Running in Poetry: Of paintings in poetry

Vinita Agrawal’s poetry is about emotions and instances that everyone can identify with

Award winning poet Vinita Agrawal

Often, I look at poetry awards with detached curiosity. The names are familiar only in that I have heard them and read the work. But this award was different. The Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award, instituted in 2010, by Ananda Mandir, US, recognises, “Outstanding works published in North America-based literary magazines within the last five years.” This year, the award in the English Category goes to Mumbai-based poet Vinita Agarwal. Unlike the other times, here was a name I recognise both in terms of work and person.

I met the poet before I met her poetry. The rest of us women poets, who had assembled for the poetry reading, led double lives. A majority were teachers, some had corporate experience, or wrote books of non-fiction. When I asked Vinita what she did, she said, “I am a full-time poet.” I have always wanted to say those words and have not been able to. And here was this graceful elegant woman, who knew how to rock a sari, telling me just that.

The award-winning poet is no stranger to awards or publications. In ‘Hangman’, she writes, “

Poetry/is my destruction but it might also save me. I could have painted; (But there was no hangman there)/Pots, bells, canvases, fabrics/metals;/little leaves outlined in dying green/starkly white within/flowers soaked in the colors of dreams/mountains dark as nightmares/thin cakes of thoughts sliced by mysteries… ”

It’s to this creation of mind pictures, of paintings in poetry that my eyes return to again and again. In a poem describing the time after her mother’s demise, Vinita says, “

Every dark morning a fresh tsunami of pain/engulfed the house; flowers wilted/photos swam in it like brave fish. The tubers/in mother’s meticulous back garden were/rendered tasteless. The Estonia by her bedside/window bent low like an old woman. Death had/become a vast gerund beneath our lowered lids. ”

These are emotions and instances we can identify with; all of us have faced loss in our lives. By the poet’s skilful fingers, the instances are indelibly etched in our hearts. When all is said and done, the priest is given new clothes, food fed to crows and cows, “ The earth/the sky are both fed and cloaked. Scabrous conscience aches/for the words not spoken. ” (‘Words Not Spoken’)

In ‘A Love Poem with a Difference This February’, the poet speaks of a long-held love. A love that taught her, “

how to inhale the scent of flowers from photographs…/Love was as simple as a rustic four-petal rose growing wild…/As warm as native violets and golden poppies. ”

It’s not all roses and hearts in her poetry. In ‘All The Things I Want’, among the many things that the poet yearns for are these wishes: “ Like the wind, I want to set free longings from places of hurt/Footprints from cloistering sands/Souls from prisons of bodies, Music from spiral conches/And the ache from human hands. ”

In Vinita Agarwal’s work, we read ideas that comfort us with their familiarity and rivet us with their uniqueness of expression. “ Brokenness stood on the spindly legs of a/yawning regret of words not spoken ” (Words not Spoken).

And I must mention the flowers. With flowers, there’s a tendency to sound trite and tired. Not so with Vinita. Vermilion frangipanis, Anthuriums of destiny, jasmines spread like a pristine carpet, pressed flowers, fresh flowers… they are all there, in beautiful harmony. Filling her writing, and our thoughts with a heady, unforgettable perfume.

Srividya is a poet. Read her work at www.rumwrapt.blogspot.in