Rishi Dastidar, "A hobby of mine"

Rishi Dastidar’s poetry has been published by the Financial Times, New Scientist and the BBC, amongst many others. His third collection, Neptune’s Projects (Nine Arches Press), was longlisted for the Laurel Prize, and a poem from it was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2024. He is also editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century (Nine Arches Press), and co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair). He reviews poetry for The Guardian and is chair of Wasafiri. His latest publication is A hobby of mine (Broken Sleep Books).

A hobby of mine, by Rishi Dastidar
My publisher says: “In A hobby of mine, Rishi Dastidar’s unrelenting catalogue of cultural observations becomes an absurd and profound portrait of modern life. With a playful spirit and incisive wit, Dastidar examines identity, memory, and the contradictions of everyday existence. He invites us to consider the idiosyncrasies that shape how we navigate a fragmented world, and the hidden dimensions of our routines: repetition becomes revelation – if we pay enough attention.”

I say: it was also a way for me to pay tribute and homage to Joe Brainard, and his wonderful memoir, I remember. Think of my attempt as a way exhausting some current obsessions, in a very George Perec-esque way too.

You can read more about A hobby of mine on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two extracts from the book. 

From A hobby of mine

Extract 1:

A hobby of mine is perverting the course of language.

A hobby of mine is the habit of mining.

A hobby of mine is wondering what the modern equivalent of mining school in nineteenth century Europe is.

A hobby of mine is running away to Rome.

A hobby of mine is imagining living in the south of France with a large of amount of cash that is demanding to be whittled away.

A hobby of mine is telling people why I haven’t launched a Substack yet.

A hobby of mine is deciding which of the endangered heritage crafts I should attempt to pick up.

A hobby of mine is calling the sun my father.

A hobby of mine is sitting in the middle of the road, crying that the passing scooters won’t stop and play with me.

A hobby of mine is wishing I was a cat.

A hobby of mine is knowing I would have been a very good clerk for the East India Company.

A hobby of mine is cultivating an emollient aspect to my personality.

Extract 2:

A hobby of mine is asking: how would David Foster Wallace have written it?

A hobby of mine is attempting to write things the way David Foster Wallace might have done, and failing.

A hobby of mine is buying any second-hand edition of The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth I ever see.

A hobby of mine is Tabasco.

A hobby of mine is predicting when money dies.

A hobby of mine is predicting when Miami sinks.

A hobby of mine is thinking up sports entertainment formats for a post-apocalyptic planet.

A hobby of mine is re-litigating the past until it asks to be taken from the courtroom and hanged until it is dead.

A hobby of mine is saying ‘wait till next year’ even though I know my team will be crap then also.

A hobby of mine is only reading my horoscope when I feel some part of my life is out of control.

A hobby of mine is opening all the cupboards in the kitchen looking for chocolate to eat, even though I know there isn’t any in the house.

Rishi Dastidar, "Neptune's Projects"

Rishi Dastidar is a fellow of The Complete Works, and a consulting editor at The Rialto magazine. A poem from his debut Ticker-tape was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2018. A second book, Saffron Jack, was published in 2020, and he is editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century. He is also co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair). His third collection, Neptune’s Projects, is published by Nine Arches Press.

About Neptune's Projects, by Rishi Dastidar

In the blurb for Neptune’s Projects, I’ve said that the poems are a ‘post-apocalyptic jig and reel.’ The apocalypse bit is important, in that I’m thinking of the book as ‘apocalyptic poetics’ rather than eco poetics. Mainly because I’m not sure ‘ecopoetics’ as a phrase quite gets the alarm we should be feeling – it feels passive to me. I concede that ‘apocalyptic poetics’ is not particularly active either, and absolutely is an overclaim and hyperbole – right now – but in that gap, I thought there was some interesting space to explore; how do you raise concerns about the environment in a new way? Can finding a tone that isn’t bystanding and handwringing per se achieve more, anything? Is there space for, dare one say it, jokes? Hence why Neptune, my main protagonist / avatar this time round, is world weary, sarcastic, and very aware of its limitations – a register I’ve found great for accessing bleak, black humour.

You can read more about Neptune's Projects on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample poem from the collection. 

From Neptune's Projects

Dhow

Are you bored yet, bored of your desk,
your window, the same vista, not even 
a breeze to make the starling fly faster? 

I am bored of performing when I should
be meeting; I don’t know where my eyes 
even go anymore. Only boring people are 

ever bored, a boring person once said, 
and sure my imagination isn’t locked down, 
but then all I could think about was being 

on a dhow right now, a kamal for a heart, 
a lateen the only future, the infinite same 
different from this. I can’t even swim.