Dipika Mukherjee was born in India and educated in Switzerland, Indonesia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and US. With such a nomadic background, it is not surprising that her poetry chapbook is entitled The Palimpsest of Exile. A chapbook is a simply produced book, and she broke this 30-page collection into sections entitled “American Angst,” “Malaysian Musings,” “Affectionately, Amsterdam” and “India in My Soul.” Each section captures a specific experience, and provides a distinct tone.
After reading the book, one poem stayed prominently in my mind, which was “These Words Once Danced in Red Jooties.”
These words would once burst through that door
In flaming silk, rustling aquamarine,
they would raise one hand, thick with silver tinkling
swish the air and tilt the chin
to demand attention. These words once knew
the power of insouciance.
I enjoyed the way she anthropomorphized the spirit of India with excitement, flash, and confidence. Then, the poem becomes stifled, depicting the transformation to the immigrant reality.
Now these words sit in oak-paneled rooms with snow outside,There is more, but one feels the carefree spirit of the words is heavier, cumbersome and forced into a box – figuratively expressing the constraints of the new environment.
One button fastened on the herringbone jacket
“After the Ice-storm” follows a similar vein of transporting the poem from a cold climate to the lands of coconut oil.
The tree beyond my kitchen window bends in ice,
tight glassiness in its low droop
limbs touching the ground in long talons.
The frost has shrouded it in white,
but a few rebel spikes
burst through the dampening snow, and this tree,
The image of the sharp icicles conjures memories of a grandmother oiling a child’s hair. At first, it seems like an awkward reference to the frozen branches. However she explains the connection:
While her hair rebels from her own shaved head,
it bursts into spikes
from a lushness within.
In the “India in My Soul” section, she leads into more personal poems about her grandmothers’ lives. “Boroma” (Great-grandmother) is as satisfying as a short story as it vividly describes a fiery young woman shackled by marriage. “Thakuma (Paternal Grandmother) is good, but not as complete as it seems to end abruptly. There could be more to this story of a young bride whose dreams were shattered through widowhood and deaths of babies.
Most of the poems in the chapbook were published previously in various publications like Asia Literary Review, Literary Review of Singapore, and Freefall: Canada’s Magazine of Exquisite Writing.
Book Description: This new chapbook is a beautiful, highly evocative collection examining what it means to belong to many places, and the ways in which we find home.
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