Tag Archives: Poetry

In ‘Lucozade’, a childhood incident reveals caste prejudice within the diaspora. His mother confronts a ‘cleaner-caste Sikh’ shopkeeper; the moment exposes how ‘tamarind agony’ hardened into ‘values rigid as pumped biceps’. Migration did not dissolve inherited hierarchies; it hitchhiked to the newfound geography.
Nagra repeatedly foregrounds writing as physical labour. He speaks of composing with a ‘Bic biro’, calling it the ‘comeback tool of the underclass’. This is a refreshing take on the everyday object.

His humorous answers to questions put to him by the King illustrate his presence of mind and ability to extricate himself from tricky situations effortlessly. There are innumerable stories of Tenali Raman’s cleverness. This story is also one such. Once the King asks him to tell him the measurement of the length and breadth of the universe as also the number of stars in the sky.

The poem ‘Body’s No Picnic’ exemplifies the poet’s respect for women and his ability to portray sensuality with sensitivity and depth. The interplay between desire and loneliness creates a complex emotional landscape, where the search for connection is both necessary and fraught with disappointment.

The next line reads: ‘This would never happen for English poetry.’ Indian poetry still retains its oral roots in its strong bonds with rhythms and music. The audience waiting for a Qawwali knows that it will transport them into the world of youth and romance.

The trope of memory has been used effectively by the poet through the lens of both the young girl and the mature woman. In ‘Wild’ she reminisces with tender emotion about the relationship with her mother. When she was a young girl, mother ‘struggled’ to ‘tame’ her curls, even as the ‘rebellious tresses refused to obey’.

A word now on sources and translations. As clearly perceptible from the quoted excerpts of the poems, Virmani’s translations are focused on capturing the spontaneous wit and crackling immediacy of Kabir’s vani. Towards this end, she dispenses with debates on literary translation; her endeavour is to get as close as possible to the lived, current idiom in the English translation so as to bring Kabir to non-Hindi audiences.

The collection opens with the titular poem ‘Medusa’ and immediately the poet wrests the narrative back with the announcement, ‘I will never reduce the illumination of my sparkling eyes./ Because you claim, my eyes have been your solitary gain’, followed by the declaration that ‘My “ecriture feminine” takes encounters/ with conformist patriarchal schemes.’ While making these assertions and refusing to be reduced to just a body part

Such poems don’t lead you to a ‘deterministic’ meaning, rather they allow the reader to explore and find his/her own. The poet lets the reader embrace them as his/her ‘own’ poemlet. It’s as if the poet is side stepping, allowing the reader to take over and participate in the process of building up of a poem while reading it. It is both creative and courageous on her part to use a Hindi word

Virtually all readers of this collection will recognize the many themes in these poems that tie into the well-known stories told about Krishna such as his childhood playfulness, his love for Radha, and the philosophical wisdom shared with Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. This poem builds on the boundless love of the Gopis,

The poet delves into the facets of relationships and the many selves that surface at each turn on the journey of life. The book also serves as an ode to Delhi, where the architecture and roads transform into spaces Katyal makes his own. The city sheds its unfamiliarity, becoming a sounding board for the yearnings it evokes and the memories that quietly settle into places like these.

Sweet Malida is a deeply moving and sensory offering. It gives readers an intimate look into the world of the Bene Israel, a small but ancient community in India. Zilka Joseph pays tribute to her growing up as a Jew in Mumbai and Kolkata, two very multicultural cities. Her childhood memories are intertwined with the…

Though Rumi’s work is steeped in Islamic philosophy, such is the quality of his verses that they can appeal to a person holding very different religious beliefs. The recurrent Sufi idea of the merging of souls or spirits in his poetry can be interpreted in various ways. A devout Hindu can read the idea of permanence of soul and the notion of rebirth in the following verse:

The first question is, how does one contend with the past? Poems such as ‘Ooh Calcutta!’, ‘Rumination’, and ‘Bengal Presidency’ remind us critically of the evolution of the Imperial Capital from its origin in a cluster of villages—a place chosen as a trading point by Job Charnock of the East India Company in 1690. While several conjectures flourish about ‘Kalikata’ being anglicized as ‘Calcutta’, there is no certitude about this baptism. In the poet’s voice, ‘Let me be free/ To write, to rewrite History/ No. That/ cannot be’

The collection of poems is divided thematically into seven sections. Haunting, elegiac and distinctly feminist in tone, the first four sections explore the pain and trauma of oppression, loss and grief. Her poems are at once evocative, wrenching, and thought provoking. In the opening poem ‘Duhkha’, she contrasts the inability of modern medicine to heal assaults on the soul, a task that can be accomplished only by turning to nature:

Hacker writes more about her fears of stepping out—one of the less-described perspectives during the pandemic is about those who were above a certain age and considered more susceptible to the virus, and as a result, were suddenly homebound. Her poems explore this:

Like Ted Hughes, Daruwalla draws our attention to the natural habitat, an earth that is home for birds and animals, plants and rocks. ‘Winter Migration’ has images of ‘dall sheep’, ‘rust-coloured rocks’, ‘dwarf birch’, ‘antlers’; ‘wolves’, ‘bear’, and ‘the Arctic tern’, ‘the marmot’ and ‘the squirrel’ wake up and move, or decide not to leave. The story of the ‘Alaskan Bear named Sky’ in the poem ‘Mother Bear’ brings alive the instinct of motherhood and responsibilities associated with it. The mother protects and nurtures her young cubs with much love and caution.

The poetry collection by Vinay Sharma moves deeper into an inner terrain. The idea of change is not driven by external factors alone, but by the dissolving of the inner boundaries. The slipping of selves happens so fluidly in this moving, shape-shifting book that I now hold in my hands. It becomes difficult, almost impossible to pin these poems down, for time and space seem to have no fixed hold over the words that inhabit these pages.

Memory is the well from which poets draw inspiration, but poetry is the ‘zazen’ that brings acceptance for loss. Thus in ‘Recognition’ the poet poignantly recalls:
The taste of twin Genoise sponge
baked and partly burnt
for my fourth birthday bash…
…the agency of

Comprising as does Subramaniam’s anthology of the voices of 56 women saints, the question then is whether they all speak in like manner, like a chorus of women saints? Rather, breaking all expectations of homogeneity that labels tend to entail, Arundhati’s compilation showcases the diversity inherent under the label ‘saint’ thereby prodding the reader gently to not experience life through accustomed wisdom but rather live for herself as a seeker after her own truth making herself the architect of her own path, with her own body, and in this material world.

Several challenge ideas that love is but a current coin for transgressivewomen or that learning and fine aesthetic sensibility are domains in which only the well-to-do are proficient. Many poems, particularly those by transgressive women affirm the significance of looking beautiful, the relevance of accoutrements, cosmetics, graceful mannerisms and many while asserting the importance of their composers’ selfhoods are also confessional without a trace of embarrassment or shame.