In a month-long act of resistance, poets remind us that poetry can push back against forces that marginalize voices, erase stories, and impose control over how we live and imagine.
An interview with poet Pujita Verma
ALL LIT UP: How would you describe Precedence to someone picking it up for the first time?
PUJITA VERMA: At its core, this collection is a poetic narrative about my experience leaving home and seeking recourse in a Canadian courtroom. More broadly, Precedence embraces themes of justice, memory, culture, reincarnation, and love. It is a coming-of-age after coming forward.
While its contents can be interpreted as heartbreaking, I navigate sensitive themes with care. I think, if writers were to have one responsibility for their audiences, it would be to take care of them. The poems in here are emotional, circular, and tender. They reimagine a legacy of women who could not leave. They trace distant memories with the kind of reflection that only passing time can allow, asking about the precedents we rewrite for ourselves and others each time we act.
ALU: How do you see poetry as an act of resistance?
PUJITA: The practice of writing poetry is slow and surgical. It is an anthesis to the rise of short-form content, where there are so many competing demands for our attention. Choosing to carve out time to write poems, to read and understand them, and to connect more deeply is an act of resistance. When studying poetry, I also learned about many of its forms, conventions, and rhyme schemes. This makes sense too. It was much easier to break the rules after knowing what they were.
ALU: What does poetry allow you to say or refuse that other forms don’t?
PUJITA: Precedence borrows from legal texts and elements from my own court case, interweaving them between lines and responding to them with my own verse. There are many pressures that survivors of sexual abuse confront when coming forward. One of them was what felt like an effective re-silencing by the courtroom and learning how to speak out (again).
With poetry, I can lean into the details that I want to, be selective with narrative elements, and experiment with metaphorical language. Contemporary poetry encourages taking liberties with its content. It’s a form where I feel most in control of how I tell my story.
ALU: Is there a line (in your own or someone else’s work) that you return to?
PUJITA: “Is everyone trying
to close the gap between themselves
& what they love?”
– Doyali Islam, from Contract (page 23 of Heft)
I had the chance to work with Doyali through Diaspora Dialogue’s long-form mentorship program in 2024. We focused closely on every poem in this manuscript, at the level of each line, considering the purpose of commas and the significance a single article could have.
Working with Doyali, I developed a deep appreciation for detail. There’s a precision involved in writing poetry, where there isn’t room for the “next best word.” I began to see this relentless attention to specificity as a necessary tool in translating personal experiences. Especially in a collection like Precedence, where I am treading a line between naming the unspeakable and unlocking emotional truths with care.
I keep returning to this line because it now informs my poetic craft: as I reach out to the world, listen to its words, and say, I’m right here on this page. I’m trying to close the gap.
Read “Crown Attorney Affirmations“
from Precedence
Crown Attorney Affirmations
punctuate time and all its verdicts:
you should feel very lucky
that you’ve come this far.
most cases will never see
the inside of a courtroom,
a comma splice
of collective amnesia
disentangling for scribbling strangers.
the reports are indicative
no defence lawyer
will produce a discography
of your callouses, your
articulation is an asterisk
of the witness stand.
watch walls come falling
at your feet, it takes
as much courage as these proceedings
take time. think
of your little sister,
how she might get to grow up
outside the margins,
think
of the precedent
you are setting,
everyone who may get to stand
in line
beside you.
Reprinted with permission from Brick Books.
Watch Pujita read from Precedence
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Pujita Verma is a poet and illustrator currently living in London, Ontario. Her work has appeared across the Toronto Transit Commission Network and CBC’s The National. She won awards from the League of Canadian Poets, the Toronto Arts & Letters Club Foundation, and the Eden Mills Writer’s Festival, and was runner-up for the Janice Colbert Poetry Award. Pujita was Mississauga’s Youth Poet Laureate from 2018-2020, and she studied Political Science at Western University. As an active member of London’s literary scene, Pujita is currently serving on the committee for Antler River Poetry.
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Thanks to Pujita for answering our questions, and to Brick Books for the text of “Crown Attorney Affirmations” from Precedence, which is available to order now (and get 15% off + FREE shipping Canada-wide with the code POETSRESIST until April 30!).
Follow our NPM series all month long to discover new poetry or connect with old favourites, and visit our poetry shop here.
