Rishita Chaudhary

I have been thinking about growth and decay, the interplay between the two, the way all growth requires regeneration, which in turn requires a shedding, a composting, a reconstituting of old material. We don’t always know what needs to be shed, or what the optimal direction of growth is. This is where the “blind optimism” of a tree is helpful —... See more

I think it’s also important to admit, to attest to, and to [bear] witness to the violence of the archive of slavery, which is about erasure. There are tick marks instead of names; it’s all about the slave’s relationship to the accumulation of wealth for another. The archive doesn’t tell us the story of someone’s life.

“Even if, as I believe, the vitality of matter is real, it will be hard to discern it, and, once discerned, hard to keep focussed on,” Bennett writes. “I have come to see how radical a project it is to think vital materiality.” It’s not just that concentration can be wearisome. Bennett had shown me that picture of the dead rats for a reason: being... See more

dialing up my agency, which I think of as something like “manifest determination to make things happen.”

Do you have a writing routine?

I meditate first thing in the morning, then work out. I do much of my reading at the gym – something about the kinetic energy being discharged leaves my mind more single of focus. And then I write, standing, for as long as the writing feels alive. By mid-afternoon, my mind begins to slip out of the poetic dimension,... See more