Bhaskar Parichha

Read the blurb first: The book ‘is a celebration of the myriad shades of life…In a world of conflicting emotions, it becomes important to seek the irresistible joy that lies at the core of the human heart.’

Ranu Uniyal is a celebrated name in Indian poetry, even though her oeuvre is limited to just three anthologies – interestingly; she brings out one collection every six years. The earlier collections were: Across the Divide (2006) and December Poems (2012).The present collection has about eighty poems all of which have been published earlier in various journals and magazines both home and abroad.

Prof John Thieme,University of East Anglia,  fittingly says the anthology ‘reinvigorates the possibilities of elegiac verse’.Ranu  Uniyal is one of the ‘most original voices writing in India today’ and her poems have been translated  into Hindi,Urdu,Malayalam and Uzbek languages. A professor of English at Lucknow University, her other books include two criticisms. One   on Raja Rao’s Kanthapura and another one on the works of Margaraet Drabble and Anita Desai.

What excites the reader about this anthology is the poetic form and style. There are limericks, haikus, narratives and also couplets. The poems have a contemporary touch too. Take this one for example:

To live and to live happily

Is well-nigh possible

even if you lose your virginity

and the pockets in your trousers

refuse to carry your driving license

and the cell phone drifts

And finally dissolves inside

the hem of your skirt

your computer blinks

as you put your email id

and there is no face book

to confide in and you are left

with only what you believe in. (From a young girl’s diary)

Or this one:

Every woman

Is a man

A man is

A woman

Madam

Holds

Adam

And Eve is

Eve

Howsoever you

Please. (Mystery)

Ranu’s style of verse is pulsating and the themes are trite which make the poems lovely and enthralling. One distinguishing feature of the anthology is prose poem – an experimentation to go into raptures over .Prose poems, as we know, typically appear as prose, but reads like poetry. As Peter Johnson says, ‘prose poem plants one foot in prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting precariously on banana peels.”Seems, here too the experimentation is remarkable.

There are at least half a dozen of prose poems in this collection which are of varying length  with an array of styles and subjects e.g. ‘At Falaknuma’,’Love Lies’,’Ma’s imperfect advice’ and ‘When God came down to earth’. And, the smallest poem in this anthology is just eight words:

Make it even,

this floor

without a ceiling (A Plea)

 

Published by Dhauli Books and with a handsome cover by Sarita Chouhan and Kirti Thakur,the anthology has some significant departures and a few momentous arrivals too. The poems are a mottled mixture of ideas – love, hate, hope, loneliness, spiritual bliss and so on.

Fruit picking, as the title of the anthology suggests, is an impressive calisthenics in muse and each of the verses indeed makes a fine pick.

The Day We Went Strawberry Picking In Scarborough

By Ranu Uniyal

Publisher: Dhauli Books

818/2502, Gobindeswar Road

Old Town, Bhubaneswar – 751002

2018

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