Description

But still, he drew only crows. More crows. Crows that were fluttering scratches on the rags he found. All his colours — pollen, turmeric, sap of leaves, indigo, palash flowers — crowded around them. Colours for the trees, margins, skies, in-between spaces. Everything else was soot, cowdung, charcoal and lampblack for his crows. Thousands and thousands of them. Sometimes, he drew them with great care. Perfect lines, round eyes, clear claws. At other times, he drew them like they were sounds: cawcawcaw of black.

Crowbite is the third collection of poems from birder, bird photographer, and poet Nitoo Das, after Boki (VAC, 2008) and Cyborg Proverbs (Poetrywala, 2017). The poet says, “Most of the poems in this collection were written in a daze in April 2014. While putting together this manuscript, I chose the sequence I wrote that month because they represent “home” to me. Crowbite is about home.” Nitoo Das’s work has appeared in several anthologies and journals like Poetry International Web, Pratilipi, Muse India, Eclectica, North East Review, Poetry with Prakriti, Vayavya, Poetry at Sangam, Uncanny Magazine, Almost Island, Diaphanes, The Indian Quarterly, etc. Das teaches literature at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi.

Reviews

Shaiq Ali in The Sunflower Collective

The title poem Crowbite draws a striking parallel with Premchand’s Sadgati (Salvation). While in Premchand’s short story, Dukhi, a Dalit, succumbs at the hands of a Brahmin, in Das’s poem, the tradition of structural opposition she creates throughout the collection is given shape through Bhobai, a “lower caste” painter, and his metaphysical leap and changing himself into a crow. The poem Crowbite transcends death through transformation. Bhobai has realized that it is his body itself which is used as a chain by the “upper caste” Sharma Master and release from it is the only solution. In the realm of the humans, his existence is through his caste which chains him to his body, and therefore breaking away implies, transformation in bodily terms but salvation in metaphysical terms.