Puneet Dutt : part five

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

I like to pick up a new poetry anthology. Right now, I’m reading The Best American Poetry 2017.

Puneet Dutt : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen have changed the way I thought about the poetic form and genre.

Puneet Dutt : part three

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

I do, I work with a friend in a writer’s collective. Through this we engage with new poetry, share our work, workshop poems, and write new ones. We work on revising larger manuscripts and discuss writing in general.

Puneet Dutt : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

Through Elizabeth Ruth’s writing workshop at the Toronto Public Library.

Puneet Dutt : part one

Puneet Dutt’s debut collection of poetry, The Better Monsters (Mansfield Press, 2017), was a Finalist for the 2018 Trillium Book Award For Poetry (English Language) and was Shortlisted for the 2018 Raymond Souster Award and was named one of “Ontario’s Best Books” in 2018 by NOW Magazine. Her poems have appeared in a number of literary journals, such as Canadian Literature, Event and World Literature Today, and in the anthology Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, with an introduction by Margaret Atwood. Her chapbook, PTSD south beach (Grey Borders Books), was a Finalist for the Breitling Chapbook Prize (Phantom Books). She holds a MA in English from Ryerson University and is an editorial board member at Canthius and a creative writing workshop facilitator with the Toronto Writers Collective. Dutt was born in India and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, and currently lives in Toronto with her husband and son. To reach out, follow her on Twitter @puneet_dutt.

What are you working on?

I am fiddling with fiction.