Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay

I am from Kolkata, India and that is the home I refer to.

Poetry, in the writing of it, has no master. There is no power structure besides the one I create. Sure, all work is informed by other work, but as Audre Lorde says, “poetry is not a luxury.” It does not have to be a hierarchical elite system if thought; it has the freedom to exist on a page. Thus voice, especially for poems no one will ever read, is an imperative.

Liberation, in its true sense, is at the same time a struggle for independence and a practice in outrage. I believe poetry does that for me. It is a place I am allowed to be angry, or rather indignant. But also a place informed by craft, not Twitter fingers. Robin D.G. Kelley, in one of my favorite wisdoms, calls this “poetry, and therefore revolt.”

Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay was the first Nashville Youth Poet Laureate and the 2016 Poet Ambassador for the Southeast. She has been published in Nashville Arts Magazine, The Tennessean, Chapter 16, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Shanghai Literary Review, Atlas and Alice, The Felt, Indian Lit, and Poetry Society of America. Her first book "this is our war" was released through Penmanship Press in 2016. Her second book "everything is always leaving" was released through M.C. Sarkar & Sons in Kolkata, India in 2019. And also, very recently her poetry album ‘i don’t know anyone here’ has been published and released in Nashville, TN.