Manisha Anjali is a writer and artist. She is the author of Naag Mountain (Giramondo 2024). Manisha is the founder of Neptune, a research and documentation platform for dreams, visions and hallucinations. Manisha has been a recipient of BLINDSIDE’s Regional Arts & Research Residency at Mooramong, a Writer- in-Residence at Incendium Radical Library and a Hot Desk Fellow at The Wheeler Centre.
Over the next four months (February to May), Manisha will be running our Poetry Online Feedback Clinic in which participants will submit a poem each month and receive concrete and specific feedback from Manisha that will help improve the work. Ahead of the Clinic, we asked Manisha a few questions about her writing practice.
Tell us about your latest project and what inspired you to write it.
My recent book is Naag Mountain, published by Giramondo. It is a spirit-infested book, full of ghosts, frangipani flowers and music. Through archival research and dream documentation, I tell the story of descendants of the girmityas, Indian indentured labourers in colonial Fiji, who have lost access to their dreams. It was composed while I lived on Minjungbal land amongst sugar cane fields, rainforests and the wild Pacific Ocean. The whims of the natural world helped shape the book.
What role have books played in your life?
Books are portals to enchantment. Without books, I cannot imagine having cultivated such a rich imaginative life.
Whose writing do you admire?
Alexis Wright, Clarice Lispector, Juan Rulfo, Diane di Prima, Claudia Rankine, Michael Bazzett, to name a few.
Self-doubt seems to be part of being a writer. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to another writer about how to overcome it?
Some of the best poets I know are plagued by self-doubt. It is important to identify what your doubts are and delve into why you are feeling this. Ask yourself, how much are these doubts based on reality? Adjust reality accordingly.
What does your process and routine look like?
My routine changes as life changes. It is my preference to write in the mornings, after strength training or a swim, when I am still close to the space of dreams and sleep. My process for each project looks very different, and it becomes a matter of being able to carve the space necessary.
Can you tell us a bit about what you’re currently working on?
I am commencing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Melbourne. I am in the very early stages of refining my project, but I am excited to research in the South Pacific ocean and work with the long form.
What are you hoping participants of your clinic will take with them?
I hope the Feedback Clinic will help build trust in practice, expand relationship to space, rhythm, composition, poetic vocabulary; and how these elements work together to evoke emotion and create meaning.
Manisha’s Poetry Online Feedback Clinic is now booked out, but you may also like Hand-operated Poetry with Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Poetry of Place and Belonging with Nadia Niaz or Writing Ekphrastic Poetry with Emilie Collyer.
Members of Writers Victoria receive up to 37% off the full price of all clinics, workshops, seminars and courses. Writers experiencing financial and social barriers to developing their skills are encouraged to apply to The Writers Victoria Fund for subsidised attendance at workshops and clinics.