Poetry Pamphlet Round-up, August 2023
Poetry Pamphlet Round-up, August 2023
In Nasim Rebecca Asl’s pamphlet Nemidoonam, there is an intimate exploration of geographical spaces that are depicted as embodiments and extensions of the self both in expansive and controlled narratives. Though the use of overlapping languages is introduced with the opening lines ‘My father’s language is a house / I cannot enter’, readers are invited into the space nonetheless as language and boundaries blend together to act as a cornerstone motif to reinforce ideas and ideals of how and where home exists and what that entails. Through the notion that ‘The body is an archive’, the poet with several interesting poetic forms integrated throughout shares powerful manifestations of ‘tender roots’.
In Tim Tim Chengs Tapping at Glass the readers are introduced to a sense of profound urgency, mitigated and then brought to the surface by moments of solemn contemplation that act sharp as glass shards reflecting on a range of topics from childhood to the trappings of the city within the confines of its ranging topography urging to break free. ‘History is wild grass peeking out / through earth-coloured ruins—’ as we are brought back to earth and reminded as the pamphlet moves within the spaces of observational political archiving to drawing out questions of the everyday. Languages and what spaces exist to explore and occupy in its inexplicable duality are also examined brilliantly in poems like ‘How do you spell [ ] in Chinese’ and ‘Ars Poetica with Translation’.
In what is the most lyrically captivating of the three pamphlets, Roshni Gallagher’s Bird Cherry throws the reader ‘plunging right into the pond’ and creates a bubble that allows us to drift along with her across a watery body formed and foamed of memory through quiet introspection. Throughout, we are transported consistently over across the boundaries of lifetimes, stretching across the perceived musings of inheritance and lifetimes that are then beautifully juxtaposed in the contemplation of searching for something else within the preservation and articulation of spaces. As if the poet is telling us ‘last night I found you / walking through my dreams’ and inviting the readers to join her in that space.
In all three of these pamphlets, pre-conceived confines of imagination or inclination towards boundaries, whether through geographical topography, memories, languages, roots are rendered obsolete, each navigating the aforementioned musings with exact and exciting promise of what awaits within the Scottish literary scene.
—Shehzar Doja