Rochelle Potkar's Blog, page 61
February 21, 2016
On going home…
And these words that rest in Shambaugh House. Oh house! you bring back such delectable memories.
Portland Stage Company
My quip at Portland Stage Company after the party and before the show. The energy that PSC and Portland, Maine has because of its crackling firebrand actors and its relaxed and hospitable people is something to witness. From where does such energy come?!
February 1, 2016
Book review: The Branches by Dominic Alapat
My ratings: 3/5
The sequel to Circling the sky and Reeling is here to complete the trilogy with poet Dominic’s favored motifs in an imprecise curation – as embryonic as — nature’s sun, moon, bird, and sky. This third book has starker shades, darker colors, closer to night, but not bleakness. The residue that gathers through the sieve of these fine-grain poems are earthy.
as your life in trains and rooms go by
Compared to his other books painted in feather-faintness, this book has energy huddled together. Thoughts reform, on the sliding line of the poet’s existence. Intimate whisperings. The echoes of heartbeats.
the stars scared / all run from place / and fall into the darkness
and
I must lie here in bed blank / my open eyes so strained/ I could burst/ any moment / and die.
But I detect pain segueing from the capturing of ennui to the movement in me the reader, making me additionally thoughtful. I am transported to the last window, last day of a life, moved into worrying for the poet. Is he okay? Will he live? Long enough?
I cannot understand / anything of / I cannot understand anything.
Or
I tell myself all is here all the sheer sad songs of mother moon / the unborn the living / the billion voices the dead the dying / the crying / I tell myself / you’re stuck here / you’re lost / you’re crazy / and when people ask you / how you’re doing / you say cool / like a fool.
Or have these poems attained the soul of an impressionist or escape artist that eke out these emotions from me and succeed?
In my childhood I had read a translation of Nirmal Verma’s novel and now I am reminded of this. Juxtaposing this abstract with child-like gaiety is:
where I was Emperor in my great Gothic castle / lord of all I saw / sailing to school / in my paperboat
These poems are so gently told, so subtly hypnotic in their simplicity that I have to pay close attention. I read this book twice – once when I let it all seep, once before sleep. I realize this book comes prescribed with the time of day it has to be read in, because each poem has finality, tonality… of night, that can be intercepted in a hypnagogic state.
the cold grey metal / of the garden railings / dripping raindrops / of blue skies / swimming upside down
and
there is this lamppost in a mountain beyond your mind they say
In nostalgia that burns into tungsten beauty with stars sprinkling blue nights like a mindless vacuum
and
and I would walk in my windcheater / amidst the fallen branches / on the footpath / the crushed yellow laburnum floating / in puddles
If I have a grudge it is about immobility and against it. To the Pessoa and Picasso of loneliness, the Proust of haunting lonesomeness I wish to see him move on, move out from where he stands. I want his feet to travel just like his mind, drift, so he can give me more stories from other windows. I wish him to drop his motifs now at the thresholds of this trilogy or then keep them for other skies.
and wish I could fly / wish I could get out of / my body and my mind
*
This book is available here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/dominic-alapat/the-branches/ebook/product-22413518.html
January 18, 2016
Poetry and haibun workshop, LSR, Delhi
My first (solo) poetry workshop on free verse and haibun went well.
The misty Delhi morning stretched into the noon keeping the hours pleasant. I went to Chath for a previous night’s shivering-cold dinner and guess what! – jal jeera with rum (yum!).
The noon lunch was at Social. Then small talk at the lake of blue.
It was poetic, except for the flight I missed because of running between two commitments. Even after keeping tabs on time, how could I get the in-between travel times wrong? Especially when I was at the board meeting of KJ Somaiya College discussing and reviewing the syllabi for first year undergraduate classes, Arts and Commerce, in the capacity of an Industry Expert for the first time. I should have known better than to book a flight so scissor-tight to another event. But I managed another not-too-late flight. 10 pm arrival into the chattering Delhi cold. Not too bad.
I was happy to spread the haibun virus.
Hyderbad Literary Festival (HLF 2016)
Had a lovely time at HLF 2016. Too many little experiences and snippets to even weave a patchwork of a paragraph. So I am leaving this with just a few photos. But meeting people – old friends and getting acquainted with new, immersing yourself in panel discussions both as a panelist and audience, meeting over drinks, long noons, dinner, wine, rum, and poetry. Talking, talking, talking late into the nights… on surreal pathways… fairy-tale-like. Where there is anchorage of true words, laughter, stories, and sincerity it will always be delightful. Now-a-day, i measure experiences by how warm they keep the bonfire of my heart, even on cold nights, especially on cold days. If I thank the people for this magic it will run into paragraphs. You need that many lovely people to make for a superb experience. Or maybe sometimes just one – person, epiphany, sunray, it depends.
January 2, 2016
Posters galore
I thought of stringing together posters this time into a story. So here it goes:
1. Read poetry at India Art Festival, IAF conversations, Nehru Centre, Dec 2015.
2. Facilitated a poetry workshop at the American Library, Dec 2015.
3. Attended a gender-based violence film fest on the lawns of the American Library, Dec 2015.
4. This is the poster for Neesah magazine. Do submit to it if you have LGBT-based fiction, poetry, book reviews, book-related writeups. We are accepting of reprints.
December 14, 2015
Gratitude
Alright, some personal good news!
I survived my first silent witch hunt and group hostility coming off smelling like roses! (Ah! That’s a cliché). So I have come off smelling more resilient, with more self-belief, more strength and clarity. And the prudence to henceforth not be defined by anybody’s unmet needs from me, rather only by my unmet needs from life.
I would like to thank the one-eyed mob for their happily hostile techniques and stabbings in the dark. Thank you for sending nasty messages via pigeons. I ate up your soggy messages and slurped up pigeon broth.
Thank you also for being so sweet, so civil, oh-so-nice and polished on the surface. Nothing is cracking up, trust me. Neither your make up. Neither mine. This is an expensive brand of cosmetics, kya? Revlon? Teflon? Kya?
But I am so happy you happened to me. I have counted my countless blessings. I have learnt to care more and indulge my most adorable friends. I have learnt to take nothing – absolutely nothing blissful (ideas, people, places, happenstance) — for granted. I have become grateful to life, manifolds.
You weren’t as effective as friends, but wonderful as enemies.
You know who you are.
A Big Big Thank you!
November 24, 2015
of what this really is/was
I thought I would be talking about Iowa, speaking about it. But it is so huge an experience that I am swimming and swimming in it. There were so many things that happened to me there – it has changed the climate inside my head.
In the people i met, the lives I glimpsed, the pain and lightness in the words and writings, the pourings of the soul, the purring, the fun, the food, the good and cold. Forget returning to the same place, Mumbai, I haven’t even returned to the same person – my old/er self. We never do return in any case, do we? Each day we are new people – our older selves watching.
But what when a large experience happens? We have heard of PTSD for unfavorable situations. Have you heard of it for favorable ones? That’s why I presented a bucket list of what I did in the last post. So I can be unhinged of this responsibility of pouring an ocean into a mere jug/mug of a blog post. This experience like a slow-release drug attacks me with an epiphany every single day and I know an iota more of what happened. What if even on my last day, my last breath I receive the final epiphany of Iowa, from Iowa?
So let me stay with ghosts, phantoms, echoes, reverberations, gurgles, wing-beats, shivers, shadows, stutters, gasps, claps, the sun on corn, heaven, drawbridges over rivers, the color turquoise, weather-beaten prairie land. Day by day Iowa changes and becomes something else, new, like the cult of heaven. It fine-tunes into a kaleidoscopic orgasmic thought with every remembrance. Then i remember the friends who live in Iowa – who get stunned with the ‘distortion’ with which we (others) hyper-perceive Iowa. Iowa to them is not the Iowa to us. For us it is the womb of nourishment, something so pure, jovial, lush, green, nourishing – it could only be heaven on earth. To them it is many more and other things: skiing, shoveling, house, garden, car, mart, bills, parties, work, life, changing weather.
Perception is place. Distortion is place. Memory too. And no one can take the Iowa from my head. What if I say it is better to perish inside a distortion, a delusion, than anything else?
I don’t know how all this will fossilize into and inside me OR will I become a fossilized human-person?
For everyone Iowa was different. A different heaven. Haven.
If i don’t write more on Iowa and just move on with other posts, news just know that I am lost in its wilderness, its great ever-expanding spaces and that I can’t write anything more. Incapacitated. And that give me 15 years, no 20, 25 and I will tell you – I might be able to, by then – of what this really was.
But trust me on this one: I saw the unicorn, and I fear nothing/ no one now.
November 16, 2015
What I did in Iowa – summary report
Increasingly, I have been using social media to log my actions so I can take leave of memory and live haphazardly. Now again, instead of a nice chatty post, through my jet lag, all that I am posting here is a summary of what I did in Iowa at the International Writing Program. Some day I shall get more conversational. Promise.
For now. This.
Had a haibun ‘Selena’ and a poem ‘Baby’ dramatically-read by a group of talented actors at the Global express stage, University of Iowa.
Read on the theme ‘brain’ in the Anthology series, Linn Street.
Presented on the panel (with Q&A) on ‘ Feminism with a little f’ , Iowa city public library
Presented on Child rights and realities in India , Iowa City Foreign relations council
Traveled to Chicago – mid-level residency
Visited Poetry Foundation, Chicago
Traveled to Seattle – mid-level residency
Presented at the panel: Technology makeover, Book Festival, Old Capitol Senate chamber, Iowa
Read poem ‘Golden city’, ‘Deer’, haibun ‘Stillborn’, ‘Summer Hills’, ‘The behavior of rain’ and an excerpt of my short story ‘Parfum’ at Prairie Lights Bookstore
Presented Trikal (Dir. by Shyam Benegal) at Cinematheque with introductions and parting notes.
Presented at the class at International Literature Today, Chemistry Building on my country’s literary heritage and what shaped me into and as a writer
Participated in the UI Dance collaboration based on an adaptation of my story ‘Dream warriors: Ramayan redux’
Presented What we saw on America, farewell day, Iowa city public library
Traveled to Portland Maine
Brainstormed and rehearsed with the uber-talented team of actors and director at the Portland Stage Company
Dramatic readings of my haibun ‘Palimpsest’, ‘Summer Hills’, ‘Samsara’ and one short story ‘Memoir of death’, Portland Stage Company
Read poetry at University of Massachusetts, Amherst for Global voices of women writers
Traveled to Washington D.C.
Visited the Department of State, and presented a brief snippet of our IWP experience
Traveled to New York
Visited Poet’s House
Contributed to our batch of 2015’s compilation of ‘A Fairy Tale’ anthology. My contribution was in 18 haiku – a same language (English) adaptation of Christopher Merrill’s poem ‘Fairy Tale’.
September 15, 2015
The Arithmetic of Breasts and other stories: reviews and bookstores
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DIGITAL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2014 BY PUBLISHING NEXT, GOA.
The reviews for my book by book reviewers and bloggers have come in thick and fast. And it’s time to enlist those.
1. http://www.privytrifles.co.in/2015/07/book-review-arithmetic-of-breasts-and.html
by Namrata (Privy Trifles) – avid blogger, author of Metro Diaries, and editor at Bloody Good Book.
2. http://transitionofthoughts.com/2015/07/18/book-review-the-arithmetic-of-breasts-other-stories/
by Aseem Rastogi – his blog is adjudged among top 6 blogs in Creative Writing Category at BlogAdda Awards
3. http://www.finixpost.com/book-review-of-the-arithmetic-of-breasts-and-other-stories/
by Manpreet Kaur. Also check out her youtube video reviewing my book in The Bookish Talks
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv30svHjSrg&feature=youtu.be
5. http://thereaddicts.blogspot.in/2015/08/review-arithmetic-of-breasts-and-other.html
by The Readdicts Janhvi and Sarika
6. http://thewhimsybookworm.blogspot.in/2015/08/review-arithmetic-of-breasts-and-other.html
by The Whimsy bookworm
7. http://www.abookisasexything.com/2015/08/the-arithmetic-of-breasts-review.html
by Ritesh Agarwal
8. http://guptakaushal.blogspot.in/2015/08/book-review-arithmetic-of-breasts-and.html
by Kaushal Gupta
If you are here, you might also want to check out an author interview:
9. http://guptakaushal.blogspot.com/2015/09/interview-with-rochelle-potkar.html
by Varsha Verma
by Fatema/Freya
This book is available on online stores:
(click on the image to read the links)
This book is also available in select bookstores, but for a limited timeframe:
(click on the image to read the links)
If you do manage to read this book, post a review on Amazon, Flipkart, Goodreads.
I hope to move on to my second book now. There are plenty of other books too in line.
~Rochelle
