one poem to the other or from one section to another in any way?

The book is divided into three sections. As Rahul Soni, the editor on this book, pointed out, each section moves from the macro to the micro, from the public to the private. I think that is an accurate assessment. Also, they were all written within a certain period of time, over four years or so. Towards the end of that process, once I realised it was a book, it began to take its own shape. This happens with novels as well. I think it happens with any kind of long-form writing. The book reveals its shape to you.

For the reader could you suggest some sort of pick – the five poems that could get the reader to start a conversation with the book. Is the order in which the poems appear in the book how you wanted it?

Yes, the order is very much how I wanted it. It isn't chronological: I placed the poems in a way that narrows the book and opens it up at the same time. Certainly, the last few poems are a narrowing-down and an opening-up. My advice to a first-time reader is to flip through the book until you find a poem that stops you, and keep going in that way, piecemeal, intuitively. For different readers, it will be different poems. There's a range of work in this book, short song-like poems and long digressive prose-influenced poems.

What do you feel you have done differently in this book than your previous books of poetry? How did you know this book was done?

The last poem I wrote appears at the end of Part One. It's called '1325' and it was a departure in voice and tone, such a departure that I knew the book was done. I think there's more humour in this book than in previous books of poems. I couldn't have written some of these as a younger man. Young poets tend to take themselves very seriously. You have to be older, and have nothing much to lose, to be able to write with lightness.

Some of the poems are exquisite even though one can see each line has come out of great pain. Yet it is also a book of ageing, and also recovery—and of great craft. Is it your most personal book yet?

I think so. There's at least one poem here that I'm unable to read aloud. It feels too raw, even after the editing and refining of the formal shape it took.

How does the first line of a poem usually come to you? How do you know when you have reached the last line of a poem?

The first line is usually an image or the sound of a phrase or a line that you know holds promise. Once you identify such a line the rest of the poem falls into place if you're lucky. Knowing when to end is more difficult. Sometimes, as with life, the end is not the end.

Should poems be considered fiction?

Poems are fiction. Not even the confessional poets of the last century wrote with complete transparency. There's always an element of disguise and craft that changes things. But this is exactly what makes a poem worth rereading. If it were entirely true to life, without craft, you wouldn't want to go back to it.

What are you working on next?

I'm working on a crime novel at the moment.

Had you not been a poet, you would have been…

A mess.