Poet Jessica Mookherjee

Interview by Jayne Sharratt

It is an exciting and stimulating experience to talk to poet Jessica Mookherjee, whose most recent collections of poetry have been Tigress in 2019, and Playlists in 2021. Images and ideas flow from her almost faster than I can write them down. She lives in Rusthall where I recently met up with her.

Hi Jess, I was wondering if you could tell me how you became a poet. Have you always written poetry?

I started writing poetry as a young child, and I have always been attracted to it. I started writing seriously for publication after splitting up with my long-term partner about six years ago. I worked quite hard at learning the craft, it needs to be practiced. I’m always reading poetry too. I like the way poetry can explore the crevices and spaces of experience without needing to make a verdict or judging.

Have the themes of your poems come out of your own life story?

I’m interested in what makes a person, and the magic we can create from any kind of adversity. I come from a family that has a 300-year history of working for the British Empire. I didn’t go through the immigrant experience, but my parents did. My poetry is how I have hot-housed the things that made me, including the 1980s recession, young love, my parents experience as Bengali immigrants to this country, my experience as their child and growing up in Wales. My most recent collection Playlists queries how we take in popular culture – are we made up of pop songs, the people we fall in love? It’s about female desire, how it is positioned, evolves, how do you choose your boyfriend, how does love break you and change you? Tigress is wider ranging, in the things that make up a person, including myths we tell ourselves. The poem Song of the Soil fuses Wales to Bangladesh; a waterlogged country, and both places have very fluid identities. Growing up in Swansea I was taught Welsh history at school. Stories of identity are so powerful. I think of our life stories as being contained in a fragile soap bubble, and poetry releases them, lets them burst inside us.

There is a richness that exists inside people. It’s easy for people to ‘other’ people, but we are all foreign to some people. I’m interested in alienation and kindness and the space where both of those exist together – what makes people reach out?

You also explore themes around women’s experience?

I’m interested in how women can create themselves. Men are socialised to be active agents, but girls want to be the lead character too. How do women create art out of themselves? What are our myths telling us about what it is to be a woman? I’m interested in motherhood even though I’m not a mother; the poem Crone juxtaposes two women; one has become a grandmother and the other never had children. Their lives are different, but both have richness. Things are neither good or bad but we can create a life out of them.

Are there particular meanings you would like people to take from your poems?

We are often taught poetry as if we must unlock its meaning, when in fact we should experience it, let it wash over us and whatever it means to us is its meaning. Once I have written a poem it belongs to the reader. A good poem gives the reader space to own the poem, so you can put something of yourself into the understanding of it and take something away.

Like all good art, I hope my poetry shines a light and doesn’t separate us. Sometimes if we say we are virtuous we aren’t creating a space for people to come into. I hope it’s not making people wrong but that it’s including as many people as possible.

Do you have any advice for anyone who wants to become a poet?

I am at the start of my poetry journey myself, but I do have advice.

 Read loads of poetry, fall in love with poetry and poems. Read contemporary poetry, not just Byron and Shelley and the traditional poets. Language and rhythms change. Find your own voice, but also, find your community, we are lucky in Tunbridge Wells to have good poets living here and a great writers’ community. The Kent and Sussex Poetry Society is a supportive place to start.

Find your community and find your voice.

Has Rusthall been a good community for you?

I have lived here for eleven years, after moving from London. It is lovely; I find it tolerant, a kind and giving place, artistic. It attracts quite a lot of creative people and is a gentle environment. I lived in London for thirty years, and it is where I became an adult, so I value that environment too.

We need to help each other through this world. Who knows what our footprints will leave, we just do what we can. I hope that some kind of generosity and fierceness survives.

You can find out more about Jess at www.thejessicapoet.com