First Contact

230.00

Author: Soni Somarajan
Published Date: 01/09/2020
ISBN: 978-81-945093-6-3
Paperback: Paperback
Pages: 104
Category:

Description

A narrative spanning four-and-a-half decades, Soni Somarajan’s First Contact is a memoir in verse — an illuminating arc of autobiographical imagery rendered in a voice fresh and transcending. From the earliest years to the present, across times and places lived in, the collection dwells on a riveting mosaic of joy, triumph, love, loss, anguish, and angst, embodying the poet’s indomitable spirit in the face of tremendous odds.

This fine collection of poems records a life’s experience, from the first poem, the birth of a relationship, through poems of memory, childhood in a military family, connections, rain in all its moods and colours, all with the grace of word-music and a poet’s way of seeing. A Malayalam alphabet symbol is like a caterpillar, ‘a ho-hum line of rowing paddles’; falling fruit ‘the hello of yellow’; sunlight ‘a speeding train, a corruscating line of beads/….a turn of phrase at the tunnel’s end’; to the last line of the final poem, a vow to survive loss: ‘Now that I walk the waters, I know I’ll live despite you.’ — Gillian Clarke

Soni Somarajan’s poems have — to use a phrase from one of his poems — the ‘vapour of stories’. That is his aesthetic — being caught unaware by the moment, catching the moment unaware. That secret is the secret of his poems — a secretive and intimate pleasure, as nutritious as dreaming. — Sumana Roy

Soni Somarajan is a poet, copywriter, editor, and content consultant. His poetry and writings have featured in anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including Muse India, North East Review, Kitaab, The Bangalore Review, New Indian Express, Marie Claire, The Four Quarters Magazine, The Alipore Post, Bengaluru Review, and is forthcoming in The Bombay Literary Magazine. An alumnus of the University of Iowa’s IWP Advanced Poetry Seminar 2013, Soni is the Creative Head at The Quarantine Train, a poetry collective, and lives in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. First Contact is his debut collection of poetry.