Rishi Dastidar

“People still want to write poetry”

Rishi Dastidar is the author of A Hobby of Mine (Broken Sleep Books, 2025), one of Sideways’ favourite collections of the year. His work spans nearly two decades in the UK poetry scene, exploring playful, experimental forms and language. In this interview, he reflects on his creative process, his influences and the evolving landscape of British poetry.

How has the poetry scene changed in the last ten years, and where do you think it’s going?

A: It helps to take a twenty-year view. Some of the structures from 2005 or so are still there, but smaller in scope and intensity. That’s mostly about money and the post-Covid bounce back. In 2020, there was this assumption everything would return to 2019 levels, but it hasn’t.

There have been positives, though. Accessibility for events is now a real part of the conversation, which wasn’t the case before. The other big change is technology. In 2005, the internet was still a place you went to; now it’s everywhere. That’s transformed how we engage with poetry. I’ve been exposed to far more poets and voices than I ever could in an offline world, which is brilliant. But the speed with which work circulates makes financial recompense, already minimal, even harder.

The other big change over the last 20 years is colour. In 2000 or 2005, it was still, in my view, mostly a white scene. 

Do you think it’s still the case? 

No, there’s been a real change. Part of the work that Malika’s Kitchen has been doing over the last 20-25 years is precisely to show that if you tell the story of British poetry since the late 1970s without mentioning Linton [Kwesi Johnson], [Benjamin] Zephaniah, Malika [Booker], Nick [Makoha], Roger [Robinson], Sarah [Howe], and Kayo [Chingonyi], amongst many others I’ve no doubt left out, you’re telling it wrong.

In the early 2000s, people could still talk about the ‘great poets’ without thinking it odd that no one of colour was mentioned. So that has been a qualitative change. Do we always have to guard against complacency? Yes, of course.

The challenge now is maintaining those gains without falling into various traps identity politics can suggest.here writers of colour are expected to write only about identity. Artists must claim the freedom to write whatever they want, even if that confounds people.

People still want to write poetry. Paths into the scene are easier now, though sticking with it is harder because of money and time. Success shouldn’t be judged only by who can afford to participate, and sometimes I fear we don’t think enough about that If poetry is to support all practitioners, the market of readers must grow, and we have to think harder about how to reach them. Government funding isn’t coming back to levels we got used to; publishing has always been brutal, and people think, “If you’re good enough, you’ll make it work.” I don’t agree, but I understand where that attitude comes from.

How did ‘A Hobby of Mine’ come into being?

A: So it started with my copy of Joe Brainard’s I Remember, and wanting to pay tribute to it in some way. I can’t remember exactly where it emerged from. I must have been playing with the phrase “hobby of mine” at some point, and it sonically stuck in my head and rolled out from there.

I follow my instincts, see what happens, and then figure out what to do with it. One reason I like collaborating with Aaron at Broken Sleep is that he takes a chance on these odd birds, which don’t comfortably fit into traditional categorisations. [The book] felt like a bit of a wild-card, and he agreed to take it on. Aaron’s been a great advocate for experimentation, which every scene needs alongside more conventional work.

Who are you writing for when you write?

A: Even if I had an ideal reader, I suspect it shifts from book to book. For example, after writing Neptune’s Projects, because of the subject, it’s been easier for people to claim me as an eco poet, even though I struggle to reconcile that description with my self-image as a poet.

If I’m engaging with eco poetry, it’s coming from an entirely different angle. If someone said I wrote Neptune’s Projects to reach eco poets, I’d be like, what? No. I wrote it because I wanted to write a book of poems in the voice of a God who’s angry and sarcastic and much more interested in the apocalypse.

The point is to get ideas and perspectives out of my head in a way others find interesting. It doesn’t rely on me as a personality. You just have to trust that if you’ve done the work, the right readers will find it.

Who are your favourite poets at the moment?

A: I’ve just reviewed Luke Kennard’s new one [The Book of Jonah], which is so good. I’m biased because Luke’s a friend and an influence, but I love the way his mind works. Technically and formally, there’s an annoying – good! – amount of virtuosity, and he’s willing to dive in and take artistic risks that few poets will. Who else looks at the Book of Jonah and thinks, “I can blow this up”?

I keep coming back to Will Alexander’s Refractive Africa, my book of the year a couple of years ago. It’s dazzling, showing the unexpected places syntax can take you, even if it can initially put readers off. I’ve reviewed Karen Downs-Barton’s Minx, which is playful, formally adventurous, exploring Romani heritage and language. I want Amy Key to write more poems! – her work just blows my mind. Richard Scott’s new one [That Broke Into Shining Crystals] is a masterclass: tender, rigorous, using objects to explore trauma, with a lot of beauty but without letting the reader off the hook.

I also always have to talk about The Golden Gate and Vikram Seth. I read The Golden Gate at the right age—it’s Seth’s first novel, before A Suitable Boy, and his tribute to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. I’ve been obsessed with those two things since I first read them 20 or 25 years ago, and was determined to write something in that particular Pushkin sonnet form. It’s taken the best part of 20 years to feel technically able and to have the idea drop into place. So, the last year or two has been spent thinking about Seth, Pushkin, and those rhymes. So that’s always there as well.

Interview by Richard Gilbert-Cross