Ode to a Badly Done News Paper Cutting*
Once
it’s im-
Poss
-ible
to go
Back
to a
life
with
-out
mira-
cles,
no-
thing
aro-
und
is
weak
eno
-ugh
to fo
-ld ap
-art or
scant
wish
-es fro-
m. we
keep
growing
in Universe
‘s rearview mirror
and voids suddenly
turn soft at the edges
like tapioca flailing on
the surface of water, it is
the secret of all human be-
ginnings: womb or catchment
or the simple warisan to braid
my grandmother’s thinning
coal-gray hair with chameli oil. Once we learn
to un-sink our fallacies and cradle them with
a hearth song, they crackle in their sleep, never sparking off
to light the dark paths again. Instead we like to imagine:
if the river returns some day, it will still recognize us.
* A far too early spring cleaning found me a shakily done newspaper cutting from two years ago that read: Climate warning as world’s rivers dry up at fastest rate for 30 years. As I read the news it felt irrelevant to pitch it as a tragedy. We are humans, our beginnings are very humble but inspirational nonetheless. We re-emerge in a single lifetime ever so often. It is silly to think that a mighty river won’t. But when it does, I don’t think it’ll grow to care about us all over again. Then it made me think if my grandmother would like to be my grandmother again in her next life. That was the end of it.
Sristi Sengupta
Sristi is a non-binary, neurodivergent writer, artist, and educator from Kolkata, India. Their work has appeared (or is set to appear) in The Burningword Literary Journal, Thread literary magazine, Metachrosis literary magazine and other lit journals and mags. They practice their acceptance speech for an imaginary award more often than necessary. Keen on exploring the spirituality of progeny, anthropology, and syntax through everyday poetry, they are here for (and until) all things rhapsodic.
Why this Knocked Taylor Out:
I think that this poem navigates its "trick" really well. I appreciated how the crafted line breaks then opened into a delta rather than staying confined. And within that delta, I was genuinely compelled by the language and how it was working in tandem with the form.
When we talk about open field poetics in tandem with ecopoetry we talk about how the page is an entryway for landscape into the poem beyond the syntax. Charles Olsen writes “A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it…by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader,” and we see that functioning really well in Sengupta’s poem here. The poem's rhythm begins in a bumpy place. The reader is disoriented through the rough enjambments and quick propulsion through lines. At the moment the poem begins to open into its delta “keep/growing/in Universe,” we are centered on a broad connection between us and the natural universe. That’s why it’s crucial we get words within that delta like “womb” and “braid”. The rhythm smooths out as the poem does. The way being connected to our histories, our landscapes, can smooth us.
And that ending, oh my gosh. Perfect.
Interview:
Why did you choose Team Taylor for this poem?
I knew I could trust Taylor with recognizing the honest syntax and timber in my poems because my culture is directly intertwined with them. I was hoping to share my poems with somebody who values the use of dislocation, breaking and rarification of poetic forms. Also, she has stunning muscles, I mean have you seen her?
You had an author's note that went along with this poem, I'd love it if you shared that and expanded on it here.
Most of my childhood was spent in the house that my grandfather had bought and rebuilt when my father was a kid, that house, like any other stunning piece of retro architecture, witnessed me as I withered into adolescence. We lived with my grandparents for so long, it felt like an escape when we finally shifted to a flat of our own. Very niche, very micro. Forward to fifteen years later, I realize how independence comes with a whole lot of cleaning. Literally. The physical exhaustion often reminds me that the river is three minutes away from where we live now. Ever so often I go there to catch up with the egrets and herons, watch urchins rock their canoes, saree-clad women shampoo their long hair in the cold water. My grandparents are gone. For a moment I feel like I have escaped the same thing twice but through different holes. Like the sun escapes the sky every day, like the west bank keeps the east bank waiting.
I so appreciate how you are weaving ancestry with climate change in this poem. Does that theme pop up frequently for you? Do you see this poem in conversation with your other work, or with the work of other poets?
One of my favourite river poems is Mary Oliver's 'At Black River'. There is so much clarity in accepting that we are a world that is torn apart between people who want to live in it and people who want to live for it. Living for it makes a lot of sense to me, personally, because I feel I have been here before, loved the same old people, hung the same old moon and stars on the same old shoulders of a naked Gulmohar tree. It is so beautiful. I pray for it every day.