INTERVIEWS
The Interviews
The Interview: Karen Solie
Winner of T.S Eliot Prize 2025
Rachna Singh, Editor of The Wise Owl, speaks with Karen Solie, one of the most distinctive and lauded voices in contemporary poetry, and a 2025 T. S. Eliot Prize winning poet for her luminous new collection Wellwater. Solie's debut Short Haul Engine (2001) was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Modern and Normal (2005) and The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out (2015) were both finalists for the Trillium Poetry Prize. Pigeon (2009) garnered the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Pat Lowther Award. Her fifth collection, The Caiplie Caves (2019), was shortlisted for both the T. S. Eliot and the Derek Walcott Prizes, and her selected poems, The Living Option (Bloodaxe, 2013), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Solie’s contributions to poetry have been recognized with the Latner Poetry Prize, the Canada Council’s Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award, and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship.
The Interview: George Szirtes
A British Poet & Translator
Rachna Singh Editor, The Wise Owl talks to George Szirtes, a British poet and translator. Szirtes is the author of numerous acclaimed poetry collections, including The Budapest File (2000), An English Apocalypse (2001), Reel (2004), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, New & Collected Poems (2008), The Burning of the Books (2009), Bad Machine (2013), and Mapping the Delta (2016), both Poetry Book Society Choices. His recent collection, Fresh Out of the Sky (2021), continues his exploration of memory, responsibility, and the pressures of history on the present. His translation of Tóth’s My Secret Life: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2025) was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. His memoir The Photographer at Sixteen (2019) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography. In 2024, he was awarded The King’s Gold Medal for Poetry.
The Interview: Reena Puri
Executive Editor, Amar Chitra Katha
Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Reena Puri, the Editor-in-chief  of Amar Chitra Katha. Reena has been writing and editing comics for the last three decades. While creating new books, she has always kept in mind Anant Pai’s vision of bringing untold stories of India to the children of India, and acquainting them with their heritage. Earlier, she worked with various newspapers, magazines and television production houses, even becoming a radio jockey with All India Radio for a short while, till she discovered that writing and editing comics was what she loved best. Now at the helm of Amar Chitra Katha, she continues her wonderful work of storytelling that entertains as well as ensure that children understand Indian heritage, values and heroes.
The Interview: Vona Groarke
An Award-winning Poet. Shortlisted for T.S Eliot Prize 2025
Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Vona Groarke, one of Ireland’s most acclaimed poets, known for her luminous precision of language and her exploration of the spaces poems make for themselves. Her ninth poetry collection and fifteenth book, Infinity Pool (Gallery Press, 2025), has been shortlisted for the 2025 T. S. Eliot Prize.
Groarke has published fifteen books, and has received numerous awards, including the 2024 Michel Déon Award for Non-Fiction, for Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara. She is Ireland Professor of Poetry, 2025-28. Vona's Selected Poems (2016) won the Pigott Prize for Best Irish Poetry Collection,
The Interview: Alessandro Schiavetti
A Medieval Archeologist & Visionary Curator
Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Alessandro Schiavetti, medieval archaeologist turned visionary curator. He straddles centuries of creativity — from unearthing the echoes of the past to shaping the aesthetics of the present. As President and Curator of the ACS Art Center, Artistic Director of the #Raccontandoci Festival, and Director of the Municipal Exhibition Center of Cecina (CEC), Schiavetti brings to each project a rare blend of scholarship, imagination, and cultural empathy. His curatorial path — marked by collaborations with institutions like the Amedeo Modigliani Documentation Center and the Hermann Geiger Foundation — reflects an enduring quest to make art a living conversation between time, place, and people.