LS Rathore is a performance poet, critic and translator. His poetry pulses with raw energy and unusual freshness and appeal to us because of their simplicity, directness and immediacy. The tone is intimate, conversational yet impassioned throughout. What scintillates through them is trance-like lucidity. Truth and fancy buttress each other inimitably. The choice of words is spontaneous, so captivating.
1. At what age did you start writing? Describe your journey as an author?
Ans. I embarked on the poetic odyssey at a belated stage. It was a late blossoming of the creative bud. I started off composing topical poems, moved on to ekphrastic poems and then graduated from image-based poems to penning those on any theme that moved me. I am not careering along but fluctuating mid-way on the poetic path.
2. How do you come up with ideas for your books?
Ans. I derive inspiration from nature, myths, folk-lore, movies, fiction and even quotidian life in its myriad forms.
3. What are some of your favorite books that you’ve written?
Ans. All three volumes of poems – Romance over Coffee, The Delphic Musings, Eagle’s Coin – are dear to me. Each has its own beauties.
4. What is your favorite genre to write in?
Ans. Poetry is my favourite genre. Even when I write prose it is poetically inclined.
5. Provide an example of a time when you had to conduct research for a book ?
Ans. For a few poems I flicked through a few articles to absorb the essence. While transcreating the short stories I went through the original stories in prose – but had no recourse to critical opinions.
6. If you could write about any subject, what would it be?
Ans. I am contemplating poetically recreating Indian myths and folk-lore.
7. What would you say is your greatest accomplishment as an author so far?
Ans. I excel in composing poems with end rhymes convincingly and with ease. My palette is huge and flexible whereon I mix various hues for different shades.
8. How well do you handle criticism ?
Ans. I heartily embrace positive criticism but prejudicial remarks embitter me. I have made it abundantly clear in ‘On Psuedo Critics’ and other poems which figure in The Delphic Musings
9. Do you have any tips for aspiring authors ?
Ans. They should read all sorts of books, revise what they have written, be true to themselves and not imitate others.
10. We want to attract more young readers to books and inculcate in them the habit of reading. Do you have any suggestions on it.?
Ans. Physical books alone will widen your horizon, kindle your imagination, mellow your thinking, whet your appetite for more, unravel the richer world lying underneath.
11. Describe your writing process.
Ans. Intense reading, fond recollection, minute observation, passionate involvement, deep reflection, keen feeling, cool absorption all go into my writing process.
12. What makes your writing unique?
Ans. End rhymes, allusions to Greek mythology, use of idioms and phrases lucidity, conversational strain, characterize my poetry. I never condense poems to mystify. I neither overcomplicate nor overdramatize. They are pictorial in the true sense. No poet has ever reviewed his poetry as I have.
13. Which authors do you admire and why?
Ans. Chaucer, Defoe, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, the Brontes, The Romantics, WB Yeats, Tennyson Mark Twain, Slyvia Plath, Pablo Neruda are my favour authors to name a few.
The reasons why I like them are far too apparent to reiterate.