For Samyak Shertok, Mississippi State University’s newest poet and professor in the English department, poetry is a tapestry in which every small design is just as equally important as the more prominent details. In weaving, every design element and arrangement that an artist utilizes with his or her artistic liberty serves a purpose. The same is true for a poet’s choices, which Shertok explained as he spoke about his new poetry collection “No Rhododendron,” officially published on Oct. 7.

“The book is a complete, whole being,” Shertok said. “Every poem forms the whole collection. If we do think of a tapestry, then every small detail and choice is as important as the biggest design or accent.”

Shertok uses stark lines and poignant images to articulate the loss of his father and land and an appreciation for his mother and mother tongue in his debut work “No Rhododendron.” He weaves together the many influences of his heritage, his country’s history, his relationship with his family and all of the personal experiences that put together the pieces of his own story. 

His familial ties to the history of Nepal and the Buddhist practices in the region have influenced his writing heavily, and it is the central premise of his work that grapples with the displacement and loss of over 13,000 of Nepal’s people. The Nepalese Civil War, which began on Feb. 13, 1996, with the Communist Party of Nepal’s insurgency on the Nepali monarchy, came to a close with the Comprehensive Peace Accord a decade later. However, the sheer magnitude of families that have been displaced at its expense indicate that the violence has never truly ceased.

Through Shertok’s words, readers can find the voices of these individuals, showing the fragmentation and disorientation caused by the conflict. The images in Shertok’s collection of journalists losing the fingers they use to write their stories to spread awareness and children collecting gun cartridges to sell in order to support their families are based in reality but can also be interpreted metaphorically.

In addition to writing about the war, Shertok finds inspiration from any place, at any time and in any way. He explained that lines, images and descriptors all form from being present in the moment.

“I think being present to the moment and experiencing the present deeply can be a great source of inspiration,” Shertok said.

If he is not out and about in nature, gathering inspiration for phrases and images from the sounds and languages around him, Shertok can be found diligently writing in his apartment at his desk, a gift from a poet and friend that allows Shertok a resting place to work in peace while honoring that friendship and his craft.

Shertok spoke about the process of writing a poem.

“When I write, I have to feel the poem. At that point, craft does not matter. I have to feel the poem, and that cannot be interrupted,” Shertok said.  

He also spoke about his state right before writing a poem when he can feel the poetry but does not quite have the right phrasing and articulation just yet.

“You have to listen to a poem to see what it wants to become. Before it is complete, there is a manic phase where I think there is a poem here, but I do not have it yet,” Shertok said. “You are aware of that potentiality and the risk of losing it. It feels time sensitive.”

Using this writing process, one of Shertok’s most daunting challenges was creating a description of a language with no script, one that is typically spoken but not widely recorded or read. His mother tongue Tamang along with the widely utilized phonetics of Nepali are shown vividly throughout his debut work.

Punctuation, and the deviation from it, is just as important to his work. For example, Shertok explained a decision not to use commas in parts of the collection like the long list found in some of his “sky burial” poems based on the common Tibetan Buddhist funeral process. This decision about punctuation perhaps can represent the unification found through that shared cultural identity of oral tradition. Reading Shertok’s work allows the reader to experiment with this since some individual poems can be read from the first line to the last or the last line to the first.

Shertok described his values and reason for writing as well.

“There was an emotional core but an intellectual thought process that was tangled. Each sonnet could focus on a troubled experience and unravel it,” Shertok said. 

Shertok, in addition to highlighting this tension between technique and feeling, noted that poetry should have infinite meanings that anyone can obtain.

“A poem should be able to offer infinitely,” Shertok said. 

Shertok said he hoped his poems would force readers to think deeply about possible interpretations and to examine themselves as they experience new cultural, linguistic and emotional connections. He added that poetry as an art form is revolutionary.

“Every poem is a radical, unique thing,” Shertok said. “Every poem, ideally, should be something the poet has never attempted before. The real test of poetry is, in a way, time.”

Shertok also spoke about writing a poem as an “act of love” that leads to “communion with the world,” and he plans to keep contributing to the future of poetry as well.

The future of poetry is evident in Shertok’s envisioned plan for his second work, centered on the discussion of migration and its universal prevalence in everyday life as well as its hardships.

For now, though, Shertok’s collection “No Rhododendron” has won many awards, selected as the winning poetry collection by Kimiko Hahn for the 2024 Association of Writers and Writing Program Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. The collection has also received other notable accolades such as the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize 2023 and the Gulf Coast Prize in Poetry 2022.

Becky Hagenston, the director of creative writing at Mississippi State University, spoke about Shertok as an invaluable new member to the faculty.

“He’s a wonderful poet, and I’m so glad he’s part of our English Department,” Hagenston said. “I know our students will be inspired by his poetry and his teaching.”

Shertok even read his poetry at Griffis Hall on Oct. 20, showcasing his creative process.

Junior psychology major and creative writing student Kamree Howard spoke about this event and Shertok as a poet and professor.

“I thought the event was very heartwarming and beautifully orchestrated,” Howard said. “I like to see his writing because, as a professor, he would never show us his writing [in class]. So it was very special to see and hear his work.”

Howard also spoke about how as a professor Shertok is especially talented and hardworking.

Samyak Shertok, through harnessing the knowledge he has accumulated over years of experiencing the repercussions of the cessation of the Nepalese conflict, has produced a debut piece that is formally innovative and connects themes with fluency. “No Rhododendron” is just the first to come in a set of poetry collections that will continue to expand upon how poetry as a whole is viewed and written.