Marilyn Hacker & Karthika Nair Interview | How Poetry Bridged Two Lives In Lockdown

When the world shut down in early 2020, distance crept into the closest of friendships. Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Nair, based in Paris, had long shared a life of poetry, travel, and deep companionship. Hacker, an acclaimed poet, translator, and former editor of The Kenyon Review, was preparing to teach in Beirut, Lebanon when she had to return home abruptly. Nair, a poet, playwright, and librettist, known for her award-winning work Until the Lions, had just found out about her breast cancer diagnosis as France went into lockdown.

What unfolded in the months that followed was a bond so precious that it led to them writing a book together. At times, it felt less like an interview and more like eavesdropping on an intimate conversation between two old friends — friends bound by poetry, shared lives, cities, and quiet resilience.

In this conversation, they reflect on the role of poetry in times of crisis, the politics of translation, navigating illness, and the many ways language can hold and heal the body.

Excerpts from the interview with Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Nair below

To begin with, let’s talk about your book, A Different Distance: A Renga. Marilyn, what is a renga, and what prompted you to choose this poetic form for your exchange?

Marilyn: A Renga is a traditional Japanese poetic form, syllabic in nature, which we’ve rendered, very approximately, into English syllabics. One of the most compelling reasons for choosing it is that it’s meant to be collaborative. It’s designed to be composed by two or more voices in conversation with one another.

Karthika, what was the most surprising or unexpected way this long-distance collaboration shaped the poems? Did you ever find the constraints of the form liberating rather than restrictive?

Karthika: Honestly, the invitation itself was a surprise and a gift, really. Marilyn and I have known each other for years. I learned to write poetry in large part by reading poets like Marilyn, Jeet Thayil, and Agha Shahid Ali. To me, Marilyn is a sort of high priestess of poetic form — especially the more intricate ones — so getting that invitation felt like a blessing from the universe.

I had just begun chemotherapy, and I knew the year ahead would be incredibly difficult. Then came the pandemic, making everything even more uncertain. Writing in the renga form turned out to be a joy. Constraints in poetry, like in many forms of art, can actually be freeing as they spark daily surprises. The structure guides the story, helping it unfold in unexpected ways.

That must have been such a difficult time. It sounds like this poetic exchange was more than just creative work — it was emotional sustenance.

Karthika: Absolutely. I often say it was a soul-saver. I was held together by the community. This book is, in many ways, a celebration of community — even as it bears witness to the silences and solitude of that year. The most beautiful part of it all was that I felt like I was more than just a body undergoing treatment. The regular rhythm of writing with Marilyn, the immediacy of the renga, created something akin to presence. We only met three times in person that year, but through the poems, it felt as though she was right there in my living room, sharing a drink.

The poems were written during the pandemic, but they resonate far beyond that moment. Were there particular emotions or themes that kept surfacing as you wrote?

Marilyn: Very much so. One was the sheer relief and joy of staying connected — of communicating deeply at a time when isolation was imposed on us. There was also the pleasure of working with words, of engaging the mind in something meaningful. It was deeply personal, yet also about reaching outward. I would write something rooted in my own experience, and Karthika would respond in a way that opened a new window, a new perspective. That interplay was both grounding and expansive.

Karthika, did your perception of time shift while writing? The title A Different Distance itself evokes temporal and emotional distances. Did the changing seasons and pandemic landscape affect the tone of the poems?

Karthika: That’s such a beautiful question. Yes, it was a year when the usual markers of time disappeared for many of us. There were no commutes, no appointments, no meals scheduled by work routines. But in my case, because I was undergoing treatment, time felt even more regimented — everything revolved around hospital visits, medication cycles and side effects.

The renga offered an escape from that clinical, external time. It let me write about other kinds of time — the time of music, of memory, of friendship. Of walking with a friend when allowed. There was, of course, the pressure of pandemic time too. In France, we were only allowed out for one hour, within one kilometre of home. But the poems opened up different temporalities. There’s a certain nostalgia in the book for past times, shared times, and imagined ones.

Absolutely. That was certainly a transformative period. Marilyn, the book captures Paris under lockdown — a city usually so vibrant, suddenly silenced. Did that shift in the atmosphere influence your writing?

Marilyn: Very much. There were moments when the silence was almost welcome — walking by the Seine, for instance. But then there were eerie, ominous silences too. Across the street from where I live, there’s a café that used to be open from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m., always bustling. Suddenly, it was shut. The chairs were gone. That felt apocalyptic — like the end of the world.

In Paris, outdoor cafés are integral to the city’s functioning. It was strange to see other cities setting up outdoor tables because people couldn’t sit indoors, while here, our beloved café culture had vanished. That absence, that stillness, absolutely crept into the poems.

Karthika, the poems move between intimate experiences — illness, ageing, loss — and the global, political reality unfolding outside. How did you navigate that balance between the deeply personal and the broadly political?

Karthika: One of the great joys — and surprises — of this project was the total absence of filters. We weren’t writing with a book in mind; we were simply writing to each other. The only rule was honesty. So what appeared in the poems was whatever dominated our minds that day.

Sometimes it was the body — I’d write about a terrible night of vomiting after chemo. Other times it was global politics, the migrant crisis, or headlines that haunted us. You’ll also find Marilyn writing about listening to Abida Parveen or reading Hafiz. The renga became a living document of our inner worlds, shaped by whatever rose to the surface each day.

Marilyn, in the book, you write: “We are free, but who’s we?” How did the idea of individual versus collective freedom shape the themes in A Different Distance?

Marilyn: That tension was very present — and continues to be. What does freedom mean when everything about your daily life has shifted so dramatically? I had just left Beirut, where I was teaching at the American University. Life there was full of language, of people, of bustling social and cultural energy. Then suddenly, I was back in Paris, confined to four walls, finishing my classes online, speaking only to the voices in my head.

There’s a lot of Beirut in my half of the book. The port explosion in August 2020 is especially vivid — I was texting friends throughout that day, trying to find out if they and their families were safe. I was far away physically, but emotionally very present. The experience of being in one place while mentally tethered to another — that duality shaped many of the poems.

Karthika, in one of the most haunting lines, you write: “Standing committees lie down; government traffic, reserve forests.” Your work often addresses power and exploitation. Do you think poetry can hold power accountable?

Karthika: Since forever. That’s why poets have so often ended up in prison. Poetry is truth-telling, and truth can be dangerous — especially to those in power.

If you were to collaborate again, is there a particular theme or form you’d love to explore with Marilyn?

Karthika: I’d love to try sonnets with her — and maybe play with newspaper headlines. Responding to whatever is most topical on a given day could be fascinating.

It’s beautiful how deeply connected the two of you are. Marilyn, what do you hope readers take away from A Different Distance?

Marilyn: Two things, perhaps. First, an interior chronicle — a sense of what two people experienced during a moment of historical crisis. And second, a glimpse into the adaptability of the poetic imagination. It sounds like a cliché to say poetry is powerful, but it really is malleable and capable of transforming difficult and devastating moments into something lasting and meaningful.

Before we close, I’d love to read a poem from the book — one that really stayed with me:

Across the street,

a girl stands lengthily at the window,

 smoking and looking at empty sidewalks.

 Sun-soaked on April 1st.

 I wish the tourists would disappear.

 Now they're gone.

 Watch what we wish for.

In Partha, in quarantine,

 I dice one more aubergine.

There are a lot of aubergines out there.

Marilyn: We drove out to the place they called Karantina, where crews of ships from Europe once waited 40 days to be declared plague-free.

 Desolate still, but in a lonely high-rise,

 in a vast gallery,

 the 90-year-old painters knew gouache, texts, tapestries.

 Afterward, a huge Armenian lunch in Bourj Hammoud

 with my two young friends,

 nobody knowing quarantine was just starting.

Karthika:

Bedlam just started here.

 N writes from New Delhi's migrant worker camps.

 How will they lock down millions who have neither doors nor roof?

 Millions who must walk many moons to reach a home to self-isolate.

 Prime Minister Modi bids his nation to light candles.

 President Macron, meanwhile, wanders off face masks unless really ill.

 Spring, the dearth in my two lands of roses for all the graves, 4th April 2020.

Thank you both — for your words, your honesty, and your presence. It’s been an honour. We look forward to all the poems still to come.

Mohua Chinappa is an author, poet and runs two podcasts, The Mohua Show and The Literature Lounge. She is also a member of a London-based nonprofit award-winning think tank called Bridge India.