Description

A mixed tape of memory, desire, and defiance, these poems hum the quiet songs we live by.

Each of Srividya Sivakumar’s poems is a poetic vision that is simultaneously philosophical, political, and deeply personal. One witnesses a complete surrender and immersion reading her poetry of startling revelations in phrases that are uniquely hers. — Rochelle Potkar

Srividya’s brilliant poems shimmer with undercurrents of conflict and betrayals even as they radiate the essence of femininity and allure. Compellingly titled, this is poetry at its most poignant. Her writing has introspective luminosity and linguistic artistry. Srividya’s lines are effulgent with some deep knowledge filtered from a profound wisdom about love, intimacy, womanhood, relationships and parting. The poems are fierce yet vulnerable, bold but tender and filled with a cadence and rhythm that is entirely unique to her. — Vinita Agrawal

Dr Srividya Sivakumar writes with the quiet intensity of someone who has listened long and well to the murmurs of the human heart. A critically acclaimed poet, her first collection, The Blue Note, was published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata. Her second collection, The Heart is an Attic debuted at #1 in Indian Literature on Amazon’s global platform in 2018.  Her verses — some of which have earned accolades like the WE Kamala Das Poetry Award shortlist and a Best of the Net nomination — speak in hushed, clear tones of memory, loss, joy, and the small sacredness of the everyday. Srividya’s relationship with poetry is not only one of creation, but of celebration. Her weekly column, Running on Poetry for The Hindu (2014-2016) and her ongoing monthly feature The World in Verse in the Deccan Herald reflect her deep belief in poetry as a way of seeing, a way of being. Both speaker and teacher, Srividya brings the same lyricism and clarity to her public engagements as she does to the page. With over two decades of experience in language and communication, she continues to shape voices — young and seasoned — with the conviction that words, well-used, can carry worlds.

Reviews

‘The skin of this love poem is grafted / on other poems’: A mixed tape of memory and defiance: Read an extract from the book in Scroll.in

Krishna Kumar N V on LinkedIn

Each poem plays like a track from a live recording, where emotion is raw, breath audible, and nothing is overproduced. From the very first note — the opening poem ‘Why Would I Want Daffodils When I Can Have Sunflowers’ — Srividya sets the tone for what’s to come. Here, jasmine-scented memories of her ammama replace Wordsworth’s romantic daffodils. In doing so, she challenges inherited metaphors and makes a larger point about cultural identity and poetic ownership. The poet’s Tamil roots are not just referenced — they are sonically embedded in the poem.

Venu Gopal Nair on Amazon

Srividya’s poems have an approachability and an Indianness that speaks from the heart. Take for example, “Why would I want daffodils when I have sunflowers? What meaning do ‘dadfodils’ hold for a Tamil girl? Rings so true. As to why English literature in India seems to ignore Indians who mastered the language over a century ago. Perhaps they didn’t have the same skills that native English speakers did. But the poems would have resonated in class and opened up the minds of children to whom daffodils were a completely alien visual.

Sonu M Kothari in The New Indian Express, Chennai

For her readers, this printed work is a lot more nuanced than her previous work. “The previous book, The Heart is an Attic, focused a lot on love poetry. This one has language, love, country, and more. It has a wider range of poetry,” she explains. But as a poet, when she reads them now, Srividya feels her voice remains rooted. “When I go back to some of the stronger poems, I realise my thoughts are still the same. I identify with them just as much today.”

Kabir Deb reviews The Soundtrack of My Life – Side B in Pena, Issue #8 November 2025: At the Altars of Witnessing

We often nurture thoughts which sound louder in silence. The progression of this silence appeals more since the content has an impact. People rediscover themselves using the voice of their quiet bodies. On a personal level, they tend to become the navel from which an entire lifetime blooms without any compromise and apprehension. In the book The Soundtrack of My Life – Side B, Srividya Sivakumar endorses those silent moments in which most people speak without any shilly-shallying. They talk to themselves only to validate their identity and its multiple appearances. Srividya acknowledges them by speaking about herself along with every act that has a role to play.

Neera Kashyap in Scroll

In her new collection of poems, The Soundtrack of My Life – Side B, Srividya Sivakumar is fearless in her expression of desire and the sexual experience. This is Sivakumar’s third collection of poems, after The Blue Note, and The Heart is an Attic. With this work she pushes against traditional norms that define women in roles of chastity, duty or devotion, invoking a feminism that is essentially personal, allowing for a mix of many elements: desire and fulfilment; intimacy and tenderness; nostalgia and loss; betrayal and assertion; desire and dream; love’s reversal and grief.

P Aranya in Poetly

These poems, drenched in the senses, form a picture of relationship, and sensual association that is often punctuated by the language of material things, and objects.

From the Book

Talking Tubers with Lovers

In the aftermath of the argument, we reel
like out-of-control amusement park rides.
You can be Takabisha. I am The Steel Dragon.
Brittle and bleary-eyed, we handle the morning after
like it’s made of baby bird bones.
Here a gentle touch. There, a cajoling tone.
Do relationships work on complicit silence?
We both have an equal number of marbles,
but can’t decide who has lost their mind.
When we talk at each other, it is only to toss
glass and stones at each other.
I am somewhat aware that words have power.
Only the truly skilled know how to do just the right amount of damage
releasing one word at a time like pills from a childproof medicine bottle.
Do you have more?
I’ll take some of these green ones and we will call it even.
Or you can take all of mine and we will call it quits.
It’s this last severing that’s the hardest.
This ending, a blunt knife through frozen butter.
It has no finesse and no finality.
The shards melt in the heat of what has been uttered
and disappear, like love.

Grotto

Spelunk into the warm dark love —
throbbing gripping to not let go
slick with salt and semen —
cave of my heart.
Once there, climb up the walls limber up those vast expanses
where each hurt and each harmonious chorus is etched
in swatches of turquoise.
Your clumsy efforts to find a foothold in this cold tundra
leave petechiae all over my skin.
But then you like to mark everything.
I give you a book and it comes back blushing with crimson.
A photograph and the colours are more vivid,
the features softer.
A poem and a line is changed and the ending questioned.
A dish and the ingredients are switched.
Blood oranges for lemon zest.
Chocolate for most everything.
What chance does a fragile robin’s-egg blue breath hold
against such tenacity?
Make it yours.

Basorexia
(How to kiss a face in a mask)

Spell K-I-S-S on the forearm.
Whisper the word in an ear.
Place an eyelash on the back of his closed fist.
Stir the rum in that glass with a single finger.
Soak silk in your perfume and place it on his pillow.
Run your fingers through the short hairs on his neck.
Make love with your eyes.
Sweep through the room in the cream negligee
he gifted you.
Spoon on the rug even if it is a warm afternoon.
Feed an erect nipple to a hungry hand.
Embrace the idea of (long) distance love.

Duty-Free Dreams

At the airport, the rafters chatter
with gossip.
The sparrows fly, laden with news
of my travel
The birdsong, cheerful and ominous, joyful and quotidian
Running away from classes that don’t deliver,
promises unkept, people who aren’t my people
I can fly anywhere, but I can’t pack light.
The monokini is lined with fingerprints
Black coffee bitter with a smattering of regret
Toothpaste loaded with everything unsaid
A neck pillow with the weight of twin heads
The shawl warmed by that night by the fireplace
Pills that carry release and remorse
Amidst the flower-pressed paper, lies paused love
The luggage I carry always weighs more than it looks.
This tin-lined heart,
fragrant like neem blossom and smooth
like river stones.

The Soundtrack of My Life – Side B

A few years later, I stopped
the hugging.

1

Hugging that particularly forlorn
tree at the quarter-way mark on my way
to the lake.
I would sit at its feet, arms and legs wrapped
around its pitiable girth, and sing.
Some days, it was Carry on my Wayward Son.
Other times, House in the Woods.
The songs changed, but the sentiment remained.
Grow. Stay. Deep. Sway.

2

Hugging that simmering pool on the road
at the halfway mark on my way to town.
I would carefully step inside, feel emptiness about my legs,
look down as though seeing it for the first time, and speak.
I would tell this illusion:
‘Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.’
I would throw in Funeral Blues one day, Refugee Blues, another.
I liked the sentiment.
Imagine. Shine. Dissappear. Die.

3

Hugging that funnel of breeze
that awaited me at the three-quarters mark to the bus stop.
I’d stand still and hear the viciousness around me,
enveloping me in turn, a cold hug.
I would tell this breeze what they say about gossip,
self-doubt, fortitude, and fragility.
I like to think that it quietened down for a bit.
Roundabout. Rage. Eyes closed. Ribcage.

4

At the destination, I
do not hug that body
as familiar
to me as the words I read each night.
It has been 45 days, and he does not see.
Some days, the distance is a crack in the wall.
Other times, a chasm.
A poem. A song. A cry. A thorn.
I talk to myself at night.