Description
Following the publication of her first book of poems, Shout, it took Gayatri Majumdar nearly 18 years to put together her second, I Know You Are Here, which has poems she has been writing since 2011. While she continues to write about everyday encounters, there, however, is an added dimension of inner and literal journeys she takes to find moments of silence and satori only to discover often that they are right there in her backyard.
Gayatri Majumdar’s multi-layered poetry is deeply reflective, and while she can be spiritual and surreal, she can also be scathing, as in her poem about the keepers of peace who ‘snarl and bite’. Her quiet voice can speak volumes in just a few lines, with sharply etched images that are like word-paintings on the page. These poems are deceptively simple, and linger in the mind long after you have closed the book. Menka Shivdasani, author of Frazil.
I first read Gayatri Majumdar’s poems over twenty-five years ago when I was struck by their ability to sound jauntily assured and utterly strange, all at once. That quality remains unchanged: a large tree trunk with ‘Boom Shiva’ etched across it sits cheek-by-jowl here with a whirl of sea creatures, stars, minibuses, peach and yellow-white prayers, and cats called Emily and Dylan. Underpinning it is an uneasy search, never devoid of humour, for what the poet ironically terms ‘love and some loose change in a boundary-less universe’. Arundhathi Subramaniam, author of When God is a Traveller.