New Chapbook: Till The End Of June

So, you might remember, I wrote a poem everyday in June and have been trying ever since to pull all the posts together into a meaningful chapbook. It has taken this long, but despite conspiracies by life, the universe and everything, here it is, finally, done, just as the year burns out. My new little compilation is called ‘Till The End Of June‘.

If you’d like to read it, drop an email to suspension.point@yahoo.com for your free PDF copy. It’s ready to be sent out!

Hope you enjoy reading it over the new year. I will look forward to your feedback!

A review, A new year, Many questions

Khaya Ronkainen has posted a short review of my book Duplicity on her blog. You can read her comments here.
Thank you, Khaya! Much appreciated. Check out her new book ‘The Sheltering’, available on Amazon.

With the year limping to a close, it’s a good time to take stock of my writing – procrastination, attempts, failures et al.

Duplicity was published in Sep 2021, in the pandemic era. So that’s like a lifetime ago. Since July this year, I have been working on a poetic memoir that I am posting online as it develops. No blueprint, no storyboard, no timeline…this began on an impulse and 4 months later, is still chugging along. Poetry grows with the poet and the poet grows with their poetry. Or something anodyne like that. I sort of see 2023 standing, hands on hips, asking what on earth I plan to do. Yeah, good question! As if there is an answer.

Dear person who reads this post, do tell me if you’re going to be reading or writing poetry next year. What’s on your reading list? Do you have a book in the works? Is poetry dead? Should we just go goblin mode and netflix the hell out of the next 12 months? Can I be a writer if that was the (Oxford) word of the year and I didn’t know it existed?

The blog turns 8

The first post on this blog was on Oct 25th, 2014.

Two books, two chapbooks, two secondary blogs, one pandemic later…here I am, still doing this and still glad I started this journey. Thank you for coming along on this incredible ride!! If you’ve ever stopped here, read a poem, heard a poem, read a book, bought a book, published a poem, followed a blog, liked a post, shared your thoughts…thank you, you made a difference.

Sharing a poem from my book, Duplicity, today.

Ferocity

This grief borrows
from the primordial
wild, the wild
that birthed the
chaos, the chaos
that still stirs the
mud, the mud
that doesn’t
hold on to the
river, the river
that forgot the
way to the
sea, the sea
that cannot
unlove the
moon, the moon
that is always
whole and
dark, the dark
that tries to tell you
that light is
false perception.

Tell me, have you found
a different way
to console yourself
tonight?

The June that was!

My June writing marathon was an absolute fun ride. I didn’t do NaPoWriMo this year but all the stars aligned to make the writing happen in June. All of you who read and liked and critiqued and commented: Thanks a ton! Couldn’t have done it without you!

Also delighted that a few of the poems from June were picked to appear in Via Negativa’s weekly poetry digest. Dave Bonta puts together an amazing collection each week and am truly happy to have my poems included. Thanks so much, Dave. Here are the links to the poems:

One of them is real posted on June 1, appeared in Poetry Blog Digest 2022, Week 22
Till the end of June posted on June, 7 June 7, appeared in Poetry Blog Digest 2022, Week 23
Anatomy of a poem posted on June 14, appeared in Poetry Blog Digest 2022, Week 24
So much, so loud  posted on June 24, appeared in Poetry Blog Digest 2022, Week 25
The arbiter of all sorrow  posted on June 28, appeared in Poetry Blog Digest 2022, Week 26

Thanks again to those who read right through the month and gave me all the encouragement and support I needed. You know who you are!

(Oh and I am putting together a little chapbook centred around the June poems with some additional pieces. More on that when I have it all done! Watch this space!!)

What happens in June

Happy to share that three haibun I wrote recently have all appeared on Via Negativa. Many, many thanks to Dave Bonta for giving my work a home. Check out this author-tag link  or the last few Poetry Blog Digests on their website. This one is the latest.

I’m going to be posting a lot more through June (everyday, starting tomorrow, at least that’s the idea) – old poems and new, borrowed and blue. Mostly blue, considering how everything seems to be going these days.

Do stop by and say hello, read and share if you will. Also on June 4th, it will be 3 years since my first book, Water to Water, was published. If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear from you. If you haven’t, it is still available on Amazon – both kindle and print editions. Either way, let’s do poetry and let’s talk!!!!

See you on the trail, fellow poets!

Lockdown Notes IX

afterwards:
just waiting
for the waiting to end

************

Sharing this micropoem from my book ‘Duplicity‘, published in Sep 2021. ‘Duplicity’ contains a mix of freeverse and micropoetry – cherita and modern haiku/senryu. This one is from a series titled “Lockdown Notes” 
Both print and kindle editions are available on Amazon. Also listed on Kobo. More information and links here. You can read other poems from the book here and here.
Do grab a copy today and let me know what you think!

City Cherita – XII

 

they come to the flower bazaar

for jasmine, for marigolds, for roses —
for funerals, for weddings, for worship —

at night, the unsold flowers
become this city’s story
of all that did not happen

*****
Sharing this cherita from my book ‘Duplicity‘, published in Sep 2021. ‘Duplicity’ contains a mix of freeverse and micropoetry – cherita and modern haiku/senryu. Both print and kindle editions are available on Amazon. Also listed on Kobo. More information and links here.  You can read another poem from the book here. Do grab a copy today and let me know what you think! 

This city as punctuation

I frame this city in untold stories. But it
wants to be a poet, fitting my life into
six rhyming couplets that soften the
consonants of its dark. Mornings, we

swap metaphors and endings. It says
love is the hyphen between its sacred
peepal trees. This is an old trick, turning to
punctuation when words are scarce. It is

the eighth lunar month. Outside every
door, oil lamps burn. The wind holds its
hands around them like safe parentheses. I
search for spaces. The space you occupied.

The space between your arms. The space
between possibility and semicolon. Between
being and full stop. Where does the
emptiness end? Where does the next sky

begin? This city strikes a bell like a tercet.
Thrice. Like an ellipsis. The silence
between us tastes of missing apostrophes.
It draws faith as three question marks.

***

Sharing this poem from my new book ‘Duplicity’, published in September. 
Both print and kindle editions are available on Amazon. Also listed on Kobo. More information and links here.

Duplicity

Duplicity, my second book of poetry, published by Notion Press, is now available.

Duplicity contains poems that look at love and life, through the prism of a big city, before and during the pandemic. There is a mix of regular freeverse and micropoetry, around the central theme, so I hope you will find it interesting to read.

Currently available on:

Amazon India

Amazon USA

Amazon UK

Flipkart India

Notion Press

Also on Goodreads for your feedback and comments.

Hope you get your copy soon! I look forward to your response. Do let me know if you can’t get the book in your region.

New Book… Soon!

Happy to share that my new book duplicity will be out this month! More on the backstory, the poems, the cover art and the listing schedule in the next few days… hope you’ll give the book a warm welcome!