Description

These poems belong to the earth and are expressions of it in its most essential forms, rhythms and feelings, woven as they are into living human memory and the very fabric of life and time. Sreekala has titled the collection Corridor of Leaves, leading us into memory-scapes that evoke emotions, reflections and total recall. They effortlessly take us into remembered personal and community worlds through a richly layered experience of then and now, existing as they do in a living state of pure being. Sreekala’s poems are deeply buried in Kerala, her homeland, and are permeated by the seasons, customs and sensory flavours of childhood, youth and age. It is in their detail that they come alive in their allness and envelop us if we choose to succumb to their inherent magic. What makes them so accessible is the simple ease of their emotionally charged language which tastes of the poetry of Malayalam, her mother language — sensory and immersive. — Randhir Khare

Sreekala Sivasankaran is a scholar, poet, essayist and translator based in Kottayam, Kerala. Formerly associate professor at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, and a fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teenmurti, New Delhi, Sreekala has two poetry collections in Malayalam: Samayathinte Manaltharikal and Veedu Thirike Ethunnu; and three collections of English poetry: You Walk with Me, Dream of the Butterflies and Stranded. She has also published stories titled ‘Pink Mothers and the White Monk’, ‘Two Stories’ and ‘Amaltas Spring’ and a pocket book of haikus in Hebrew–English. Her latest work is a collection of essays in Malayalam, Poonthottangal, Naam Sancharikkumbol (Logos Books). She is the co-editor of One Hundred Poems by Women (forthcoming).

FROM THE BOOK

You Took That Out

You took that out from me

A voice stuck in my throat

for a long time

Now they call me a poet

 

The voice came out

shouting back at me,

declaring its independence

 

A destitute I am now

Not wanting to say

Not wanting to write

Just wanting a moment of freedom

for my self

 

Goodbye, Mother

Summer showered rain

Teardrops trickle down the village’s eyes

The leaves that fell in the autumn

have gone underneath

Goodbye, mother

Until we meet again,

I am in your line of solitary stars

 

Father

In the sounds of birds at dawn,

in the leafy movements of nature,

on the afternoon earth,

where dry leaves run around

in the threshold of evening,

where silence hangs heavy

In the darkly spreading twilight

somewhere,

dissolved in the river of memories that flows along —

there you are, father —

a breath, a quiet sigh,

an awakening

You are deathless love,

the current beneath all things,

the endless flow of unseen energy