#140: Poems about Home + The Alipore Post Poetry Month
Hello!
I write this newsletter to you from Alipore, Calcutta. I'm spending some time at home, with a new family member about to join us very soon.
I moved homes in Bangalore earlier this month and have been trying to feel grounded in the new space. And I find myself often thinking about the concept of home, about how some people try to find their roots while others are being uprooted. I recently started working for an artist as a researcher, who made me collate data on natural disasters in India this past year to understand the impact and magnitude of displacement due to these calamities. Since then, I haven't been able to stop thinking about migration and homelessness, about the future of this precarious world.
On my poetry dive last week, I came across an interview with poet Ed Skoog, who talks about zugunruhe - a German word to describe the restlessness of animals before their migrations - the itchiness to get going, the behaviors before leaving.
"Birds exhibit it; everything that migrates tends to behave a little differently right before taking off on what might be an enormous or fatal journey. I feel that restlessness. I feel it as a human who travels from place to place. I don’t really feel like I have a home. I have a lot of different places where I belong at certain times. That fugitive nature is something very central to the nature of poetry and poetic language."
-Ed Skoog
This week, I had intended to curate poems either about colours (because of Holi) or birthdays (since I turn 30 in two days). Instead, I found myself looking for unconventional poems about homes, about rooms and spaces that we strive to call our own, on finding a place in this world where we feel we belong.
1. Befriending A Poem by Marjorie Maddox
Invite him home for dinner
but don’t insist on rhyme;
he may be as tired and as overworked
as his distant cousin Cliché.
Best to offer intriguing conversation
that’s light on analysis.
Allow for silences and spontaneity.
Most importantly, like any good friend,
be faithful and patient;
remember to listen.
Sometimes he’s shy
and just needs a little time and coaxing.
Much of what he has to say
lies between the lines.
2. Visiting My Parents in Summer by Tishani Doshi
It seems they have always been here
these crows outside the window,
whom I cannot see, but hear.
It seems they have been making their noise
for such a long time I cannot remember
what it was like before.
Perhaps it was summer
and there were leaves on the ground
from trees silently dying.
Perhaps it is still summer
and all you are doing is listening
to your life pass by
in a single afternoon.
Here is your childhood room.
Here are the distances between sleeps.
And here are the crows outside your window
singing their harsh songs, glistening.
3. The Moment by Margaret Atwood
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
4. Half Written Love Letter by Selina Nwulu
I often imagine my parents came here
after hearing the sea of the British isles.
As if they put their ears to its shell
and the waves threw themselves tipsy
against conch, willing them to come over.
Then there were the things
we understood without words;
how sun in these parts is a slow swell,
the coastal path walks of Dundee,
graffiti hieroglyphics, damp shoes
against Sheffield cobbles and
the tastebud clench of a tart apple.
We learnt this country fiercely;
my father felt its knuckles crush his jaw
my mother delivered its children,
I have been kissed deeply by its tongue
it has licked Yorkshire on my vowels, left me
with the blushed cheeks of a first crush.
I am a half written love letter
it does not know where to send.
So when go home
becomes a neighbourhood war cry,
we understand we are not what you wanted,
have been clean written out of your folklores.
But we have built here, loved here, died here,
already carry the heartache of leaving.
When we go home, we go back reeking of you.
5. Protocols by Vikram Seth
What can I say to you? How can I retract
All that that fool, my voice, has spoken,
Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked,
The protocols of friendship broken?
I cannot walk by day as now I walk at dawn
Past the still house where you lie sleeping.
May the sun burn these footprints on the lawn
And hold you in its warmth and keeping.
6. What we need is here by Wendell Berry
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
Recommended Listening:
1. Bolero - Wiener Cello Ensemble 5+1
2. You Slipped Away - Andy Shauf
3. Macrophobia: Fear of Waiting - Jamaal May (Amazing!)
4. You Seemed So Happy - The Japanese House
5. Bermuda (Yoshi's Story) - Cuddle Formation & Emily Reo
6. New Order's Blue Monday played with 1930s Instruments by Orkestra Obsolete
Links of the Week:
1. The Maskbook COVID-19 Project promotes a sustainable world and takes the current pandemic as an opportunity to change the relationship between humans and nature.
2. Satellike
3. 30 things I learned by my 30th birthday by Nina Iordanova (I turn 30 on April 1st, and loved reading these pearls of wisdom by Nina)
4. Subscribe to Mason Currey's Subtle Maneuvers, a newsletter on routines, rituals, and wriggling through a creative life. His latest advice column talks about impostor syndrome, which so many of us seem to be suffering from.
6. Ahead: A short story about living with and as a headless person
8. ^ This little guy chose to dress as Amanda Gorman for Dress as Your Idol day at (remote) school
9. I'm really loving The New Yorker documentary series: The Many Lives of a New York City Doorman + Love Lessons from a Forty-Four-Year-Old Plant Shop in New York City
10. Everybody needs to read and learn from Monocle’s digital decency manifesto
The Alipore Post Poetry Month: April 1st - 30th, 2021
April’s nearly here and I’m delighted to share the prompts for The Alipore Post Poetry Month 2021. 30 days, 30 prompts to write to with the rest of the online poetry community.
The idea is to cultivate a poetry writing habit over a month, to read and feel inspired by each other’s words. Anybody who wishes to participate can write a poem on the corresponding prompt from April 1st to 30th.
You can use the hashtag #thealiporepostpoetrymonth to share your poems and follow what others are writing :) Unlike last year, I’m not going to be picking my favorite poems daily for the website since it gets overwhelming for one person to read so many beautiful poems everyday, and also, because the idea is just to write everyday and have fun doing it. However, I will be reposting all the Instagram stories with your poems that are posted before 10pm everyday, so feel free to tag @thealiporepost!
There will also be surprise giveaways of calendars, postcards, stickers and other cool merch throughout the month :D So make sure to be consistent and put your writing out there. If any brands and publications would like to host giveaways in collaboration with The Alipore Post, please write in to thealiporepost@gmail.com.
In my April anticipation, I wrote a mini poem that I’d like to share with you:
April approaches
The poetry vault opens
Without the key
This is my newsletter: Annada Menon
In the latest edition of This is my newsletter, illustrator Annada Menon talks about how 2020 was a challenging year and how she revisited various sources of inspiration - the books, songs and TV shows - she spent time with over the past year! Fans of children’s literature, folklore and comics, there’s some great recommendations in here.
Read Annada’s newsletter at https://thisismynewsletter.substack.com/p/this-is-my-newsletter-33-annada-menon
Really resonating with perfect comic by Worry Lines on the power of art to save us:
Wishing all of you a lovely week ahead. And to those of you participating in the poetry month, happy writing! :) I can’t wait to see what we all write together.
Sending virtual cake and hugs,
Rohini
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Hi Rohini, happy 30th birthday from a grateful fan. You're doing beautiful work, I just wanted to thank you for sharing poetry and other art with us. It makes my drab inbox warmer and brighter. Wishing you all the happiness!