Interviews
Amit Majmudar, Robert Antoni, and Bob Watts sit down with the editors of Pitch: A Journal of Arts and Literature to talk about their experience as a writer or poet and their latest works.
Amit Majmudar
(Febuary 23, 2017)
Amit is a novelist, poet, essayist, and diagnostic nuclear radiologist (M.D.). He has written three books of poetry, two fiction books, essays, nonfiction works, and has done some translation work. He was the first poet Laureate in Ohio. His works have been published in various publications, including The New Yorker, The New England Review, Poetry Magazine, and The National Poetry Review.
Majmudar spoke about his various works, both published and unpublished, as well as how he goes about balancing the life of a writer and a nuclear radiologist. Majmudar explores various forms of expression through his novel writing and poetry, in which he talks about which form would be best depending what you want to tell. He also talks about the role of poetry in a political context such as the one we have now.
He has many works in the works, such as a new book of poetry, Dual, a two part book, another novel, a translation of a Sanskrit poem, and recently published Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now anthology edited and introduced by himself. He leaves fantastic advice for anyone, but particularly those who are perhaps not writers by trade but would like to write anyways.
“You can do both [your major and write]. Just streamline your life, basically. Don’t do stuff that wastes time because there is enough time to do a lot of stuff. You just got to make sure you don’t waste time.”
Robert Antoni
(October 13, 2017)
Robert Antoni is the author of five books: Divina Trace, Blessed is the Fruit, My Grandmother’s Erotic Folktales, Carnival, and As Flies to Whatless Boys. Antoni’s books have been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, Commonwealth Writers Prize, and an NEA grant. His short fiction was selected as an Editor’s Choice, included in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, and chosen for the Aga Kahn Prize by The Paris Review.
Antoni shares his thoughts on the convergence of novel writing and the internet, and the worry that happens after publishing a novel. His source of inspiration stems from his own personal experience, with his newest novel Cut Guavas a novel about his uncle who left Trinidad and went to Hollywood, starring in a big Hollywood hit. Antoni found his voice through listening to his grandmother’s stories and the language she used while telling them, particularly her vernacular. He stresses practicing over researching and the magic of inspiration. He hopes to see a revival in the way writers approach novels, wanting to see more exploration in the convergence of novels and the digital age.
“It has to happen; it astounds me how conservative writers are. The literary form is in many ways kind of so dated, so bound to words on the page. Of course, that’s of supreme important to us, I always bring the reader to the words on the page, to rediscovering the words on the page, but, you know, one thing that I have always tried to do as an author is try to break through the page. To take the reader into another territory and I have all sorts of ways to do that. But one of the obvious ways is through the internet. There is this huge world that has infinite possibilities for new ways of storytelling and I’m interested in exploring some of those.”
Bob Watts
(April 21, 2016)
Bob Watts is an Associate Professor in English and Creative Writing at Lehigh University. His first poetry collection, Past Providence (David Robert Books, February 2005), won the 2004 Stanzas Prize from David Robert Books, and his poems have been published in Poetry, The Paris Review, Great River Review and reDivider, among other journals.
Watts talks about how he first became involved in poetry and how his time spent at the family sawmill helped to develop his ability to write away from a specific space. If there is any advice to part with undergraduates looking to publish, it's to read as much as possible, citing his own personal experience with his favorite writers the way it has helped to develop his voice. When talking about the struggles and successes of writing poetry, Watts has this to say:
"I tell my creative writing students that every poem ever written was a failure. What the poet is trying to do is raise the dead. I like to think that's what poetry does, it tries to bring back the dead, to stop time, to say clearly and fully and beautifully what it means to be alive in this world that is just whipping past us and the chaos and motions and events and time always hurling past and to find a forum, a vessel of language that can hold that for a moment, if not stop time, at least seem to for a moment and present something with some clarity to make some meaning out of what is so often a meaningless experience."
