Podcast Summary: Sadiqa de Meijer, "In the Field" (Palimpsest Press, 2025)
Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Sadiqa de Meijer
Date: October 28, 2025
Episode Overview
This episode features an in-depth conversation between host Holly Gattery and acclaimed author Sadiqa de Meijer about her latest book, In the Field, a collection of lyrical essays. Together, they explore themes of language, identity, place, death, spiritual life writing, creative process, and the art of attention. Rich with personal reflection and literary insight, the episode offers both practical and philosophical considerations for writers, readers, and anyone interested in the intersections of culture, memory, and creativity.
Detailed Breakdown
Book Origins & The Essay Form
[03:16]
- Sadiqa de Meijer describes her process: In the Field consists of nine essays written over 12 years, accumulating organically as she discovered a personal arc and the possibilities of the essay form.
“As the essays slowly started to accumulate, I thought, well, I’m interested in this form…the essay form is something I want to keep exploring.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [03:16]
Language, Storytelling, and Identity
[04:03]
- Holly reflects on learning Farsi and wonders about how writing in a second language shapes storytelling.
- Sadiqa explains Dutch was her first language; it imprints an “emotional resonance” English never quite achieves despite her greater fluency in English now.
“Dutch retains for me a certain immediacy, an emotional resonance that English never quite achieves. And I think that has to do with the way that we imprint a first language into ourselves…” — Sadiqa de Meijer [04:49]
- The subtle but present differences between Dutch and English are contrasted with her experience learning Punjabi, which is structurally and semantically further apart and reframes narrative and meaning.
Book Cover & Its Resonance
[07:02]
- Although rarely discussed, Holly is drawn to the book cover’s atmosphere and coherence with the essays.
- Sadiqa shares the cover’s painting is by her partner, depicting a field near their home. It leans towards abstraction, echoing the essays’ movement from literal to contemplative.
“It’s recognizably a landscape, but almost leaning a little bit towards abstraction as far as the forms and the colors…there is a depth you can look right into the view.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [07:50]
- Sadiqa appreciates small presses’ flexibility, allowing her a visual say in the book’s production.
Writing About Death: Structure & Lyricism
[09:42]
-
The first essay, "The Singing Bone," confronts death and burial. Holly connects her own intrusive thoughts about death with Sadiqa’s associative essay structure.
-
Sadiqa discusses not outlining structurally, but channeling a “poetic, associative” movement through various themes—bones, fairy tales, personal history—linked by symbolic resonance.
“It moves more, I would say, the way that a poem might…The through line is the notion of bones in this essay.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [11:26]
- Both agree this non-linear, intuitive approach is deeply true to their experience and voice as writers.
Excerpt Reading: The Texture of Place
[15:05]
- Sadiqa reads from her essay about returning to her birthplace, Amsterdam—a meditation on how places shape us physically and emotionally:
“Places teach you how to move. You start out clumsy, flailing in eager repetitions until the willed action occurs…Amsterdam means being lifted onto the front of your mother’s bicycle, grinning into the weather, the city flooding your rudderless, permeable, epiphanic attention…” — Sadiqa de Meijer [16:00]
Spiritual Life Writing & Faith
[18:01]
-
Holly explores the essay "Spirit Materials," which begins with Sadiqa and Amy exchanging embroidered letters. She asks about Sadiqa’s approach to spiritual life writing and whether material practices are metaphoric or literal vessels for connection.
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Sadiqa speaks of her dual religious upbringing (Muslim and Christian), her current position as non-religious yet spiritual, and the inexorable presence of spiritual dimensions in her essays.
“The physical, the emotional, the spiritual, they are dimensions of being human…and so putting words to that comes naturally if you’re…trying to convey a holistic subjectivity…” — Sadiqa de Meijer [20:27]
- She reflects on her collaboration with Amy Rubin and being influenced by Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish diarist, to situate faith within literary and communal frameworks.
Creative Process, Living in Service of Ideas
[24:48]
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Holly draws a parallel between In the Field and Adele Wiseman’s Old Woman at Play, praising Sadiqa’s focus on creativity as an ongoing way of life, not just a goal-oriented process.
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The title essay, which begins with literal fieldwork (catching aquatic insects), is discussed as Sadiqa’s way of examining reverence and attention in both science and writing.
“Biology is the study of life…that study wasn’t extractive. It was meant to be reverent…to appreciate just how many species are present.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [26:59]
- The episode highlights how fieldwork prompts broader reflection on connection, ecological awareness, and narrative.
The Power of Reverence & Condensed Writing
[29:24]
- The conversation turns to the sacredness of daily life and geographical place, with both agreeing that writing—and reading—are acts of attention and reverence.
- Holly notes the essays are "distilled," with “not a word in there that doesn’t need to be there," attributing this to Sadiqa’s background in poetry.
“Poetry definitely is an education in concision and in making every word count...when I think about it, if that's done well, it’s still not really that there are extraneous words.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [36:15]
What Should Readers Take Away?
[31:54]
- Sadiqa doesn’t write simply to tell her story; she hopes to invite readers into a deeper, centralizing subjectivity—to move through the world with attentive reverence.
“My hope is that by going as deep as I can into what I've walked...that for the reader, that turns into inviting them into their experience, that I’m returning to them a sort of capacity…to inhabit that same subjectivity for themselves.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [31:54]
Upcoming Projects
[38:48]
- Sadiqa is finishing a new poetry collection, Kaf’s People (Signal Editions, 2026), which imagines a mythological homeland for people of mixed race or ethnicity, inspired by Mount Kaf in Islamic mythology.
“This book imagines a place…where people of mixed race or ethnicity, that is their homeland, and so it’s…imagining what a place like that would mean.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [38:48]
Notable Quotes
- “Try to write as closely as you can to how your mind works…then it will be really yours.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [14:26]
- “The through line is the notion of bones in this essay…poetic associative leaps.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [11:26]
- “The attention with which you gave everything you wrote about…that’s a word that describes how I felt about your writing—reverence.” — Holly Gattery [31:54]
- “I don’t write to tell my story…my hope is that…for the reader, that turns around into inviting them into their experience.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [31:54]
- “Poetry definitely is an education in concision and in making every word count.” — Sadiqa de Meijer [36:15]
Timestamps for Key Segments
- 03:16 — Book origins and discovering the essay form
- 04:49 — First language, learning English, impact on writing
- 07:50 — Book cover and visual resonance
- 11:26 — Essay structure, writing about death, poetic movement
- 15:05 — Amsterdam excerpt: how places shape us
- 20:27 — Spirituality, faith, and embroidered correspondence
- 26:59 — Fieldwork, biology studies, and the meaning of reverence
- 31:54 — The intention behind the essays: reverence and invitation
- 36:15 — Poetry, concision, and the craft of distilled writing
- 38:48 — Upcoming project: Kaf’s People and mythologies of mixedness
Memorable Moments
-
Holly’s personal reflection on place and art:
“You see a piece of art and you’re like, I know that even though you’ve never seen it before…but it’s speaking to kind of a cellular recognition of a feeling.” [09:42] -
Joint laughter about coming at things slant—as writers whose minds don’t move linearly. [13:31]
Tone & Closing Sentiments
The episode is warm, contemplative, and attentive, mirroring the qualities of Sadiqa’s writing. Both host and guest display genuine curiosity, vulnerability, and reverence for the creative process, ending on a note of shared appreciation for nuanced, distilled, and attentive art-making.