Lovely Raju
Who are your favorite poets?
I was greatly inspired by William Wordsworth. “The Solitary Reaper” and “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” led me to write the poetry of nature. Later I just tried to add some surreal and sometimes weird color pallets to my poems and still I am doing so, sketching my words in the pages. So yes. William Wordsworth. If you want me to name another poet, I would say Robert Frost.
What is the strangest poem you’ve ever read?
It is not a strange question I guess. I would love to name the poem “A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance” by Stéphane Mallarmé. He is a French Poet. A different poetic expression, words disorderly placed all over the white pages and some ambiguities, I think, make this poem strange.
Can you tell us about anything you’re currently working on?
My poems always tend to roam around the beauty of nature and I let them be wanderers. That is why I am currently working on a manuscript named The Sky into the Woods. I am trying to explore the finest, refined color pallet in the body of this work. Maybe it would be another world that never existed before. Or the unborn fancies would strive to secure a place in the vast space. Anyway best of luck to them!
What is your favorite literary journal (online or print) and why?
Honestly, I am not a good reader. But sometimes I read poems from Poetry Magazine because they are very selective in publishing poems. That is why we get the opportunity to read the finest work.
Why is it important to read works-in-translation?
I think to be an actual global citizen we have to read work-in-translation. It is an opportunity to enrich our power of thinking and garner the knowledge of a certain population or region. A chance to read the minds of others.
Do you have a favorite Action Books title?
I have recently read a few Action Books titles. I loved Phone Bells Keep Ringing for Me most. My professor, Joyelle McSweeney, suggested this book to me. I really loved it.
Raju Kalam, known as Lovely Raju to his fans and followers, has self-published a few books on Amazon and owns an Instagram poetry page with about 16k followers, where he publishes excerpts of his works. He loves to write nature poetry and the poetry that motivates people to get out of anxiety, sorrow and depression. There is a secure place in his heart where theoretical physics sleeps. He aspires to preach Peace words through his writing.
Agnes Ong
Who are your favorite poets?
John Ashbery. Gerard Manley Hopkins.
What is the strangest poem you’ve ever read?
All poems are strange.
Can you tell us about anything you’re currently working on?
My poems are conspiring to uplift the consciousness, insignificant for this cold, dark planet.
What is your favorite literary journal (online or print) and why?
What is literary?
Why is it important to read works-in-translation?
Every time text gets reinterpreted, it opens up differently for any bearer of affect. This, quite possibly, softens the potential of any text from being pressed to some thickness of meaning. This action is criminal.
Do you have a favorite Action Books title?
At the moment it is I Need Music by Anaïs Duplan.
Agnes Ong is a disabled poet trying to figure out unimportant things like how you and I feel deeply, harm literacy, or if the trees ever sing.
Zoe Darsee
Who are your favorite poets?
I love Leslie Scalapino and Rosmarie Waldrop — in particular, her translations of Elke Erb’s Mountains in Berlin. I’m working my way through the catalogs of Burning Deck and the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets.
What is the strangest poem you’ve ever read?
What I think of first, insularly, is a chapbook called Hennie, which TABLOID put out, and which was written by a friend of mine, Zan de Parry. It culminates with a page that repeats the word “bye” 180 times, with line breaks.
Can you tell us about anything you’re currently working on?
As a poet, I could be a sculptor if language is a material that I shape or chip away at. I’m working on a few pieces that deal with this idea. I’m also very interested in surveillance culture and the moments when the requirements of bureaucracy or professional performance supercede expressions of self. So that is showing up in my writing, too.
What is your favorite literary journal (online or print) and why?
Typo Mag has good, elemental design, I like how much space it gives to the text. I love Black Sun Lit’s digital vestiges because it’s weird and defies commercial desires. And I’m keeping an eye out for a new interdisciplinary journal, amatter.
Why is it important to read works-in-translation?
Other histories. Reading translation could be walking into an American classroom and challenging “truth”. It works against complacency.
Do you have a favorite Action Books title?
I’m loving Factory Girls by Takako Arai.
Zoe Darsee (b. 1991) has spent most of her life between Texas and Berlin. In 2014, she co-founded TABLOID Press with poet and artist Nat Marcus. The publishing initiative is a social one; it aims to facilitate collaboration, to uphold the poetics of the local. She is currently a candidate for the MFA in poetry at University of Notre Dame.