A chat with Sanjeev Sethi about his poetry collection, Legato Without a Lisp (Classix, 2024)
How would you describe Legato Without a Lisp in one sentence?
It’s a series of poetic tableaus captured from the poet’s perspective.
How did you come up with the title (and what is a legato)?
The title hit me while tidying the book’s first draft, like how sometimes a poem’s
first line reaches one as one is lost in daily rituals. And immediately, I knew this
was it. Legato, as you know, is music without a break, so translating it to poetry
as one poem after another and Without a Lisp is symbolic of sans a setback. In
short, poem after poem without an impediment.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a poetry collection (perhaps no other work of fiction at all) where the writer has had such a rich, wide and diverse vocabulary – obviously you love words, but how did this come about? And out of curiosity, what is your favourite word?
Thank you, Sam. I am a voracious reader and still read everything like a student. If I don’t know a word, I halt and note it in a daybook. I have spent a lifetime doing it. That
is the beauty of words. They often drop by at the right time.
I don’t have a favorite word. Words need to fit in to fill in the gaps. An unusual word that
strikes me is my favorite till another one dethrones it from the pages of my manuscript.
Would you say the collection has a particular theme?
My poetry is my gaze. If something touches me, it will eventually become a part of my poetic archives. But a poetry book has a certain rhythm, a curve. One has to work to get
the correct meter. The aim is also to include poems that depart from one’s earlier collections.
There seems to be a focus in a few of the poems on different parts of the body, and I wondered if this is a trope that has a particular meaning in the collection?
Thanks for letting me know. I didn’t work consciously about it as a trope. If there are
some poems on the body, it must be a concern, something I was dealing with during
the phase of the poems.
Alliteration also seems to feature prominently in your work – what is it about this technique that enriches a poem, for you?
It comes naturally to me. Even when conversing, I notice alliteration if I am relaxed and in the flow of things. Now that I am conscious of it, I deliberately work on reducing it while I redact my poems.
How long did the book take to write?
Sam, I indite daily, so I have a vast body of work. Hedgehog published my seventh book in August 2022, and Legato Without a Lisp came out in September 2024. There are 102
poems and more than 70% are unpublished. So, all I had to do was choose from the corpus and see that the poems blended as a book.
How did you choose a publisher?
CLASSIX has published three of my eight books. I have a comfortable working relationship with them, which works well.
Do you have a favourite poem in the collection?
Sam, I will go with the cliché. They are all my poetic babies. I can’t choose one over another.
Have you any readings planned to promote the book?
The book has just come out. I am sure the publishers and I will mutually work this out.
Do you have any other poetic/writing projects in the pipeline?
As mentioned earlier, I am constantly inditing. There is a call from within when it is time for another book. When it strikes, I will start wrapping up my ninth collection.
Sanjeev Sethi has authored eight books of poetry. Legato Without a Lisp is his latest (CLASSIX, an imprint of Hawakal, New Delhi, September 2024). His poetry has been published in over thirty-five countries and has appeared in more than 500 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He edited Dreich Planet # 1 India, an anthology for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in December 2022. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. Sethi is in the top 10 of the erbacce-prize 2021. He is the recipient of the Ethos Literary Award 2022. In 2023, he won the First Prize in a Poetry Competition by the National Defence Academy, Pune. He was conferred the 2023 Setu Award for Excellence. He lives in Mumbai, India.
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