How to Write Surreal Poetry with Aakriti Kuntal
What makes a poem emotionally resonant?
It’s a question I find myself returning to often in my own work, but it was at the forefront of my mind as I sat down with my guest, Aakriti Kuntal. Aakriti is one of my favorite contemporary poets, and her work is truly kaleidoscopic—lucid, dreamlike, and entirely fearless in its exploration of mortality and the "shadow sides" of consciousness.
Her latest collection, Night Breaks Apart: Like Pomegranate Seeds in My Palm, is a masterpiece of visceral imagery. While her vocabulary swims through spiritual and mythic archetypes, she never loses the thread of the body—its beauties, its horrors, and its profound memories.
Night breaks apart, like pomegranate seeds in my palm by Aakriti Kuntal
What does it mean to exist within language? For readers drawn to the introspective and the experimental, Kuntal's poetry is the perfect solution.
ORDER on Amazon →To learn more about Aakriti’s journey, click below to watch the full YouTube video below.
Speaking with Aakriti Kuntal
In this episode, we discussed our shared ritual of writing to music; while I lean toward ambient or black metal to induce a trance, Aakriti finds her flow in classical music and jazz, letting the rhythm set the tone for her line breaks.
Much of our conversation centered on the liminal space—that thin veil between waking and dreaming (the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states). Aakriti uses poetry to question how we perceive the world when our internal "hardware" is under the stress of illness.
To learn more about Aakriti’s journey, click below to watch the full YouTube video below.
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