.Mother-Daughter Poems.

I have refrained from making any long-term writing goals this summer because my dissertation is wearing me out. It is hard for me to concentrate on any other big project at this time. The best I can manage is to give at least 30 minutes to my creative writing every day. Beyond that, it is hard for me to plan my creative writing projects in a more sustained kind of a way. I need to get the dissertation done first. So far I have been keeping up with that schedule-- I haven't written any new stuff recently, but I am revising. And the truth be told, I have too many first drafts lying around which need my more focused attention. So I am not too anxious that I am not producing/generating too many new texts right now. And also, revising is HARDER. At least for me. Because it demands that I dig deeper. The poems that I am working on revising right now, are more personal and autobiographical than I have ever written. So, when I try to revise, I re-visit parts of myself which I have kept hidden from my own eyes for way too long. It's almost as if the poems are holding up the mirror in front of me, and forcing me to look into the contradictions of the Post-Partition Bengali-Hindu lower middle-class/middle middle-class gender roles, and the way they played out in the everyday mother-daughter interactions. I cannot work on these poems for too long. I often feel that I am talking too much. Then there are times I feel I am saying too little. And I keep wondering, how will these poems be classified by others who read them? Confessional? Autobiographical? Will there be anyone who will consider these poems as remotely political? I don't know!