Seven Leaves, One Autumn: the very title is poetic, evoking the vivid shades of yellow, orange and red through which autumn leaves pass as they turn from green to brown. This collection brings together the work of seven award-winning women poets: Zohra Saed from Afghanistan, Julie Boden from Britain, Clara Janes from Spain, Kishwar Naheed from Pakistan, Ute Margaret Saine from the USA, and the two editors, Savita Singh and Sukrita Paul Kumar, both from India.
The editors explain in ‘a few words’ at the beginning that ‘Having known each other’s works and with an acute awareness of the difference in style, content and perspective, we decided we needed to be together in the same volume. What prompts us to do this? Is it the gender affinity that transcends cultural specificity? Or, is it a shared aesthetics or vision? Our poems, we thought speak to each other effortlessly and put together, they are likely to create a harmonious chorus of varied notes…while there is a “seeking” through a range of experiences presented, there is also a quiet resistance built into these voices, the resistance to any kind of dominance or exploitation. What is shared is a desire to create new meanings and fresh premises for human existence, particularly for the female gender.’
Perhaps the unifying theme is that of a primordial love, which initiates and sustains human life. As Clara Janes puts it so beautifully in ‘The Well’: ‘Love/ has many ways;/ love is a resonance/ remaining suspended/ in the air and, crossed/ by uniting harmony,/ revealing the return of all colours and shapes;/ arc of light;/ a huge wave/ expanding, gathering/ till it flows into the rhythm/ of breath/ and initiates the heartbeat…’
The compulsion to write, the art of shaping words into poetry, is a recurring theme in Ute Margaret Saine’s poems. In ‘My Home is Words’, she writes: ‘My home is made just of words/ far-flung fluttering tatters of words/ words stacked like shredded newsprint/ that shuffle and creak like cardboard… My home is made of homemade words/ that form out of homespun chores/ sail along alone sans bridge or boat/ stream from language to language’. In ‘Cutting Away Words,’ she likens her poems to sculptures: ‘I the sculptress/ cut away the words/ Not necessary/ The bulk of a body/ Unwelcome/ or disturbing.’ Others take up the theme. In ‘Tor, Tor, Tor: What use is it blackening perfectly white paper?’ Zohra Saed writes: ‘Tor/ (English)/ Stay as the black of my eyes/ where God marked with his pen/ the punctuation to begin my soul/ sparked also my obsession/ with cutting into white hills/ needles of utmost black’. (‘Tor’ means a hill or rocky peak in Middle English.) And in ‘How to begin,’ Sukrita Paul Kumar describes the elemental process through which a poem comes into being: ‘This way/ that way/ It has to/ Surface on this paper…/ From the black holes/ Of the universes, seen and unseen,/ Through meteor storms and/ Somersaulting planets/ The hand has to appear with/ The finger pointing/ This way/ That way’.
As one would expect in a book by women poets, relationships figure prominently. There is love fulfilled, as in Ute Margaret Saine’s ‘Dream Boat’: ‘You are the ship I ride seaside/ I’ve clambered on board of you/ to end the rip of a dire sea of roiling troubles/ in your extended rolling bliss/ I sleep dream-wrapped in our love’; but there is also domestic oppression, as in Kishwar Naheed’s ‘Anti-clockwise’: ‘Even after you have tied the chains of domesticity,/ shame and modesty around my feet/ even after you have paralysed me/ this fear will not leave you/ that even though I cannot walk/ I can still think./ Your fear/ of my being free, being alive/ and able to think/ might lead you, who knows, into what travails.’ We feel the ache of a mother letting go of a child who has grown up in Sukrita Paul Kumar’s ‘Parting Again’—‘Sadness sits like/ a snake in my belly/ turning and twisting/ giving me hysterics/ It sits/ hissing subtle threats/ of yet another severance’—and the sharper pain of a mother whose adult child does not want to spend time with her in Kishwar Naheed’s ‘The Poison Cup of Mother’s Love’: ‘Walking along with me you do not feel any pleasantness/ This too is like carrying a heavy burden/ The burden of continuing a relationship/ The burden of having to say something/ The burden of insisting on some kind of love!’ The dread of parting from a beloved sister comes through in Zohra Saed’s ‘Sparrows in a Dish’—‘One day, I will be left/ Unsistered (more tragic than unmothered)/ And obsessed with looking into mirrors/ trying to find your face/ in the shadows of mine’ —and the grief of losing a beloved brother in Julie Boden’s ‘For My Brother Peter’: ‘Three months after the funeral, an optician said:/ “Your pain is due to unshed tears.”/…We are the same tree, you and I./ Born of the same wood,/ struck by the one blow./ We are the same tree, you and I.’
The resistance to any kind of domination or exploitation, mentioned in the few words at the beginning, is proclaimed defiantly in Kishwar Naheed’s ‘We Sinful Women’: ‘It is we sinful women/ who are not awed by the grandeur of those who wear/ gowns/ who don’t sell our lives/ who don’t bow our heads/ who don’t fold our hands together/…It is we sinful women/ who come out raising the banner of truth/ against barricades of lies on the highways/ who find stories of persecution piled on each threshold/ who find the tongues which could speak have been/ severed.’ The same resistance inspires Savita Singh’s proud declaration of independence in ‘Who’s (sic) Woman Am I’: ‘Whose woman am I/ Who is my lord/ Whose legs do I massage/ Who gives me food to eat/ Whose beatings do I take…/ Such were her questions/ The one who sat on the seat opposite mine in the train/ Travelling along with me/…After a lot of thought I said to her/ “I am no one’s woman/ I am my own woman/ I eat my own food/ I eat when I feel like/ I do not take beatings from anyone/ and no one is my lord”.’
Sukrita Paul Kumar’s ‘Tsunami’ conveys the tragedy of a natural disaster with utmost economy in a few poignant images: ‘Footprints of lovers/ in intimate dialogue,/ Footprints, those of old infirm fishermen, dragging in sand/ Frolicking footprints of children/ All caressed into oblivion/ each day by the waves/ Today…/ They’ve carried away/ the footprints, as also/ the feet and/ bodies over them’.
There is the same compassion for the victims of a pogrom in Savita Singh’s ‘On the Map of My Country,’ but it is shot through with horror at the cruelty of those who inflict such suffering on innocent, helpless human beings: ‘So many wounds on the body/ Many more on the mind/ Even more on the map of the country/ A heap of burnt corpses on one side/ On the other hangs an unborn baby killed in the womb slit open’. In ‘Mushtaq Miya’s Flight,’ the victim acquires a name and history, and we are thrust into the unbearable position of witnessing a ghastly atrocity: ‘That he’d have to leave all and flee/ with no shelter to stop and rest/ Passed sixty, he was too old to run,/ his heart sick/ He had no choice/ but to fall./…Mushtaq Miya turned to ashes/ Humanity too/ The sword that slew him/ still dancing on the street/ summoning fire’. Julie Boden’s powerful ‘Wasted Lives’both mourns and protests against the destruction of countless lives by war and genocide: ‘Pity the Nation. Pity the Man/ who carries the gun of a grey suited plan./ Harvest of Terror. Harvest of Sorrow./ Playing fields yesterday, killing tomorrow./ The suicide bomb, the hate of Sharon./ The victims of gender and race who have gone/ into graves of Anon and Anon and Anon./ We will remember them.’
These extracts from a few poems are just a sample of the treasures hidden between the covers of this little volume. Some of the poems were written in English and some have been translated into English, with the translators acknowledged. Translating poems is itself an art, and in a few cases the result is less than perfect, yet in most cases they read very well, and we would hardly know they were translations if we had not been told they were. At the end of the book there are short biographies of the contributors, summarizing their impressive achievements. Coming from a diversity of backgrounds and personal experiences, their voices blend to produce a harmonious whole, crossing cultural barriers effortlessly and speaking to readers across the world. A vision of dignity, justice, compassion, beauty and love shines through the collection as a whole.
Rohini Hensman is a writer, independent scholar and social activist based in India.