Rochelle Potkar's Blog, page 62
September 10, 2015
My poems go live on Planet Radio City on 11th & 12th September
Some of my poems go live on Friday 11th & 12th September at 4 pm and 9 pm (IST) on www.planetradiocity.com/rcfreedom
Do tune in!
I am grateful to Shalin Choksi of Radio city and The Poetry Club, Mumbai for this opportunity.
August 20, 2015
Irrevocably
The day is clean like sunshine.
I woke up with a few bad dreams;
I refuse to call them nightmares.
The kid had bad dreams too.
Of being stuck in an elevator for 24 hours,
of forgetting a window isn’t screened and jumping into it,
of fire starting on our third floor.
The anxiety of my oncoming travel,
filtered in me in the form of
a maid servant in an old house – Sweet Home, where I lived a decade ago…
she goes mad and uses a pen to stab everyone in the chin.
Then as I send her free with a bag, money, and some distracted advice….
As she trundles down the stairs, people collect in the distance.
In an instant I realize an old man has jumped off a building
to his death.
But there is no blood around him. He is asleep on a park bench.
It’s morning and the hara-kiri of dreams is over.
Sunlight kills germs.
I can feel my petals gathering up, closing in snugger.
I am becoming a bud.
This is how we leave…
This is death.
Not of body
but a new beginning.
I have inklings only now.
You can say I did not permit them earlier.
I wanted to be distracted by everything existential.
This is so I don’t savor a laddoo still being moulded.
Now I allow myself to eat sweet meat –
a pinch in a circle.
I allow those thoughts tapping at me
of my life changing irrevocably.
I can sense and feel it. I know it.
It’s here…
and nothing can stop it.
August 15, 2015
Poem publications, July-Aug 2015
My poem ‘Birth’ got published on the Poetry India website. I am honored to share space with all the poets on this page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Poetry-India/362923327179179 and here: http://www.poetryindia.com/
***
I am elated to be part of bigbride and An Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry II, edited and curated by the amazing and ever-inspiring Menka Shivdasani.
http://bigbridge.org/BB18/poetry/indianpoetryanthology/ROCHELLE_POTKAR.html#
Hey, what are you still thinking or dreaming about? Go read these poems!
Poetry readings, June-July 2015
I was one of the featured poets at Smokehouse Deli, Bandra organized by Poetry Couture and Po Art Initiative, and the ever-energetic and enterprising, Raghavendra Madhu.
Dan Husain, Kirti Kulhari, Raamesh G. Raghavan, and Raghavendra himself swept us off (our imagination’s cliff) with the depth and lilt of words. The open mic that followed had known voices: Preeti Vangani, Bhaskar Pitla, Dominic Alapat, Mayank Saxena, and new voices that made the day verse-drunk. Megha’s movie on acid attack victims was riveting.
I was happy to soak into the warmth of these brilliant, jubilant people that later only hanging out in the sparse lights of Janata Bar could top.
***
On June 28, I went to wish my new friends Ankita Shah and Trupthi Shetty and all the other TPC (The Poetry Club, Mumbai) members a very happy second anniversary. It was a celebration of poetry and song|music on the guitar and vocals. I met so many old friends and made new ones that again the experience was nothing short of electrifying!
(I know… there are some good adjectives surrounding my life right now. Touch wood.)
Drizzle city to deluge city, June 2015
The last I was in Hyderabad in June 2015, I ‘blinged’, with rain on my ear lobes and puddles percolating at my neck. But it was intentional. It represented the deluges of my city, Mumbai.
I met Nivedita’s sweet mother, Teddy – professionally called: Subhashini and Dr. Neal Hall, and spent moments of preamble with the stunning yet down-to-earth K Ramesh…
I read two of K Ramesh’s poems from his book at the book launch of ‘Little Friend’. What a wonderful collection of poems it is. So powerful, so simply rendered.
After Neal’s powerful rendering of poems on racism, I read three of my own: baby, skirt, and deer, away from my pieces on personal injustices. Then we set on to launch the third issue of Neesah on the theme of women in love/ woman and love. This issue is now available on Amazon and Flipkart.
I interacted with many interesting people after the event.
At some sweet moment, Akila, Nivedita’s mom, and Subhorup (Dasgupta) mentioned the rain and I tried zooming my glance out at those pearl drops, dilating my eyeballs. It’s not rain to a Mumbaikar if your hips, thighs, and waist don’t wade in the wet, and no one’s talks of boats, divers, and manholes.
As the evening blew over, I walked out of the venue and picked up five men who were hanging around waiting for Godot. I used the most innovative pickup line in the world: “Hey, what are you guys doing this evening?” And they turned out to be poets from the Secunderabad poetry club.
We had haleem – my first venture into it — and some crazy conversations that can only be had amidst abject strangers caught under a drizzle and happenstance.
But I made new friends!
July 19, 2015
verses of musing 0.0
It’s very breezy outside my window today. And the nervousness of the weather sweeps and weeps inside my bones, shivering.
It’s rather early.
The kid has left for school.
The house is soft and quiet.
There is a hara-kiri of objects:
a hair brush, a clump of a wet towel, wet leaves
she was playing with yesterday
that have now curled into their death.
It’s too early for me to be awake.
It’s too breezy to go back to sleep.
I am as nervous as the wind playing
on the fingers of green leaves outside.
Even the light apparent from the blue sky
is different.
So today is a new day
just by the footfall of its appearance.
There was no day in my memory
that stenciled the lashing green
so bright in foreground
against a dull backdrop.
June 14, 2015
my poem ‘Biscooti Love’ finds its wrapping!
One of my all-time favorite poems ‘Biscooti Love’ finds place in The Freshwater Review.
Books that have come all the way from Duluth, Minnesota.
This poem is dedicated to the delicious brown-skinned men I’ve come across.
June 11, 2015
Haibun at A Hundred Gourds
My haibun ‘Stillborn’ and ‘Snakes and Ladders’ appears in ‘A Hundred Gourds’. Go read!
http://www.ahundredgourds.com/ahg43/index_haibun.html
Poetry at I Bar, Bandra
Reading my poems as a featured poet at I Bar, Bandra for ‘Words Tell Stories’, orchestrated by Rochelle D’silva.
The evening of 9th June was high, high, high on spirit and spirits, crackling with gorgeous poetry by so many poets, I was wondering if I needed those glasses of wine.
Thank you friends for being there, some even from Bangalore ditching a day’s work.
All of you made the night rock with your verses or presence! Just can’t get over.
a Chennai feast with Poetry Couture
And those crackling Chennai days, where you speak poetry and life or life and poetry in any order. Then coffee, then humidity, new faces, new languages, but the same manner of the heart. The mud, the skin from where it all comes, to where it all returns. Colors, coziness, ambience, and laughter. The tilt of the Tamilnadu sun. Readings at The Brew Room and The American Library.
“The Chennai event ‘Poems for the Planet’ was jointly organized by the US Consulate Chennai and Poetry Couture on 5th June, World Environment Day. The event not only celebrated nature but also the rich and extraordinary array of poets – Salma, Sharanya Manivannan, K Srilata, Rochelle Potkar, and Raghavendra Madhu. Some poems were rooted to the earth and the body. Some left sanctuaried traces. Some were dangling from the skyscrapers. Some were roving in urban spaces. Also a few beautiful poems were recited by Sivakami Vellingiri and Sriram. Thanks for the support by the Consulate, the poets and the poetry enthusiasts who came.” (source: Poetry Couture page)
