Kuffir has very kindly translated my poem ‘The Nizam’s Wives’ into Telugu. Sadly, I can’t read the language but for those who can, it’s here at his blog Fakeeram. And here is the original:
The Nizam’s Wives
Four girls in brocade, tussar
and stiff smiles, the slow stranglehold
of gold on their hands, necks, faces.
They were the children who aged early.
Were they friends? Did they
share their fractured power
while swapping dolls, diamonds
and nights? Or were their eyes
darting and vicious over the kheer?
Did they avoid the bath at certain times?
Perhaps, three of them colluded
against the fourth, leaving
frogs on her bed,
peas under her mattress,
spit in her tea.
We can’t know. In this photograph,
they’re just four girls
released from purdah,
frightened and unblinking
into the cameraman’s flash.
Just a quick note to say that the latest issue of Nth Position is up and two of my poems, ‘Separation’ and ‘Speaking in Tongues’ are in it. Do read. I haven’t been submitting too much recently, mainly because I got busy with my first collection. So I’m glad to see these somewhere other than on my computer.
I haven’t had time to read the issue properly because the power has been gone ALL day and has just come back and I’m due to meet a friend in 20 minutes. On the upside, I got a lot of actual book reading done because I had no computer.
And yes, I know I’ve said this everywhere else but once more, Ultra Violet, the feminist site I manage, has a new home on the web. There are some changes in structure, focus, content and mood as well. Do check it out and mail me if you want to write or post something as a guest.
Over at The Guardian, they’ve started a new series of collaborations between poets and photographers. Poems and photographs being among my favourite things, I was quite excited. But gah. I think the poem might work okay on its own but the photographs are so hopelessly literal, so dull, that they sucked all joy out of the thing. Here’s another poem by Sarah Maguire (the poet); it’s got the same attention to detail, the same sense of looking at small objects through a telephoto lens, and a similar sort of poofy ending.
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I prefer my poetry a little stronger, more bourbon than Bailey’s Irish Cream. Like this Sharon Olds reading of her poem ‘I Go Back to May, 1937′.
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Or Sonia Sanchez reading ‘Poem for Some Women’, startling and very, very sad. (Incidentally, Sanchez just won the Robert Creely Award.)
Not snow geese, these. But beautiful all the same. Or at least, i think so. I’ve always liked geese despite their honking and their ill reputation as silly creatures. I think it’s because of ‘the ugly duckling’, one of my favourite fairy tale characters when i was little. Anyway, these were pets at one of the resorts where i stayed. They recently bred goslings, and grown-ups and babies were all having a jolly time in the green-brown pool.
The tree outside is dead.
Unhand me, will you? My bones
melt in the heat when I go out
in the afternoon sun.
Look how crows have replaced the leaves.
Their silent, alert eyes fix me.
They have me down as someone
who fails continually
to understand the simple things.
That water boils.
That one is alone.
That there are things one cannot bear.
They know I have lost my destinations,
that I am unplanned and motiveless.
I need to be cut down,
resprouted in some place
where land meets water
with relief
and there are geese,
fish, sea urchin.
Poet, writer, journalist and editorial consultant in Bangalore, India. My first collection of poems, City of Water, was published by Sahitya Akademi in February 2010. I also run Ultra Violet, a site for Indian feminists.
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