Interview by Uche Umezurike
Photo Credit: City of Edmonton
Nisha Patel’s debut poetry collection, Coconut (NeWest Press, 2021), resounds as a metaphoric laugh in the face of strictures and resists the lure of propriety. Through poetry as expansive as it is taut, Patel speaks to us in tones vibrant yet tender, forthright yet intimate, about the complexities of living, love, laughter, longing, and loss. There is no doubt that Patel is well attuned to the rhythms of the heart: its joy, its unease—its vitality.
Uche Umezurike: Congrats on your full-length poetry collection, Nisha. Coconut is riveting. I really liked “nine things to say to elizabeth gilbert.” It is witty, ironic, but very critical of global capitalism, racism, and the West’s fetishization of the East (India). What was the fun part for you about writing this book?
Nisha Patel: Thanks, Uche. I enjoyed the release that I get from airing my anger and frustration with the world to an audience that I know will be sympathetic, curious, and affected. I wrote this book for people like me (whatever you want that to mean) and I intend for my audiences to be people who care about the things I care about. If you’re a new reader, I hope that you get to know me for my values and strengths, as well as some of my struggles and challenges. There’s a lot of anger in this book—but there is also solidarity and love in that anger.
UU: Coconut celebrates self-love, body positivity, and female sexuality, while tackling colonial violence—“british bullets,” “clanking of chained wrists,” “plantation-bent,” and “those who were tricked into treaty.” Was there anything you struggled with while working on the collection?
NP: My biggest challenge has always been to fill the metaphorical room with the reaches of my poetry. Mentally, I feel sometimes like I am pushing an elastic band of how big and momentous I can make a poem that I need to write, one that I am compelled by my own force to write about. Some days I meet that challenge while other days I fail and have to try again. I spent a lot of this book asking myself: did this poem do what I needed it to do? Was it true to who I am? Was it big, loud, important, to me?
UU: Your book also touches on cultural alienation, especially common among second-generation Canadians. “Coconut” refers to a stereotype about Asians, even Blacks, so why did you choose that title?
NP: “Coconut” is a racial slur that—as you mentioned—has been used in many ways to denote someone who is “white on the inside.” Growing up, I felt both harmed by the erasure of my Indian identity by white folks as I conformed to whiteness, and then faced backlash from Indian folks for doing so. I wanted to reclaim this word and show that if I am to be a “coconut,” then this book is what a coconut looks like, in all its complexities. There’s no one way to be Indian, or Asian, or brown—those are just the ways that I am, and the things that make me who I want to be.
UU: There are references to goodness and propriety—“a good woman,” “a good girl,” “one of the good brown bodies,” “good enough,” “a good daughter,” in poems such as “fat girl tweets about pussy,” “I am so eloquent,” and “fat girls rise.” Can you speak briefly about this?
NP: Who gets to define what is “good”? I think in this book, I play mostly with the intentions and the gaze of who employs and prescribes goodness to others, and how I feel my existence and experiences have subverted these heavy implications. Goodness, as defined by whiteness, prizes thinness, polite behaviour, and model minorities, but I have tried to defy those prescriptions at every turn because it is not who I am. I am good in my own way.
UU: There are also references to appellation—“saying my own name,” “repeat my name,” “cement my name,” “see your own name,” “learned your name,” “their names on my skin.” How much does a poet’s sense of identity influence their writing? What interests you about names/naming?
NP: Names, after life itself, are one of the first gifts given to us. My name has a history. It is foretold and chosen, and influenced by the stars and spirituality. It is also common, repeated thousands of times over in Gujarati culture, and yet has always made me foreign in this Canadian space. I’ve grown up with people telling me how they’ve never heard it before. Nisha. How can a poet with a name as common as mine stand out? It feels disingenuous, to be honest. It shows me that if I’m the only Patel in spoken word poetry then there isn’t enough room being made for Indian poets, or diasporic poets, in CanLit.
My identity is everything that motivates me, that fuels and pushes my writing, because everything I take on or become is a part of that identity. I am queer in the context of my South Asian heritage. My work is my own voice whether I write a love poem or share my suicidal ideation or experiences of racism. Names are just one way of entering my world—reading my work is another.
UU: The poet that came to mind while I was reading your book was Lucille Clifton, especially her “wishes for sons.” Which poets do you count as your influence?
NP: What a huge compliment to even be in the same breath as a poem like “wishes for sons.”
My influences are almost all spoken word, many of them Black or racialized like the origins of spoken word poetry itself: Claudia Rankine, Ian Keteku, Titilope Sonuga, Hanif Abdurraqib, Ariana Brown, Timiro Mohamed, and Warsan Shire; as well as Chen Chen, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Mercedes Eng, and Jordan Abel. My partner, Matthew James Weigel, is a poet and my love, and inspires me constantly through his dedication to our safety and happiness, and his own distinct and unshakeable style of writing that is so different from my own.
UU: The poem “questions for google assistant at 4am” depicts different layers of depredation, which I found very affecting: “and what is the ocean if not a woman / the way men take and take of her body / entanglement nets imprinting on her flesh / the space between her legs yet another man’s bycatch / the way they pull her up by her hair / leave her on the wharf for the bleeding.” What is the inspiration behind this poem?
NP: “Questions for google assistant” came from a literal conversation I had with Google as I worked up the courage to write one of my earliest pieces for the Climate Justice movement here in Edmonton. I wondered what life was truly defined as—literally, not in the metaphorical and fantastical eyes of art––and I was given a literal answer. From there, a whole poem unfolded of questions I had for Google about the end of the climate-safe world that is free from collapse and degradation. It was my way of making my way through the grief of climate collapse, but also of seeing hope through the belief that humanity can make changes still.
UU: Lastly, I’m curious to hear a bit about Moon Jelly House. Are there writers whose work you are already considering publishing soon?
NP: Moon Jelly House is a chapbook publishing press that specializes in small runs of poetry chapbooks from emerging or under-published authors. Our authors are all Black, Indigenous, or people of colour; many are queer; and our team (made up of myself, my partner Matthew, and our friend Katherine Abbass) are all folks who exist in these marginalizations as well. We just published three fantastic poets—Jennifer Alicia Murrin, Omar Ramadan, and Leslie Joy Ahenda. And we are so excited to share that we will be publishing five more poets this year: Emily Riddle, Sulva Khurshid, Angela Sue, Namitha Rathinappillai, and Gabe Calderon. We will be opening to submissions again later in the year.
Nisha Patel is an award-winning Indo-Canadian poet, artist, and public speaker in Edmonton, Alberta. She is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Edmonton and Regional Writer in Residence at Strathcona County and St. Albert. She is the author of the chapbooks I See You and Limited Success. She is also the 2019 Canadian Individual Slam Champion, the 2019 Edmonton Slam Champion, and the Executive Director of the Edmonton Poetry Festival.
Uche Peter Umezurike is a PhD Candidate and Vanier Scholar in the English and Film Studies department of the University of Alberta, Canada. An alumnus of the International Writing Program (USA), his critical writing has appeared or forthcoming in Canadian Journal of African Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, African Literature Today, Postcolonial Text, Journal of African Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies, Journal of African Literature Association, and Tydskrif vir Letterkunde. His research focuses on postcolonial and Black diaspora literatures, gender and sexuality studies, cultural and critical studies. Umezurike is a co-editor of Wreaths for Wayfarers, an anthology of poems.