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Fall Into Place: Ava Ugolini interviews Manahil Bandukwala

How does it feel for you, having been published in The Malahat Review, to return as an Open Season Awards judge?

The Malahat Review has been incredibly supportive of my writing since I first considered myself a “serious poet,” and being invited to judge the Open Season Award for Poetry feels like an extension of that support.

The title of your latest collection, Heliotropia, is beautiful—the idea of turning towards love to nourish us, like how a heliotrope turns to the sun, is really moving. What is the process like for you when titling a collection or chapbook?

Sometimes coming up with a title feels harder than writing a book! The title has been the last part to fall into place for both Heliotropia, as well as my 2022 collection MONUMENT. This isn’t intentional, but rather a reflection of how the final pieces of a collection’s puzzle need to fall into place before I can figure out what the title needs to reflect.

I also prefer short titles for my own work. But how do you find a single word to encapsulate the many dimensions of a collection? For Heliotropia, I struggled to find a title that spoke to the cosmic and botanical, while also reflecting the theme of love in the collection. My editor, Sonnet L’Abbé, helped a lot with coming up with the final title.

Being a writer and a visual artist, is there a lot of overlap between the forms for you? Do you find yourself having to decide between poem and art when an idea comes to you? Are you working on something in either medium currently?

I try to allow myself to work on what I’m drawn to at any given moment—and there is usually something creative on the go. My writing projects have been a lot more formed and thought-out over the last few years, so writing has tended to occupy more of my time. When working on a book with an editor, I find myself needing to intentionally carve out time even when I might want to work on something else. But I also find that once I’ve re-entered a project, I can inhabit the creative space of the project without much difficulty.

I do have a short fiction manuscript in progress right now that feels like it’s taking a backburner to various art projects. I spent significant time with the manuscript in the first half of the year, so in some ways it also feels like I need to take time away from the writing in order to recognize its strengths and weaknesses when I do return.

In an interview with The Malahat Review in 2020, you mentioned self-censorship in your work, specifically in your poem “To ride an art horse.” I’m curious if you still struggle with this censorship now and/or how overcoming it has changed your writing.

Self-censorship continues to be something I grapple with in my writing. The difference between a poem like “To ride an art horse” and my current work is an awareness of the blocks that self-censorship can create. When I’m struggling with a poem, I know to ask myself, “am I self-censoring?” I’ve also been able to reflect on the difference between avoiding writing about something because I want to keep it private, versus censoring myself with something I genuinely want to write about. I don’t know if I’ve “overcome” self-censorship, but juggling these questions has certainly helped me come into my poetic voice.

As someone who often interviews and reviews the work of others, I'm curious which poetry collections—or general literature—you’ve found especially moving over the course of your academic and poetic career?

This is a big question! I love reviewing and interviewing because of the deeper engagement it offers with a work, and oftentimes what I choose to review also reflects where I am with my journey in writing or in life. Two books that have synced up perfectly with the above-mentioned journey are River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation (trace press, 2023), edited by Nuzhat Abbas and Relative to Wind: On Sailing, Craft, and Community (Assembly Press, 2024) by Phoebe Wang. River in an Ocean collects essays by women translators working in decolonial contexts. I read the book when I was editing Heliotropia, and the essays opened up my understanding of how speaking multiple languages influenced my writing in English. Relative to Wind follows Wang’s journey with sailing, and the similarities between sailing and writing communities. Wang’s book brought clarity and language to my similar journey of balancing martial arts and writing.

Finally, what are you looking for in a winning Open Season Awards poem?

I’ve asked this question to former Open Season Awards judges, and now I find myself struggling to answer! It’s difficult to define what I’m looking for in a winning poem, because a winning poem will very likely be something outside of what I can imagine. I want a poem to surprise me. I want a poem to do something fun with imagery, language, style, theme, subject, and so on.

The winning poem will be one that I can’t stop thinking about when I’m washing dishes or out on a walk!

 

 

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