I’m writing a new book of poems about OCD, and it has made me realize that the discourse of OCD tallies with that of inspiration, traditionally conceived. A thought-feeling comes into, or out of, the mind-body with a velocity and salience that feels like it cannot be gainsaid. In this respect I am still learning that not every poem needs to be written, just as not every fear needs to be followed up. When I have time to write there are always words spilling out but the shapes they make aren’t always compelling—and that’s the (building) block. I’m trying to write poetry, and different kinds of prose, in a family-oriented way too, so if my son runs in to see me, I break off and go play, and the work is changed by that. If you’re not machinic then standstills and goings-astray are to be lived with and through. So what I’m after is a sort of concentration that lives in the world—but isn’t merely reactive, contentious, internetified, or otherwise unreflectively news-inflamed—and where the words discover as they go a fluency that isn’t facile or prefabricated or on loan; with movements toward and also away from others (family, friends, but also the people I aspire to feel as creaturely, kindly, toward as I do my loved ones).
—Vidyan Ravinthiran, author of Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir
(Norton, 2025)
Photo credit: Jenny Holden