Description
Language assaults my body. I bleed
rivers, wading through my own blood.
I cry; my single cry echoes the cries
of a hundred sisters, huddled, waiting.
In this confident debut, Jhilmil Breckenridge conjures up a revelling of being truly alive, and explores mortality through experiences of homelessness, trauma, poverty and more. It offers an insight into a woman’s mind, indeed all womanhood, as she reclaims her feminine power. This is a song for India, for women, and for the marginalised.
Jhilmil Breckenridge’s poetry is honest and moving; it is the work of a ‘poet on the run’ who stops to smell the flowers. There is depth, sensitivity and a deep awareness of the horrors of the modern world. This is the work of a woman, who, forged by fire, has come out stronger, and reclaimed herself. Her poems, with their striking imagery, are deceptively simple and speak to the heart, but she is also a poet of sensuousness and subtlety. These poems linger long after one has read the book. — Menka Shivdasani, author of Frazil
The poems in this collection are driven by a direct and fearless gaze which explores the role of women in both Afghanistan, India and the UK and refuses to look away. Wide-ranging and ambitious, they weave together the personal, political and the social to examine the role of power and violence in relationships and society. In a poem, where a window becomes a way of looking at the world and the self, Jhilmil Breckenridge writes ‘The window asks me to be present/to witness’. She answers this calling throughout this collection, wielding intricate imagery with an accomplished use of form to create a rich and moving collection. — Kim Moore, author of The Art of Falling
These haunting poems use women’s concrete and specific experiences of love, loss and motherhood, including the poet’s own, with a rare candour. Jhilmil dares to step into the dark depths of a woman’s mind, a mostly devalued and politicised area, where sexuality separated from procreation by a patriarchal society, creates a strange zone with long buried feelings about families and a dual sense of power and powerlessness. — Mrinal Pande, author of Daughter’s Daughter
The hard-won poise of these poems is a tribute to the redemptive power of language, of art. Lurking not too far beneath the well-wrought surface of these poems, threaded through elegance and high-stepping grace of language, there is a sense of existential risk, a lived experience of danger that takes these poems well beyond the timid angst of contemporary poetry. It is that which renders their achieved sense of control, ultimately, so moving. — Alok Rai, author of Hindi Nationalism
This is poetry that sings, laughs and cries in the voice of mother, citizen, outcast, daughter. Poetry that recognises what it is to be a stranger at home, and at home in a far away country. Poetry that holds pain in its gaze and refuses to turn away. These are poems that long for peace and insurrection. There is some brave, honest and beautiful writing here, framed by paintings in the poet’s own hand. — Cheryl Moskowitz, author of The Girl is Smiling
This is iridescent poetry, of the taste of tears, of rage at hate, of amnesia and remembering, of love and loss, of elegies and hyper-life, of wildness and calm, and always of the light that comes through. A stunning burst of talent, that unsettles and captivates. — Harsh Mander, author of Looking Away
Jhilmil Breckenridge is a poet, writer and activist. She is the founder of Bhor Foundation, a mental health charity. Her areas of work are mental health, domestic violence and trauma. Jhilmil is currently working on a PhD in the UK and her poetry and other writings have been widely published and anthologised. She tweets @jhilmilspirit.