Q&A with Gurmeet Kaur
“1. A conversation begins in tongues: meaning movement: meaning departing from each moment by changing direction or position.”
~ ‘Instructions on English’ by Gurmeet Kaur
In your poem ‘Instructions on English,’ definitions can prescribe and limit lived experience, but they can also be slippery and changeable. Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind your piece?
I did a workshop with Meena Kandasamy on writing in a second language and started thinking about the idea of speaking English as a bilingual person. Although knowing more than one language opens access to other worlds, it can also leave us feeling bereft if one language begins to dominate. I wanted to explore this power play and the process of losing parts of ourselves from the violence of assimilation. It’s a poem about subtle adjustments that migrants make in host countries and the accumulation of microaggressions that I wanted to build in this poem.
Your poem takes the form of a list written in the second person. Why did you choose this structure and mode of address, and what did it allow you to achieve?
I was inspired by Claudia Rankine’s use of the second person and wanted to experiment with bringing the reader in. I wanted to reverse the effect of the singular ‘I’ by shifting readers directly into the lived experience of those who are ‘othered’. The list allowed me to construct speaking English as a set of customs or unspoken rules - the knowledge of which is necessary to survive English cultures. I also wanted to echo the changing relationship between the speaker and the environment; how the success of speaking English is codependent on following certain rules. I wanted to show conditions non-native speakers must conform to in order to be accepted.
Your poetry has appeared in Dynamis Journal, Sweet and Sour Zine and F*EMS Zine, while your short fiction has appeared in Rewrite Reads. What do you enjoy, or find challenging, about both of these forms?
Poetry allows me to sharpen my observations; I can distill ideas into a short space. Short story writing gives me the space to shape worlds across time and place that is more challenging to do in poetry. I would say though that both forms overlap and often, my observations or notes take me to a form rather than my preference for a genre.
Your poem ‘Waiting for the Daily Press Conference’ is an homage to Lucille Clifton. Who are some other great writers or poets that you admire?
I always return to Adrienne Rich and Meena Alexander for inspiration - they’ve become reference books for me when writing poetry. Nisha Ramayya, Bhanu Kapil, Mona Arshi and Sandeep Parmer have all been poets and thinkers I admire.
Gurmeet Kaur (she/her) is a writer and educator from London. Her work has appeared in Rewrite Reads, Dynamis Journal and her next poem will appear in Issue 3 of Sweet and Sour Zine. Gurmeet is currently working on her poetry pamphlet and living on the Kulin Nation (Melbourne).