A Dinner Party in the Home Counties

by Reshma Ruia

This poetry collection explores the diasporic experience of leading a translated life, yearning to belong to a past that one no longer owns and a future that is murky and unclear. There is a sense of melancholic nostalgia in these poems but also a fierce kind of determination to embark on a new beginning and make the best of one’s circumstances. The poems are particularly relevant to our times when there is a growing sense of parochialism and hostility towards ‘the outsider.’ They will resonate with all those who have portable roots and are at home everywhere and nowhere. The poems also portray the emotive minefield of relationships, questioning the ambiguity behind maternal or filial love. Society conditions us to love our parent or child or partner but my poems challenge this by describing the tug of war between a woman’s sense of self and the roles she is expected to play. There is an undercurrent of mortality running through some of the poems. A sense of an ending and a reflection on what the passage of time can do to one’s dreams and aspirations. * Comments by the judges of the Word Masala Debut Poet There’s a fierce energy in Reshma Ruia’s poetry. Her incantatory and conversational tone belies her social and human concerns. Her rhythmic control is amazing, sustained in her assertive voice and language. This debut collection everyone should read—the sooner the better. Captivating! Cyril Dabydeen , a former Poet Laureate of Ottawa (1984-87) Reshma Ruia creates poignant vignettes of common folk dealing with the mundane business of life. Parmila Vankateswaran, a former poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15) You will be pleased with discovering award-winning poet Reshma Ruia. Her voice is intimate and confident. Her poetry shines bright. Reshma lures the reader into her world through a vivid imagination. From the empty bed of an accountant to the code of 1947, Reshma’s skill is in how she paints pictures with words, which become whole landscapes and scenes in one’s imagination. I feel I am reading someone whom everyone will be reading in future. Read her now! Lemn Sissay MBE

64 pages, Paperback

Published October 25, 2019

Reviews

[JK · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Reshma Ruia asked if she could send me her collection for a review, I felt I had to explain. I’m no poetry expert; oftentimes I feel idiotic whilst reading, as though there’s something I should be interpreting that my small brain just simply cannot grasp. I told her I couldn’t read poetry and understand technique; I could only understand how it made me feel. She sent the collection anyway, and it was perfect for me.

The poems felt unbelievably personal and distinctive. Ruia’s ability to tell an entire story with a tiny number of words is astounding. Where in other poetry collections I’ve stumbled along in a fog of confusion, here I was devouring each line with countless forking emotions.

She works a lot with the idea of belonging and what this means, what it means to strive for belonging, to belong to somewhere no longer accessible. We look at women and what’s expected of them, at the fear of aging, at race and sexuality. Mostly, we’re exploring the lives of people who society sees as outsiders, and it’s just so utterly gorgeous.

These poems are rippling with a passion which is a telling sign of Ruia’s complete devotion to each and every one. Her characters and her message all seem to have been sculpted by fire, and there are no signs of her fire being quenched in any single moment of any single poem. The collection has rekindled my inclination towards verse when I didn’t think it possible. Thank you so much for sending me this.

[Tracy Fells · Rating 5 out of 5]

This whole collection was a joy from start to end. As a prose writer who loves poetry but often finds collections a little bit scary I found these poems incredibly accessible. Ruia's writing is fluid and lyrical, and I found narrative arcs within the poems and across the collection, which is divided into three sections to neatly present a beginning, middle and ending. Dare I say it but it was the prose that drew me into the poems here. There are many characters and voices, all with distinct stories to tell, often outsiders (for whatever reason) longing to belong or worse being made to belong, and I feel this is a collection I will continue to return to again and again. Ruia captures the thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams of both men and women. Her poems feature bored accountants, desperate mothers and echo how we are all trying to make sense of the world.

My copy is now jam-packed with yellow stickies where I marked up particular lines or stanzas I enjoyed.

[Snehal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems in this book spoke to me in different ways. Most, I could relate to and others I could empathise with. Reshma’s words lucidly flow through the pages and quietly capture one’s imagination. The theme of belonging and/or displacement comes across very well. A few lines are so poignantly expressed that I had to reread them in order for them to sink into my consciousness. A wonderful collection of poems!