To Preserve Human Dignity Amidst Silence and Erasure: A Conversation with Susheel Sharma

Abstract

This conversation between American poet editor Danielle Hanson (DH) and Prayagraj-based Indian author Susheel Kumar Sharma (SKS) took place via email over a period of nine months, from Sept 2024 to June 2025. Susheel is a Professor of English at the University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, the fourth oldest university of India. Unlike many others, Susheel has not been a prolific poet. This wide-ranging literary interview probes the craft, ethics and cultural politics that shape Sharma’s third poetry collection, Unwinding Self (2020), while mapping three decades of his creative evolution. Structured around fifteen substantial questions, the dialogue ranges from close readings of key poems to broader reflections on pedagogy, ecological crisis, gender violence, spirituality, and the role of the poet in society. Hanson presses Sharma on the personal–universal dialectic. Sharma explains how teaching, multilingualism and post colonial location recalibrate his voice from youthful introspection through social satire to philosophical witness. Sharma candidly reflects on ecological degradation, gender violence, and spiritual hypocrisy. He positions poetry as an ethical space that can elevate the ordinary, interrogate systems, and preserve human dignity amidst silence and erasure. Sharma also outlines his concept of the “ideal reader”—a synthesis of the Western “writerly reader” and the Indian sahr̥daya pāṭhaka. The interview culminates in a discussion of the book’s unusual inclusion of seven international afterwords as a deliberate act of critical polyphony. The conversation concludes with practical guidance for emerging poets. This interview will be of interest to scholars of Indian poetry in English, postcolonial literature, comparative poetics, and creative writing pedagogy, as well as to poets and readers engaged with cross-cultural aesthetics and ethical imagination.

Keywords: Poetry, Pedagogy, Postcolonialism, Spirituality, Intertextuality, Environment, Ethics and Aesthetics