The world is only upside down, when we think–we are atop the sky
A Conversation with Kalpna Singh-Chitnis about Trespassing My Ancestral Lands
Kalpna Singh-Chitnis is an Indian-American poet, filmmaker, and author of six poetry collections, including “Love Letters to Ukraine from Uyava” (River Paw Press 2023), a finalist at the 2023 “International Book Awards”; “Trespassing My Ancestral Lands” (Finishing Line Press 2024); and “Bare Soul,” the recipient of the 2017 Naji Naaman Literary Prize. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. “Sunflowers: Ukrainian Poetry on War, Resistance, Hope, and Peace,” an anthology curated and edited by her, was shortlisted for the 2023 “National Indie Excellence Award.” Kalpna’s poems and her poetry film “River of Songs,” archived in the Lunar Codex, landed on the moon with NASA-SpaceX-IntuitiveMachine missions in 2024. Website: www.kalpnasinghchitnis.com.
Trespassing My Ancestral Lands by Kalpna Singh-Chitnis is a song of blessing, for “the daughter of idol worshipers / out to defy borders and demarcations.” Singh-Chitnis’s speaker stands up to tell the story of what she has learned outside of school, as she migrates to lands where her very own biography is “altered” by the colonizer. In it, she turns to examine her own complicity, in witnessing the meaning behind “dirt poor,” and the humanitarian crises wreaked by war and climate change. The book trailer link can be found: https://youtu.be/vSX9AlxJmpM.
Tiffany Troy: How does “History” set up the rest of the collection that is to follow? To me, it immediately brings to the forefront the relationship between the speaker and an other, a “he” and in many senses it’s about telling one’s personal, familial, national and transnational history anew.
Kalpna Singh-Chitnis: You have rightly observed. There is a reason why the poem “History” is placed first in the collection. Trespassing My Ancestral Lands is a journey of recollection and storytelling through poetry, with each poem contributing to an overarching narrative.
The poem “History” was inspired by a true incident. I was invited to write political opinions for a British journal and sent a short bio, which was subsequently altered, omitting key parts of my accomplishments and professional identity. When I requested my original bio be published, the editor declined and eventually took down the piece when I insisted. I felt it was more respectful to be taken down than to accept an altered identity, so I thanked the editor for the same.
Standing up for myself brought great satisfaction. Although born in a free country, in those moments, I was transported back to the days when India was under British occupation and imagined what it must have been like for generations of Indians to be constantly undermined by their rulers. Indian people, belonging to a prosperous and enlightened civilization, were made to believe they were not good enough. Their cultural heritage and native identity were looked down upon. Generations of educated Indians were mostly hired as clerks, while those who weren’t educated were given inferior jobs and often taken as indentured laborers to far-off British colonies. Our history was written by those who oppressed us, enforced upon us through power and their education system. I realized that historical memory and trauma are passed on to us by our ancestors through genetic memories, and it was my turn to assert that we will no longer allow others to write our history and define who we are. Here I also want to mention my poems “The Pending Introduction of KSC” and “Inheritance Isn’t the Matter of Choice.”
TT: Yes, “The Pending Introduction of KSC” and “Inheritance Isn’t the Matter of Choice” directly speak to the speaker’s experience of being cast as the other and poetry in this way serves as a voice of resistance against systematic oppressions. What was the process in writing and putting together this collection?
KSC:
My journey of writing the poems of “Trespassing My Ancestral Lands,” began with my participation in the “Silk Routes: Heritage, Trade, Practice,” a three-year project (2014-2016) supported by the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, at the University of Iowa. This project, under the International Writing Program (IWP), led by Christopher Merrill, aimed to build region-wide networks of writers across South and Central Asia, encouraging us to work within our own traditions while being united by a shared commitment to the art and craft of writing. This program provided me with a solid foundation to begin the groundwork for my poetry collection. The very first poem I wrote for this project was “Trespassing My Ancestral Lands,” the title poem of the book, which took me on a quest to find my own cultural and ancestral roots. This poetic journey through the destinations of the Silk Road was a fascinating exploration of self-discovery and acceptance of my evolved identity as an American in my new homeland and as a world citizen. The process of writing evolved naturally over the years between 2014 and 2024. However, I arranged the poems in the manuscript so that readers could appreciate them not only as individual pieces but also as a comprehensive story I wanted to tell through poetry.
Speaking of the writing process, I remember recalling stories from the chapters of our history, imagining being present in those times to personally witness the marvels and turmoil of those eras. It wasn’t like recalling the past from a figment of imagination but feeling it in my bones, veins and gut, as our ancestral memories are passed on to us through our genetic memories. Poems like “The Indus” (where Indian civilization was born), “The Abode of Gods” (a poem on the Himalayas and its gifts to our cultural and spiritual traditions), “The Temples of Knowledge” (about the ancient University of Nalanda, the first university on earth, located in my home state of Bihar, India, which was destroyed multiple times by invasions), and “The Land of My Birth: The Light of Asia” (written on the history and importance of my birthplace) were born out of deep contemplative meditation. Whereas the poems in the section “Blood and Water” were inspired by contemporary topics such as wars, migration, women’s issues, and human rights issues across the world. The last chapter of the book, “The Dance of the Century,” which includes Pandemic poems, are personal accounts of metaphorically living in The Waste Land of our own time, revisiting the Fire Sermon of the Buddha from a native perspective on an agonizing day; and while reading Whitman, writing my deepest fears and woes in “O Captain!” poem while sitting in America, far away from my family in India.
TT: Oftentimes it is easy to overlook the process in the cohering and synthesis of a collection, so your walking us through the writing process as a collaborative and communal one is appreciated.
Turning to the poetic forms utilized in the collection, I note that the shorter poems have this Kafka-esque aphoristic quality while longer poems utilize repetition incantorily, as in the ghazal “On My Way to School.” Then the last section, also the shortest, features triplets.
Could you speak to whether, for you, the poems find their form or vice versa? And how did you land on organizing the sections in part based on poetic forms utilized?
KSC: While I wrote the very first poem of “Trespassing My Ancestral Lands” (which is also the title poem of the book) when I joined the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, the other poems in the book were written over a period of ten years. At the Silk Routes project, we shared a vision, but all participants wrote in their personal spaces, inspired by their own cultural and literary traditions. This brought a rich diversity to the program’s outcome, despite it being a communal experience.
Speaking of poetic form, I do not consciously choose the forms of my poetry. I write spontaneously, and the poems naturally find their forms. Now that you have identified a Kafka-esque aphoristic quality, as well as influence of Ghazal and other forms in my poetry, it is intriguing for me to view my work through your perspective as a reader. For me, the poems in “Trespassing My Ancestral Lands” served as a catharsis. The writing process was like the beginning of a healing journey in many ways. However, I do occasionally work on structuring the poems after they have been written to ensure a better reading experience.
TT: And what does that process look like? What do you consider in thinking about the poem’s structure, after the fact?
KSC: As mentioned earlier, I go back to structure my poems to ensure a better reading experience, especially when a poem builds a narrative. You have also rightly observed in your preceding question that some of my poems are structured in two, three, or four-line stanzas; though they are not necessarily couplets, tercets, or quatrains. This is because I like my poems to flow like a river through uncharted territories, free from the constraints of meter and conventional rhyming schemes. Yet, it’s important to me that my verses have a cadence and musicality, even when they are free-flowing. I do it by choosing the words meticulously and placing them in the order I feel will ensure that quality. Several of these structured poems conclude with a single line. This was not an intentional choice initially; however, I realized that these solo lines often encapsulate the essence of the entire poem or carry the primary emotional thread to the end. The poems ending with a single line sometimes also serve as a segue for me to write subsequent poems.
On the other hand, I have consciously avoided structuring and formatting my poems solely for visually stylistic purposes. While such formatting may draw attention, I find it distracts the reader from the substance of the work.
TT: I was interested in the idea of poems flowing like a river because in some ways, I feel the fragments of memory ebb and flow in the same way. You bring your memory to the foreground to readers. On social media, you wrote of studying the classics as a student in India and handwriting your observations in Hindi. You are also a translator. Can you tell us how the act of handwriting in script from either a distant past or currently shaped your sensibilities as a poet? How do you carry these sensibilities forward in researching and synthesizing the myths for your readership?
KSC: It is a scientific fact that the water of a river carries the memories of the places it flows through. It encounters obstacles along its path but continues to flow without losing its memories. Each river carries unique memories, which is why their water also tastes different. Similarly, we carry memories stored in our consciousness and body cells throughout our life’s journey, often expressing them in what we write and create. We all hold unique memories of our civilization, ancestors, and environments where we were born, lived, or migrated. These memories are often subtle, but they are always present. Several poems in “Trespassing My Ancestral Lands” respond to them.
The social media post you referred to was a flashback of my keen interest in studying Indian philosophy and ancient Indian literature since my teenage years. I started school in the 70s when there were no computers, so I wrote everything on paper with a pen or pencil. I attempted to translate “The Mahabharata,” the longest epic ever written in any language. I began translating it in 1988 but stopped after the fourth chapter because I felt my knowledge of Sanskrit wasn’t sufficient to understand the texts in their original form. I had to rely on my teachers to explain the meaning of the texts, which wasn’t always possible to complete such a challenging task.
Seeing my old handwriting in notebooks brought from India to the USA in 1994 connects me to myself in a very special way. It is inspiring to look at it, as it links me to my past when I began writing as a young poet. I still write by hand whenever possible. The difference between writing by hand and typing is the level of satisfaction you get in making those connections. It’s like eating with your hands, which is preferred in Indian culture, instead of using a spoon. You can also compare the satisfaction of holding and reading a book in your hand to reading it on computers and tablets.
However, what you call myth is not entirely a myth, as in ancient times, history was often documented in poetry and stories, and historical figures were idealized to the extent they seemed mythical. Many references in ancient Indian scriptures and literature are metaphorical and must be understood in their proper contexts. When I write anything in a historical context, I feel a responsibility to be extra vigilant in studying those metaphorical references and examining the historical facts, and this is what I would ideally expect from my readers as well.
TT: In closing, do you have any closing thoughts you would like to share with your readers?
KSC: I have been writing since I was fourteen. I initially wrote in Hindi, my mother tongue, and published three collections of poems in India before coming to the United States, where I reinvented myself as a poet writing in English. I studied creative writing at the College of DuPage in Illinois, Film Directing at the New York Film Academy, and Buddhism Through Scriptures at Harvard University through its online program. I also participated in writing workshops, published magazines, worked as an editor, and over the years, English became my primary language. I have been writing in English for nearly thirty years now.
Despite this, I feel that diaspora poets and writers are often marginalized, and their works are devalued. Diversity in many places is used as icing on the cake, while gatekeeping relentlessly excludes writers with unique sensibilities unless they win a major award and become an overnight sensation, or unless they are victimized, or come from countries ravaged by war and humanitarian crises. Writers who write from places of chaos and unrest and call for activism gain attention, as they allow us to use our soft power to exert influence over important world territories. Politics and bias are subtly, yet painfully present in the field of literature. However, it’s crucial to recognize that those who write from places of peace, stability, solidity, and optimism, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, nationality, or racial background, offer perspectives that can be refreshing and help us understand ourselves and the world better, leading to healing and transformation as individuals and societies, which is much needed at all times.
The poems in “Trespassing My Ancestral Lands’ faced numerous rejections, and the book itself was declined by many publishers, delaying its publication. It was a loss of my time. I’m glad that the collection is finally out, and I must thank Finishing Line Press for trusting my work. I hope this book, which is important to me for several reasons, finds its readers, overcoming any discriminatory ideas that resist the greater good, dissect, and label us, secures a place for itself in world literature. I look forward to hearing from my readers, their thoughts on the book and this important conversation you have facilitated. Thank you!
Tiffany Troy is the author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]) and co-translator of Santiago Acosta’s The Coming Desert/ El próximo desierto (forthcoming, Alliteration Publishing House), in collaboration with Acosta and the 4W International Women Collective Translation Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is Managing Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, Associate Editor of Tupelo Press, and Book Review Co-Editor at The Los Angeles Review.