Auguries of a Minor God

by Nidhi Zakaria Eipe

Nidhi ZakAria Eipe's spellbinding debut poetry collection explores love and the wounds it makes.

Its first half is composed of five sections, corresponding to the five arrows of Kama, the Hindu God of Love, Desire and Memory. Each arrow has its own effect on some body - a very real, contemporary body - and its particular journey of love.

The second is a long narrative poem, which follows a different kind of journey: a family of refugees who have fled to the West from conflict in an unspecified Middle Eastern country. With an extraordinary structure, yoking abecedarian and Fibonacci sequences, it is a skillful and intimate account of migration and exile, of home and belonging.

Genres: Poetry, India, Audiobook

108 pages, Paperback

First published June 29, 2021

About the author

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Born in India, she grew up across the Middle East, Europe and North America before calling Ireland home. Founder of the Play It Forward Fellowship, she erves as poetry editor at Skein Press and Fallow Media, contributing editor for The Stinging Fly and an advisory board member of Ledbury Poetry Critics Ireland. She is the recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award in Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and the inaugural Ireland Chair of Poetry Student Award.

Reviews

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exciting and original debut collection, Auguries of a Minor God is formally inventive and deeply emotional. The first section consists of meditations on the five arrows of the Hindu God Kama, god of love, desire and memory. The second, and more substantial poem, A is for Arabs, is structurally challenging, written in an abecedarian form (in which the lines follow the letters of the alphabet) and as a Fibonacci sequence (so each section is twice as long as the previous section). This reminds me of the poem alphabet written in the 1980s by Inger Christensen, in which the poet struggles with the threat of nuclear annihilation. Using two challenging forms in one long poem creates an in-built tension which allows Zak / Eipe, like Christensen before her, to wrestle with threats to oneself and ones very being. A is for Arabs challenges Western perceptions of Islam and Muslims, and looks at how Islam was seen during the course of history and what it means to believe. The poem begins by stating

and they used not to wish each other joy but for three things: the

birth of a blessed babyblue boy, the foaling of a
beautiful broadboned mare, and the

coming to light of a promising poet,
conjuring his craft in the hallowed halls

The poem follows a family of refugees who have got "a house in the suburbs, white fence, white neighbours, watch them / glare at your from behind their gauzy diaphanous drapes". The poem focuses on the father of the family as he spends time with his children and helps them through their school routine, while trying to cope with the loss of his wife, and his own PTSD. Then the precarious world he has built unravels when the narrator of the poem learns of the attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. Hearing about the death of a woman with the same name as his wife on the news unmoors him in time, and the poem formally breaks down, reflecting the narrator's loss and mental anguish.

This is a moving, challenging and ambitious poem, full of tensions, but expansive in its treatment of its characters and their relationship to Islam. Zak / Eipe's voice is disquieting and uplifting. The first section of the book is also engaging, capturing the emotional vulnerability of a young women through animal metaphors and lush wordplay. While I really enjoyed these poems, I wondered if they entirely fit with the themes of A is for Arabs, and if this poem should have been published on its own, as a single-poem book. That being said, the poems of the first section are vivid and engaging and certainly deserve their place in a collection.

Zak / Eipe is an exciting, dynamic voice, and we are very lucky to have her work. This is a moving book that is unafraid to look at pain, loss and trauma, as well as the beauty and strangeness of the world around us.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This debut poetry collection is on the Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist. I’ve noted that recent winners have in common a distinctive voice and use of language, which chimes with what Thomas was known for and clarifies what the judges are looking for.

The placement of words on the page seems to be very important in this volume – spread out or bunched together, sometimes descending vertically, a few in grey. It’s unfortunate, then, that I read an e-copy, as most of the formatting was lost when I put it on my Nook. The themes of the first part include relationships, characterized by novelty or trauma; tokens of home experienced in a new land; myths; and nature. Section headings are in Malayalam.

The book culminates in a lengthy, astonishingly nimble abecedarian in which a South Asian single father shepherds his children through English schooling as best he can while mired in grief over their late mother. This bubbles over in connection with her name, Noor, followed by a series of “O” apostrophe statements, some addressed to God and others exhorting fellow believers. Each letter section gets progressively longer. I was impressed at how authentically the final 30-page section echoes scriptural rhythms and content – until I saw in the endnotes that it was reproduced from a 1997 translation of the Quran, and felt a little cheated. Still, “A is for…” feels like enough to account for this India-born poet’s shortlisting. (The Prize winner will be announced on Thursday the 12th.)

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Say that the day we burned the body of love
the flames wouldn't go out.

This collection is filled with beautiful poetry, but poetry with power. It isn't pretty for the sake of prettiness. It is saying something. Telling stories. Giving witness.

love that makes you visible
love that makes you whole
love that will fill these gaping
lacunae in your bones, the hollows that have started to haunt
you...

There is a long poem "A is for العرب [Arabs]", which every populist prick who pontificates on immigration should be forced to read on a daily basis. It's the story of the surviving members of a Syrian family who have made their home in Britain told by the father. It's about the loss that even this survival creates:

Miriam dispensing some pop culture advice as she
mills about, wagging her finger
Marwen, you've got to check yourself before you wreck yourself; some
part of you
marvels at how effortlessly she has
managed to pick up this slang, this accent while another part
mourns for the loss of her
mother tongue, for how language
mutes itself, how it goes
missing, atrophies and rusts...

The only oddity is that the last 30 pages are from The Koran: A New Interpretation. It isn't that this exegesis isn't wonderful to read it just seems odd to produce such a chunk of someone else's poetry in your collection. But it starts at the end for "A is for العرب [Arabs]" and feels like a natural next step.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting poetry collection, structure wise. The writer plays with the structure, especially how a poem looks on the page, in an effective way, however it leaves some of the line breaks feelings less poignant; which is something usually very important in poetry.

The way in which a poem is giving hidden and extra meanings by strikethrough or lightening the ink colour of a specific word is really inspiring! I've never seen it done in such an effective capacity before, but it is truly a great inclusion to this collection. The questions and statements surrounding life, identity, im/migration, race, and culture are very well presented. The language is beautiful and often makes you think of a possible double meaning, which compliments the way the writer does this structurally as well.

The final poem, although warned it would be a long one, was so much longer than I expected. It left me getting a bit bored while reading. I definitely think, and would suggest, that the final poem either be split into multiple shorter poems or even turned into a regular piece of text; whether a short story, a monologue, or a sermon, etc.

[Lewis Isbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

IT WENT OFF

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This changed lives (mine)

[Natalie Strange · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really beautiful poetry

[Samara]

I find that I can’t quite rate poetry books that I enjoyed

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a poetry collection that requires some work from the reader. The first part of the book is a collection of poems based on the Five Arrows of Kama, the Hindu God of Love. These poems are both profound and accessible.

The second half "A is for Arab" is 60 page long narrative poem. It is a abecedarian poem which is an ancient form which has lines that begin in alphabetical order. Zak/Eipe starts with one line beginning with A :" and they used not to wish each other joy but for three things". The letter B is represented by two lines, and C by three lines. In the C section we learn that one of the three things that brings joy is "the birth of a promising poet". The poem changes with the letter M. The M section ends with the horrific incident in Christchurch New Zealand where a man killed dozens of worshippers at a mosque. This is followed by 2 pages of text that states "no more". What follows are 30 pages of lines all starting with O that are all based on the Qu'ran. On the final page are several lines starting with the word "Say".

The book jacket also mentions Fibonacci sequences. A Fibonacci poem (or Fib) is a multiple-line verse based on the Fibonacci sequence so that the number of syllables in each line equals the total number of syllables in the preceding two lines. I didn't't identify where she does this.

One of Zak/Eipe's goals is diversifying Irish poetry. She was born in India, grew up across the Middle East, Europe and North America, before calling Ireland home. In addition to being a poet, she is also a pacifist and a Global Peace Ambassador with the Institute for Economics & Peace, and she has formerly been honoured as a Davis United World College Scholar, Davis Nuclear Nonproliferation Studies Fellow, and Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Peace & Conflict Fellow. Since settling in Ireland, she has become a prolific part of the Irish poetry scene. She is the recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award in Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and currently serves on the Expert Advisory Committee for Culture Ireland as well as the Advisory Board of Diversifying Irish Poetry. In 2023, she was appointed the Rooney Writing Fellow. She has served as poetry editor for several Irish publications includings working as the poetry editor at Skein Press and Fallow Media, and contributing editor with The Stinging Fly. Her most recent achievement is as the editor of the recent issue of Poetry Ireland Review.

There are a number of videos you can find of her reading her poetry. It is well worth it to take the time to seek her out.

[Sophie Apps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auguries of a Minor God is a poetry collection that on a linguistic level makes you feel guilty for not realising the potential of the English language. Its first half is composed of five sections, corresponding to the five arrows of Kama with each one touching the human body – either with enchantment or ennui. The second half follows the narrative poem ‘A is for Arabs’, which dazzles us with abecedarian and Fibonacci sequences, while offering an intimate inclusivity into the lives of West fled refugees – a single father and his children. I really can’t help but migrate through every poem, in a tumultuous love affair with Nidhi Zakaria Eipe’s words.

A casual reminder of Max Porter’s linguistic experimentation in Lanny, Eipe’s collection is one that stirs up a structural revolution. I must admit, at first, flicking through the pages I was thinking, ‘not another contemporary poet selling more blank space than talent’, but Eipe surprised me. His language is economical, punching images into your face: “stains like an early bruise”, “anxiety prowled like a tigress”, “slick like newborn spawn”. His Shakespearean confidence of adding new words to the dictionary: “palettebrushwash”, “curlingsmokewisp”, “tantrumthrowntoddler” is enviable. Considering this is Eipe’s debut poetry collection, I think Shakespeare would join me from the grave in giving him a round of applause. But Eipe’s talent doesn’t end there. ‘A Myth of Horses’ is where the line is broken for line breaks. Sometimes comical, sometimes not, Eipe is masterful, each line is meticulously arranged to change the meaning: “Say a queen made love / to a dead horse”, “Say a horse is not a horse but a giant / trap”. Even if you cannot appreciate Eipe’s command on poetry, his running themes of truth, love and wounds are ones to admire.

‘A is for Arabs’ takes the form of a longer narrative poem that unravels the myth of migrant exclusivity and Western perceptions of Islam. We encounter an out of place father, trapped in a white suburbia, by the grief of his wife, by the future of his children. Eipe cleverly colours the father’s immovability with red, yellow and green – should he stay, or should he go? But this isn’t a light-hearted The Clash song. The speakers desire to leave is a light flashing at the edge of a car window. “green says go”, and I feel buckled up beside him, immobileonwheels. Eipe’s language in this poem is seductively sympathetic, fresh, but it progresses into an overplayed string of religious disharmonies that are better left unsaid, poetically speaking – to use Eipe’s words, just “stop stop stop stopstopstopSTOP”.

The love I have for Auguries of a Minor God is not without its caveats. While Eipe has brought poetry into an age of literary enlightenment, the use of line break, sandwiched words, faded words, blank space, economical language, some of the collection falls short. The ordinariness of ‘Innocent’ and ‘Fugue for young & fugitive’ and ‘The unquiet amygdala’ is hard to bare considering the genius of Eipe’s other poems. Despite my ambivalence, Nidhi Zakaria Eipe’s collection is contemporary masterpiece that every poetry lover needs to have in their collection.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Say the day that we burned the body of love / the flames wouldn’t go out // Love was just a boy with a sugarcane bow / and five flower arrows”. Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe has written such an iridescent debut collection with Auguries of a Minor God, published recently by Faber & Faber. Five trios of poems correspond with the five arrows of Kāma, Hindu god of love, desire, memory: ‘stunning/paralysing’, ‘drying up/withering’, ‘bewildering/mesmerising’, ‘bewitching/infatuating’, ‘killing/destroying’. In the second half of the collection is the long poem ‘A is for [Arabs]’, a sprawling epic which moves through the alphabet stanza by stanza, each longer than the last, finely snowballing according to the Fibonacci sequence; from A to O this is a story of migration and loss, grief indelible and the spirit that rises against it. Its move from M to N, the intense disintegration of N, and the Quran-proclaiming finale in O, all come together to round off a collection of spectacular emotional and formal peaks. Eipe has a most impressive array of triumphs for a book that is only sixteen poems long — there’s gorgeous language and rhythms in ‘formerly exotic, fruit’; a curtailed pitch for clarity in ‘The unquiet amygdala’, one of several poems on attachment, abandonment, the cost of love; such stunners as ‘Ode to day’ and ‘What birds plunge through is not the intimate space’; the brilliant craft in ‘Fugue for young & fugitive’. It’s already one of my favourite poetry debuts!

[Anisha]

Nidhi Zak/ Aria Eipe debut 'Auguries of a Minor God' fantastically reinterprets cultural and lyrical traditions to explore the violence of desire. Self-described as a fabulist and pacifist, Eipe draws on Vedic, Middle Eastern and Irish traditions to explore the force of unwanted attention on an individual. I found the nuanced use of culturally varied mythologies, specifically animals, particularly striking. Eipe describes touching a horse as a vulnerable moment, 'likenothingelse,' then depicts the inflicting violence of 'two hurt mouths'. The spatial compression and dispersion highlight the collection's tension between an arresting, wounding desire and an exposed, delicate beauty.
also loved the cento. she's got the prose poem goods too!
Kalidasa's and Kama's arrow Hindu mythology is used sooo well. want to look at Nishaa and her tantric poetics in relation to that. omg and etnal with the a is for arab

[Georgie B · Rating 2 out of 5]

While there are moments of poignancy and some great poetic formulations, I had trouble engaging with the work because of the formatting. The line breaks were Rupi Kaur-esque, meaning they felt more aesthetically than poetically motivated so seem unnecessary to the reader and disrupt engagement. The alphabetisation of the second part is conceptually interesting in its methodical cataloguing of a narrative but it comes off similarly as contrived.
There is no cohesive style between the poems, some are paragraph-like, others use /s, italics for interjections, those Rupi Kaur line breaks, or a more traditional tercet form. Their narratives and themes also differ massively, even though the first half is united by the structure of the five arrows of Kāma. It creates a sense that the poet has no cohesive voice and style which is disorientating.

[Rose Stanley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another Shakespeare and Co Year of Reading pick - very belated October read.

This is an unusual beast.

I liked the beginning of the longer narrative poem, and the way that the poet rearranged passages of the Qur'an to have all the lines start with the same letter. Another of the poems has the poet stitch together lines from various poems by different fellow-poets to create something that hangs together as a poem in its own right. Yet another has her weaving together myths from different cultures involving horses.

If I was giving points for technical prowess alone this would probably have been four stars.

However, I just couldn't entirely connect with this collection, which is why I've given it a slightly lower rating overall.

[Chris Linehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fantastic find at Shakespeare and Company. Is that a humble brag about going to Paris? Of course, but it doesn’t detract from this collection of poetry. As I am just wading into the poetic sea, I’m reserving final say, but something in this little book struck correctly. There was a collision of words, speaker and hearer that worked. Maybe I identify with the brokenness resulting in highly religious language, mirroring my secular present with the sacred past. Even in the religious differences there is a beauty in the earnest seeking of truth. This is one I’m convinced I will need to reread to fully grasp.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of poetry meditating on loss, separation and connection. The second half is a long poem concerning the lives of a Muslim refugee family who have lost their mother/wife. There’s a real command of language in these poems that I find especially memorable.

[fionn · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.75)

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although there were certain elements / poems I didn’t connect with, there was a lot I admired in here, particularly the approaches to form. I can see this being a book that folks really love.

[nina okechukwu · Rating 4 out of 5]

my insta captions are about to become so pretentious💯

[Ceren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dit deed mij van ontroering hete tranen schreien.

[Isa King · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little gimmicky at times (lots of run-ons to create the pace, rather than being more deliberate in word choices and placement) but when it hits, it hits. The final long-form poem didn’t work for me as effectively as Eipe’s short poems did. I felt there was too much repetition, and some sections were just rehashings of other people’s words and ideas—the velveteen rabbit, the commandments—in a way that didn’t really showcase the command of language I know she is capable of. I feel like it veered too far off from the close, intimate look at loss we were seeing in the early sections of the poem and became too much about doctrine without context for how these doctrines (religious, political, social, etc.) are put into practice, how they shape the lives of the people who follow them for better or worse.

[Achab_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the first 2/3 of the book, struggled a bit to keep my focus in the last part of it.

[Kirat Pawar · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 60 page long epic poem had me in a chokehold