Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay

This piece examines the contradictions of dichotomous forms of mass migration and its cultural effects through the creative study of the Road and its implications—investigating of RV camps in the United States. The entanglement of past, present, and future is explored in the poem as written about a ‘fixed’ journey during the pandemic a year after it was abruptly ‘ended’ but is then extended in the form of a live reading. The “memory” of such event—as tied to the handling of the pandemic by the American government as well as in aspects of personal interaction—becomes a political road narrative. The poem can represent a hypermobility of memory yet also indicate a “temporal rupture” which cannot be accounted for illustrated by the surrendering of control of consistent and clear imagery, sound, and Internet connection in the recording of the poem. Thus the lapse in time between delivery of poem and hearing its musical interpretation, though live, simulates a “waiting” that presented a challenge to narrative motion and flow. The poem attempts to form a conversation amongst and between spaces as the guitarist from Nashville, Tennessee in the United States plays alongside the reading in London. The Zoom room can then be a formation of the “borderland.” Yet while recording, the sentiment of ‘if only we were in the same room’ indicates an impossibility of true intimacy— creating a gap in the recording and the collaboration. These tensions illustrate the larger implications of movement and the freedom of the ‘American road.’