Hello beautiful, creative people!
We were recently contacted by Shreesh Kakkar, a poet (and dancer) in India who has published his first book but was looking for ways to help get it find an audience. We loved the concept of the book, and so we decided to have a chat with him, and share his thoughts with YOU!
Hi Shreesh! Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself?
First of all, before we start I would like to thank you for this opportunity and for coming up with this concept and reaching out to people who are not really making it to the world out there…
You're welcome! It's our pleasure!
My name is Shreesh and I am from India. I'm a law graduate, and I started writing when I was 14 or 15 years old – I’m 24 now. I'm 24 now. I have one book under my name and I am planning to get maybe another couple published soon.
So you have more books planned – that was one thing I was going to ask! Your current book is called Connections; can you tell us a bit about it?
Yeah, so I write depending upon the emotions and what's going around in my head - mostly life experiences. So it's mainly about how you feel emotions, feel connected to them and the power of your mind.
There are lots of books that talk about the power of your mind and the subconscious mind, but when it comes to me, I haven't read those! So this is purely based on experiences I have been through in life. It’s very real and genuine.
I know you've been asked before whether writing is a spiritual thing, and for you it isn’t, but you do find it a good way to regulate your emotions. So do you write more with your audience in mind or do you write more for yourself?
I would say I write more for myself, but that changed over time and now I think I will write for the people. When I started it was just basically a way to… maybe you can call it running away from the situation or whatever. I used it to express my things.
I've read through some of your poetry on your Instagram, and it's very emotional, very deep and very expressive. I also know that another way you express yourself is through dance.
Yeah, I do, I haven't trained so I'm a born dancer! But that has somewhat been left out with other things in life. I'm trying to get back to getting dancing again, but it's something that's had to take a backseat at the moment.
Do you have anyone, whether it be your dancing or your writing, that inspires you?
Yeah, I have a few people I look up to and it's about dancing. There's this Bollywood actor, Shahid Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan, and then you have this person from Uttarakhand, he's Raghav [Juyal], that guy is just amazing. I really look up to him.
At Poems by Post we drop poetry through people's letterboxes. If you were able to put a message through people's letterboxes what would that message be?
I think the message should be not to give in to the pressures that the society creates; to believe in yourself and, be patient with yourself, to not be harsh on yourself. This is something I learned recently – the hard way. Give yourself the time and opportunities like you would give to someone else.
I think that's great advice - especially in the creative world.
Yeah, because when you create something, whatever form of art it is or whatever it is, there are going to be people who will like it, there are going to be people who won't like it, and there are going to be people who would absolutely love it. So if you can motivate yourself and be happy about the positive reviews, then why do you have to, take the negative reviews so... as such a big impact, you know? Why do you the negative reviews put you down if the positive reviews can't put you up?
I completely agree! Is there anything I haven’t asked that you’d like to say?
Just that in the world you cannot really actually reach out to everyone. So I think I would ask people to support other people, especially the smaller ones. If there's something you come across, maybe make it a point to share it or you talk about it to your friends so that you're supporting in the best way you can.
Thanks Shreesh! His full interview is on our YouTube channel here. You can find Shreesh on Instagram (@world.through.my.words), and his book "Connections" is available here.
