False Offering with Rita Mookerjee

Inspiration, mental health struggles and what to make with a giant bag of tapioca starch, this conversation has it all. Rita tells me about her new book, False Offering, and a bit about her upcoming book, Banana Heart. She discusses the way her partner, Dorothy K. Chan helped her get back into writing poetry after taking a haitus and how important it is for her to see people with her background represented in the art. False Offering navigates much of what it means to be the daughter of Indian immigrants growing up in Pennsylvania, exploring a hunger for culture, and interogating religion. We also discuss the possibilities of finding and creating beauty and strangeness in poetry. As Rita says, poets can write about their trauma if they want to, but they don’t owe it to anyone if they don’t want to write about it. While she is interested in “burning it all down” she is also interested in growing something new with her writing. We also had a lot to say to one another about how to find that newness through food. So, poets and epicureans both should have a lot of fun listening to this interview and trying out some of the writing practices and recipes Rita recommends here.