Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
A slice – uneven
– of chin, wild vermillion tracks
on a widow’s peak,
two-dimensional manga
heads, voices in vibgyor
shimmy in and out
of place on a MacBook screen;
pixellate into parents,
a sporadic aunt,
peering gods and panting dog
blink-blinking aloud
in the sudden midnight sun
until eyes and emotions
find their feet, and tongues
rewire synapses, renew
the quest to connect;
mothers swift to slit
static, space and sentiment:
Your hair looks awful today,
do you go out looking this way?
Karthika Naïr is the author of several books, including Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata, a reimagining of the Mahabharata in multiple voices, which won the 2015 Tata Literature Live Award for Book of the Year (Fiction). She was principal scriptwriter for Akram Khan’s DESH(2011), Chotto Desh(2015) and Until the Lions (2016), an adaptation of her own book. Also a dance enabler, Naïr’s closest association has been with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet as executive producer of works like Three Spells, Babel (Words), Puz/zle and Les Médusés, and as co-founder of Cherkaoui’s company, Eastman.