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
Reviews
Nishi Pulugurtha in Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 8, Number 1
In several of the poems one hears this strong voice, that is at time muffled by angst, at times momentarily overwhelmed by grief, and yet stands out strong and steady, a testament to a life itself. There are several poems in which the mother is lost in the folds of time – “The present, blurred and faceless, has no challenges/ for you” (“Grandfather”). “I Cannot Answer” refers to this blurring further, more specifically – . . . Pyramids of memory stacked/ inside the brain might soon/ dissolve into Alzheimer’s, then/ my own name would be less than/ a whisper. … What characterizes the voice heard in the poems iscompassion, of trying to hold on in spite of the circumstances that seem so adverse. ‘Listen to my voice,’ the poems seem to say. The poetic voice is one that voices the personal and yet is universal, in a simple, lucid style with a spontaneity that lingers on.
Sutanuka Ghosh Roy in EKL Review
Throughout the slim volume, Uniyal’s interpretation of life and its myriad hues is both reverent and reflective. She didn’t indulge in showmanship; nor did she try to impress with overly poetic flourishes. Instead, she allows poetry to breathe. “I blow kisses in the air and/ watch them collide with/ with ever-vigilant grains/ of ash and disappear./ Of love, they have no evidence./ Of remorse I have none” (‘Only Grief’). Each poem unfurls slowly, often pausing just long enough to let the silence settle before the next poem, lending the collection a rare emotional intimacy. By the end of reading This Could Be a Love Poem for You one can sense a gentle stillness in the mind, an afterglow of poetry that had not only been read but deeply felt.
Aman Nawaz in PYSSUM Literaria
What begins as a rendering of life’s fragility in the first two sections deepens into a full weight of loss in the final section, Thy Eternal Grace. Memories of the loved ones lost cling to the body as ‘You remember more of what is no more,’ says Uniyal. Even as the collection renders grief, loss, politics into lyrics, it employs words that the readers touch, feel, and smell as they flip through the pages with occasional painting that adapts to the mood of the poems.
John Thieme in Scroll.in
In This Could Be a Love Poem for You, her fourth collection of verse, Ranu Uniyal offers a powerful poetic account of her wrestling with the profound sense of loss that pervades her everyday existence. Sometimes this loss is highly personal, and several of the volume’s most moving poems deal with the passing of the poet’s mother, but the poignancy of such personal responses to bereavement expands outwards into a more fundamental grappling with mortality, rooted in a feeling that her own existence is transient.
From the Book
English in Me
English is as big as a mustard seed
in my conscience.
I have made a living
all these years,
read and chewed
and sometimes failed to digest
its embryonic juices.
Constantly I am being told,
you know nothing.
Here is a poseuse
without pauses
or commas
jutting off hyphens
and siphoning
all the prepositions
with umms and hos.
My desi friends
make fun of
my Sanskrit seeped in
accented English;
they say nimboo pani
as an ideal drink
cannot survive without
sugar and salt
adequately mixed.
When People Stop Listening
Crocuses bloom.
The eyelids drop,
unable to bear
a single note of diffidence.
The sun is soft
this mid-summer May,
as ashes bring
bodies home.
And we put them on,
our tinted glasses
revealing little or nothing,
woes on hold.
Aconites shrill.
The earbuds wilt,
words deflate
and all is still.
Fighting the Blues
Learning to cut corners
on a sleepy Monday noon,
he banged his head against
a book and said I will
read you soon.
Too late for breakfast
clutching his mug
for coffee, he opened
the fridge and was miffed,
with eggs squashy.
Plumbing through channels
settled for news
barring the punchline,
all so dumb, were
folks with similar views.
Curling on his toes
at an unearthly hour,
he picked up his towel,
rubbed the gel on his feet.
I heard he slipped in his shower.
Back in bed, unable
to move, he grabbed the book
and true to his word
was engrossed in the tale
of a green-eyed crook.
Us in December
We become like two aliens in twilight.
Hence, I wait for midnight.
We came to each other
as battered souls
and tried to stitch
ourselves anew.
Lockdown
He talks of nothing but insomnia and gastroenteritis.
The two have spun his body, made him cantankerous
and impossible to bear. I give him ways to counter
both with pranayama and prayer. He grows impatient
and I quiet. The night swells and so does his belly.
At last, we both settle down with a drink and realise
how much we have lost in this game called love.
Between Light and Dark
Do you think you have enough time to
gather memories of miraculous fronds?
Suddenly, you get the news that she is no more.
You had thought of going on a holiday with her.
Moments scarce and uncertain
bridge the distance between light and dark.
The doors are likely to remain shut.
Is this the appropriate time for mourning?
Suddenly, your child jumps into your arms
and defiance shatters to dust.
Back home, your best friend’s mother
gathers her potted plants and puts them out in the sun.
