Recipients of our Poet-of-the-Month Honour

In my eyes, a rainstorm gathers,

I write you a poem.

Your body burning on the pyre

lights a fire in my pen.

Your kiss reached

my lungs, I lost my heart.

Your touch burned

my words in the Indian summer.

How can I fill

the vacuum in my life

with anything else?

I press my fingers

against your memory—

the curse of being a poet,

feeling everything so deeply.

I miss you

for years after you are gone.

‘Craving You,’ a poem essay, originally appeared in Sweta Vikram's poetry book: Wet Silence (Modern History Press: July 1, 2015. ISBN-13: 978-1615992560).

Sweta Vikram

Craving you

I felt inspired to use Sweta’s own words to convey the richness of this collection, and I do so in my two 'found' poems, which are offered below. These will, I hope, speak for themselves and do justice to her fine collection.

For

An Achievement of Excellence as a Poet

Sweta Srivastava Vikram (www.swetavikram.com), featured by Asian Fusion as ‘One of the most influential Asians of our time,’ is an award-winning writer, three times Pushcart Prize nominee, Amazon bestselling author of 10 books, novelist, poet, essayist, and columnist.

Her latest book, Wet Silence, is a full-length collection of poems about Hindu widows. Sweta is also a certified yoga teacher who shares the love and power of yoga with trauma survivors. A graduate of Columbia University, when Sweta is not doing yoga, cooking, travelling, writing books, or posts for magazines, teaching creative writing, or giving talks on gender equality, she works as a digital and content marketing consultant. Sweta lives in New York City with her husband and can be found on Twitter [@swetavikram] and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Words.By.Sweta)

Sweta Vikram

Patrons: Lord Parekh & Lord Dholakia

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Wet Silence

"Sweta Vikram captures bold raw passion, poignant reality and crafts a powerful voice for the voiceless."

--Kate Campbell Stevenson, Actor & Producer

Wet Silence bears moving accounts of Hindu widows in India. The book raises concern about the treatment of widowed women by society; lends their stories a voice; shares their unheard tales about marriage; reveals the heavy hand of patriarchy; and, addresses the lack of companionship and sensuality in their lives. This collection of poems covers a myriad of social evils such as misogyny, infidelity, gender inequality, and celibacy amongst other things. The poems in the collection are bold, unapologetic, and visceral. The collection will haunt you.

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Bacause All is Not Lost

We have all lost a dear one at some point in our lives. Grief, depending on the relationship with the one deceased, affects us differently. I feel my Dada and Mausi's absence every single day for disparate reasons. But these two losses have taught me that their time had come. And that life is about celebrating those alive and not just mourning those who have moved on. Optimism and faith are the keys to overcoming the roadblocks life puts in our way. This book tries to state that there is always hope for anyone coping with grief. No one can tell us exactly how; the voyage has to be undertaken by each of us individually.

Learn more about the author at www.swetavikram.com

Two Poem to Honour Sweta Vikram by Brian G D’Arcy

I felt privileged when Yogesh invited me to comment on Sweta Srivastava Vikram's latest collection Wet Silence. It is good to be welcomed back to Word Masala e-newsletter as one of the contributors to the very first Word Masala paper anthology, published in 2011 and already a collector’s item.

Immediately on first reading I found myself on an emotional rollercoaster ride. Sweta explores the glory and the pain of lost but enduring love, and the pain and darkness of love betrayed. And she does so with both a searching gaze and an unforgiving candour. As with any rollercoaster ride, it pays to keep your eyes open or, in this case, your eyes, heart and mind. The forty-five poems in three sections are individually short and powerful, and collectively commanding.

Guest Editor Brian G D’Arcy’s Comment

WMP Award for Excellence

BELOVED

My longing for you hasn’t ceased.

Solitude is my partner in bed.

I run my hands over your contours in my mind,

prowl through memories of our sweet days,

the warm memories of our togetherness

when I wasn’t forced to wear a black mask

and drape my trembling torso

in a white cotton sari.

I didn’t ask for this silence.

I am still trying to understand.

BETRAYAL

I am broken.

I don’t harbor illusions that my name was on your last breath.

You left me feeling like a

freshly dug grave

as wet silence became my friend.

I didn’t plant roses in your memory;

Some promises dissolve in the rain,

emerge as poems.

I’ll indignantly rise, and sing songs of freedom.

And I’ll come back smelling of jasmine.

Note: Both 'found' poems rely entirely on lines taken from Sweta's Wet Silence collection.

About the Guest Editor

Brian G D’Arcy is a prize-winning poet whose work ranges from light-hearted limericks to passionate odes and haunting villanelles and ghazals. His poetry collections are Tha Shein Ukrosh: Indeed the Hunger (Bellasis Press), Footsteps in the Dust (Sixties Press) and - hot-off-the-press this month - Ghost Horses Dancing (Sixties Press). Jointly with his wife Debjani Chatterjee, he edited two acclaimed anthologies for Frances Lincoln Children’s Books: Let’s Celebrate! Festival Poems from Around the World, which was selected Book of the Month by Paper Tigers magazine, and Let’s Play! Poems about Sports and Games from around the World. He is Treasurer of the Mini Mushaira writers and chairs the Healing Word workshops.

Ghost Horses Dancing by Brian G D'Arcy

£7.95 ISBN 978-1-905554-28-7

To order this book at DISCOUNT please contact Yogesh at Word Masala.

Ghost Horses Dancing by Brian G D'Arcy

£7.95

ISBN 978-1-905554-28-7

To order this book at DISCOUNT please contact Yogesh at Word Masala.