10 Questions for Varun Ravindran

- By Marissa Perez

Lovely as milk, smooth as a knell,
bodiless and meade of breaths,
a blue bed of pollen,

lace, mesh, the sea ran
like a prayered tongue, the waves
—from “The City Opposite Nineveh,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was younger we moved around India a lot, and so I went to a handful of different schools. An English vocabulary test was usually a part of the application to these schools, where you had to write an essay using all the words from a provided word bank. Those essays were my first pieces.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I’d wager my most formative influence is Virginia Woolf. More recently, Bach, G.C. Waldrep, Daoism, and Buddhism.

What other professions have you worked in?
I was a produce person for a little while. Then, a technical writer. Now I’m in nonprofit administration.

What did you want to be when you were young?
A scientist or an explorer.

What inspired you to write this piece?
This is a tough question! It usually takes me a very long time to write something, and so by the time I’ve moved away from a piece, the story of its inspiration is pretty meaningless to me, and I don’t remember or care enough to remember. But I spent about 3-ish years with this poem and went through 5-ish different versions. It started off as a pantoum, and then became a sonnet-pantoum. At that point I decided I no longer wanted to work in form and put the poem away. Then I came back to it again and de-pantoumed it. Then I put it away again. Sometime between that time and the next time I came back to it, I discovered Derek Walcott’s work. When I returned to it after that discovery, it became this current version which incorporates stuff from all the previous versions as well as Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History.”

Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
No. I love music the most, and when there’s music, all my attention must go to it.

Who typically gets the first read of your work?
My partner, and my writing workshop.

If you could work in another art form what would it be?
Music for sure!!!!!! I’d love to learn to play as many instruments as I can, starting with the most beautiful instrument of all time, my beloved, beloved, viola. And then the cello, and then the oboe, the mandolin, the alto trombone, and a variety of zithers, and finally the theremin.

I’d also learn about folk music (Czech, Balkan, Maghreb, Welsh, Central Asian, and Iranian folk, especially), and about Carnatic and Hindustani music and music theory. I’d learn as much as I can about my favorite composers (Bach, Schubert, Takemitsu, Debussy, Clara Schumann. . .) and study or study with my favorite contemporary musicians: Carly Rae Jepsen, Björk, Tom Waits, Lhasa de Sela, PJ Harvey, Igor Levitt, John Luther Adams, Meredith Monk, Mitsuko
Uchida. . .

What are you working on currently?
As far as writing goes, I’m not consciously working on anything. I’ve been reading my way through a large pile of books on Buddhism and Daoism, which is absolutely, tremendously, excruciatingly, thrillingly, very, very, very, super exciting.

What are you reading right now?
I’m re-reading The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen.
 

VARUN RAVINDRAN was born in India and lives in Pittsburgh.