how plants inspire my poetry
I always get asked, “what inspires you to write?” and to be honest, there isn’t one answer.
When it comes to writing, one thing that definitely inspires me is music. Listening to a peaceful Bollywood song like “agar tum saath” ho or “ek dil ek jaan” really gets me in my feels sometimes. And then I basically translate those feels from mind to matter. Honestly sometimes even a Bollywood song title itself is enough to strike a poem out of me. I listened to the unplugged version of “mohe rang do laal” and right after I ended up writing the poem “laal.” One of my favorites too.
But of course, music isn’t the only inspiration. When I was younger, I used to dream of becoming a botanist. For some reason I developed quite the green thumb, And while other kids in elementary were hanging out playing tag after school, I was at home planting seeds in my gardens and growing fruits and vegetables. I used to spend hours just researching plants and figuring out which ones were related to each other. That’s how I know the almond is a fruit in the same family as the peach, or a mango is related to poison ivy, and the reason some unfortunate souls are allergic to mangos because of the trace amounts of urushiol found in them. I know a little too much about plants than I probably need to, But everything happens for a reason. Maybe all those years of botanical research was actually just preparing me to write this book.
Point being, I find the beauty of nature to be the biggest inspiration of poetry for me. And that appreciation sprouted inside me from childhood. You really can’t go wrong writing a poem using fragrant flowers or luscious fruits as a metaphor. Not only that, it fits perfectly with the theme of my book, masala chai. Considering chai grows directly from the earth and is in fact the very essence of the earth only extracted in water. Which is why I use a lot of floral and nature imagery. It all ties together.
Meet my oxalis triangularis. I have so many plants but this has to be the most unique one. I love this one because it opens and closes at night. at night it closes and looks a hundred dark purple butterflies. Then in the morning they rise up and flutter again. I love it so much even bought two of these, and one of them is green!
I have had love for plants for as long as i could remember. Instead of playing with kids outside in elementary school, I would spend hours in my garden planting herbs, vegetables, and flowers. Yup, i was that one random weird kid. But you know what? It all paid off because i got to make fresh garden salads and watch my zinnias again bloom every year.
However now that i’m older, I decided to collect rare houseplants and create an indoor jungle. My house is covered in plants and i absolutely love it!! my passion for plants even carries on into my poetry. That’s why so many of my poems are about nature, plants, and flowers. I just connect with it so much because nothing is more beautiful to me and I love interpreting how it feels wether it’s through gardening or writing.
Aside from that, there’s also other life experiences, travels, and relationships that inspire poetry. But who doesn’t have those? In my opinion, it’s not what you write about but how you write it. The metaphors are what makes any good poem stand out to me. That’s why all my poems are always in a metaphor. If its not metaphorical, then I probably didn’t write it. I like the challenge of getting from point A to point B in a poem using the metaphor as a vehicle. Kind of like parkour but with words or putting a puzzle together. If we choose a tree as our image, how does that tree start out and how does it get to the end. If I went ahead and wrote that poem I’d probably say something about a drought refusing to give me water when I was only trying to bear fruits for you. And then we would have a banger. But i’m not going to write that poem because I’m going to stop myself from adding anymore pages to masala chai.
Maybe for the next book.
- eęsu
here’s a young me proud to see my carrot tops finally sprouting leaves.