Nadia Choudhury

The more clarity I have about the writing to be done, the deeper I find myself in piles of books, film, music, art, recipes, physics formulas, globes from various eras, interlibrary loan emails, browser tabs, magazine adverts from British newspapers circa 1870s, lighters, and cashmere socks. Research and nesting have blurred together; I am the…

I haven’t much to share today. But I have decided to make myself write a poem in 30-minute sessions. It may be a way to get my spicy brain to stop overthinking and just write. Music (and, yes, I know, folks will raise in eyebrow at music during Ramadan, I still do it): “Glove Compartment,”…

Ramadan, Lent, Chinese New Year all began within a 48-hour window this year. Coincidentally, I also began a writing residency yesterday (day two of Ramadan). It feels a deeply significant time. In the midst of all this, I am also giving the day job its due attention. It feels odd, experiencing the weight of all…

For some time, I’ve aspired to keep a Ramadan journal. To capture my meditations during the month. Having read Kazim Ali’s Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Place, having returned to it for many year during this time, this might be place and time for me to start jotting down my musings. I searched…

can be the root to today’s anxiety, the anchor, so to speak. When it’s too far a reach to find anxiety in the breakfast to-be, the drive to work yet to be driven, or the water cooler chatter that is meant to happen five hours from now with the colleagues five hours too distant, a…

the way in which you open the front door, the welcome you give a stranger, your smile, the fill of your dining table–it is your lips upturned when it rains, and you don’t have an umbrella–poetry expands, explores, finds thought in the gap between the stove and the counter, the rumble two-seconds-too-long when you turn…

are convenient for those of us juggling a full to-do list nine days out of the week. They also make literature more accessible…no navigating fine print, no cost of buying pages and covers, no space to hold the books, no need to carry the weight in your bag, no need to devote your attention solely…

December 20th, I had the privilege of joining a few other South Asian poets in a poetry mehfil hosted by Desi Digest Magazine. It was one of the most unique and comforting experiences of late. In this room, not just the poets, but all the folks vibrated with the intention of unity and solidarity. With…

Shall we make a commitment to leave little thoughts and post-it notes in this space? Yes.