Description
I have a wallet that bulges inside out
even without a single coin. Like this
hammock which you ordered for me
from Mexico, I sling my thoughts on
to it and then there is no desire in me
to go back and forth. Often, I think of
you trapped in the mountains wary of
weather and idle avalanches. I know
my prayers will keep you safe and I
must wait with the coffee and some
olive oil for your tired feet.
These poems have a unique fragrance, the fragrance of violet plum flowers subtly blending into an arena of other smells that she fondly associates with parental home — the smell of jams, old embroidered cushions, and old furniture. … Some of the most moving poems in the collection are rooted in a kind of angst that follows us after the loss of a parent. … The best thing about these poems is that even the political ones have a philosophical mooring and they raise deeper questions. — Anamika
Ranu Uniyal is Professor and Former Head, Department of English, University of Lucknow. She was a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Hull, UK. An author/ editor of ten books, her articles and book reviews have been published widely. Her poetry has appeared in Cordite Poetry, Mascara Literary Review, TEXT Special issue (Australia), Jaggery, Medulla Review, Sketch Book, Setu, Twenty 20, Whispers (USA), Littlewood Press (UK), Bengal Lights (Bangladesh), Asia Literary Review, Cha (Hong Kong), Turning Pages (Germany), Words and Worlds (Austria), Ethos literary journal, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Dhauli Review, Muse India, Kavya Bharati, Femina, Manushi, Indian Literature, Madras Courier and several anthologies, both in India and abroad. She has published three poetry collections: Across the Divide (2006), December Poems (2012) and The Day We Went Strawberry Picking in Scarborough (2018), which was translated into Spanish as El dia que fuimos a coger fresas en Scarborough by Traduccion de Carmen Escobedo de Tapia in 2020. Her collection of Hindi poems, Saeeda Ke Ghar, was published in 2021. She co-edited essays Reading Gandhi: Perspectives in the 21st Century (2022), Mahatma Gandhi: Essays on Life and Literature (2023), Understanding Disability: Interdisciplinary Critical Approaches (Springer 2023). She has read her poems at international literature festivals and conferences in Almora, Aligarh, Bhubaneswar, Berhampur, Chemnitz, Calicut, Coimbatore, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kanpur, Lancaster, Lucknow, Madrid, Meerut, Tashkent, and Udaipur. She was on a Writer’s residency in 2019 in Uzbekistan. Her poems have been translated into German, Hindi, Oriya, Malayalam, Marathi, Spanish, Urdu, and Uzbek languages. She is the Chief Editor of Rhetorica, a Literary Journal of Arts, University of Lucknow. She is a founding member of PYSSUM, a daycare centre for people with special needs in Lucknow.
[email protected]; ranuuniyal.com