Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay Says Goodbye to Nashville With a Poetry Album

Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay is one of those people who makes you question why you haven’t done more with your life. In 2015, she became Nashville’s first Youth Poet Laureate and published her first book of poetry, this is our war, at age 16. That was only the start of many more accomplishments for Mukhopadhyay, which include performing her work at TEDxNashville, Mayor Megan Barry’s inauguration and a Parnassus Books event. She’s published her poetry in Indian Literature, Nashville Arts Magazine and Chapter 16, and she regularly appears on WPLN’s podcast Versify and at The Porch Writers’ Collectives’ Poetry on Demand events.

In 2018, Oxford Bookstores published Mukhopadhyay’s second book, everything is always leaving. A year later, she graduated from Belmont University. Now the poet is set to release a poetry album and embark on a cross-country tour in a souped-up van. Before she goes, Mukhopadhyay will release her new project, a poetry album called i don’t know anyone here, at a party at 6 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 19, at the Global Education Center.

Mukhopadhyay and her family moved to Nashville from Kolkata, India, when she was 6 years old. Although her roots are Indian, growing up in the states provided her with a sense of belonging and comfort in American culture. As she got older, she became increasingly aware of the duality that comes with being an immigrant. i don’t know anyone here explores that fragmentation in both its poems and its format. Above, check out the lyric video for “identity crisis as country song.”

Mukhopadhyay calls her project a collage, existing through multiple mediums. “I studied the collage method in trying to write for the album because I wanted it to show this sense of fragmentation,” says Mukhopadhyay. She reads her poetry over music tracks laid down by various Nashville artists, and there’s also a limited-series booklet that adds a visual element to the work. Mukhopadhyay recorded “identity crisis as country song” with local folk singer Neil O’Neil at Fort Negley Park. O’Neil gently sings and strums his song “Modern Agriculture” alongside Mukhopadhyay, who recites her poem. Mukhopadhyay juxtaposes Nashville’s loss of identify with her own experience. 

You who have spent your whole lives

Renouncing this place pronounce the return

Honky tonk Tuesdays

And whiter skin

And nothing ain’t the same no more

Not from around these parts

So go back to where you came from

Now how does that feel? 

Here, Mukhopadhyay articulates her sense of familiarity with the city as well as the estrangement she feels from it as Nashville develops into a different place, one that’s “done got too big for its britches.” This sense of dissonance echoes many native Nashvillians’ fears and misgivings about the city’s development. It also speaks to the sense of alienation that Mukhopadhyay has known as an Indian woman in the South. 

“My dad has always taught me growing up to ‘never forget your roots,’ so I’ve always been very acutely aware of my Indian roots and the place I came from,” says Mukhopadhyay. “Place is very important to me. So in a sense, I felt that I needed to document [how] Nashville … is changing … because I feel like it’s forgetting where it came from.”

Many of the musicians that appear on the album will perform at Sunday’s release party, including Neil O’Neil, Marc Greenspon, Jacob Milstein, Josh Warren and Collin Felter. This event is more than just an album release — it’s also a farewell. The day after it, Mukhopadhyay will be packing up her inventory and leaving for a cross-country road trip and poetry tour. As Mukhopadhyay moves on to the next phase of her life, with plans to travel and hopes to attend graduate school in another country, she is saying a bittersweet goodbye to the life she’s known in Nashville. And what better way to go than in a celebration of poetry, music and community? 

Get all the details about the release party here.