Description
“Poetry became a form of expression for my grief, criticism and anger. For me, this was my freedom song.”
SALMA’s writing stands out for its audacity and boldness in engaging with language, ideas, society, and politics. Her life is as dramatic and inspiring as her writing has been. This book seeks to bring alive the richness of her vocabulary as well as her perceptions of what life and creativity mean to her through the translations of her selected poems by K SRILATA and SHOBHANA KUMAR, an in-depth interview with CHANDANA DUTTA and essays written exclusively for this book by her closest friends — MEENA KANDASAMY, PERUMAL MURUGAN, and KANNAN SUNDARAM. The magic of these words will now find their way into the hearts of readers.
i, Salma unveils scintillating poems that throb with the fervour of the original even in translation! Fearless and bold, direct and simple, these poems are rooted in the very living of life while they transform the mundane into magical and the real into surreal. — Sukrita Paul Kumar
Rajathi Samsudeen is a Tamil writer well-known by her pen name Salma. Overcoming orthodoxy and having been confined within her home, Salma has now become an international literary figure and spokesperson for women’s rights. Her works have received acclaim globally and she is renowned in contemporary Tamil literature. With three volumes of poetry, three novels, two collections of short stories and a travelogue, Salma has made her mark as a distinctive Indian literary voice.
Reviews
Salma interview: How poetry became an outlet for my grief, my freedom song in The Federal
Sutanuka Ghosh Roy in The Book Review
Kabir Deb in Outlook India
The freedom of a woman is corroded many times in the twenty-four hours of a day. Even when we ask a woman to hide the lace of her bra, maybe out of respect, we are disrespecting the space where she lives. A free-living, quirky, witty woman sounds appealing. But at the same time, the weird vulnerability of a man has to do anarchy with his own self to pass judgment on a woman he does not even know. In the poem, ‘The One Who Has Become Herself’, the poet presents the joyous version of a playful and joyous woman. The fabricated moral concepts of our society cannot disturb her choices since the former ones are too weak to submerge the latter ones even from a non-ideal perspective. History is not just a documentation of the bloodshed. It also presents strong arguments on the necessity of a woman’s freedom to balance humankind.
Amanita Sen in The Antonym
From friendships fraught by the gaps that cannot hold two persons together, to finding resemblance with a cockroach who has been stamped upon- the themes for her poetry are stark and speak of a reality that perhaps no person can shy away from. But the power of the words lie in how they connect the reader to higher thoughts, intent wise.
