I first met Sophia at the Delhi Poetry Festival last year. We were both in the same session, reading our poetry, and the session got delayed. We had a good time furiously cribbing about the delay. Of course, we finally got to our poetry, and I was completely floored by what she read.

Her poetry was cerebral, fun, layered - it was like an intellectual puzzle that needed to be uncovered, layer by layer.

So when Dibyajyoti Sarma, the heart and soul of Red River Publications, asked me to have her as my first guest to begin the Second Season of Red River sessions, I was completely delighted.

Before we started this conversation, we promised each other that it would be no longer than 20 minutes. You can see where we ended finally. I decided not to edit much of the conversation because it was so delightful and stimulating - and there were so many interesting things which Sophia had to talk about.

Sophia Naz is a bilingual poet, artist, author, editor and translator. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize; in 2016 for creative nonfiction and in 2018 for poetry. Her work features in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets, The Night Heron Barks, Singing in the Dark: A Global Anthology of Poetry Under Lockdown, Berfrois, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Rattle, The Punch Magazine, Poetry At Sangam, Poetry International Rotterdam, The Adirondack Review,  The Wire, Chicago Quarterly Review, Blaze Vox, Scroll, The Daily O, Cafe Dissensus, RAIOT, Ideas And Futures, Chapati Mystery, Guftugu, Pratik, Gallerie International, Coldnoon, VAYAVYA, The Bangalore Review, Papercuts, Madras Courier, The Yearbook of Indian Poetry and many others. She has authored the poetry collections — Peripheries (Cyberhex, 2015), Pointillism (Copper Coin, 2017) Date Palms (City Press, 2017) Open Zero (Yoda Press, 2021), and Shehnaz, a biography (Penguin Random House, 2019).

Her latest collection of poetry, Bark Archipelago, published in March 2023 from Red River in India and Weavers Press San Francisco in USA. This is a peerless episode from Red River Sessions presented to you by Uncut Poetry. In Red River Sessions, we talk to published poets about their poetry, their craft, and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books and curated prose, and Uncut Poetry, a much-loved poetry podcast.