Poetry

As I leave for Calcutta I think the city Always that other city Its river Ganga Always my other river Howrah Bridge What a colonial cradle A Raj suspended Kipling's imperial joy Hoogly...

'No-one has ever written a poem “On His Deafness”'; (David Lodge, Deaf Sentence). - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...

“Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?”~ Jimi Hendrix, Purple HazeSabeen had a list of crimes to her name – She ran a...

The producers decided things were getting slow so I caught you with Arabella at the charity regatta, delivered a flute of strawberry champagne to your blazer, a...

She walks past the wave Of curious glances An apparition eluding Light and desire Everything she hides from Trembles in her body She remembers the lures In every street But no street...

To Steven O’ BrienGrandfather Heaney dug deep Into his country’s soil Another man unlike him left home To burrow through an alien forest In search of enemiesThe alien...

THE CULT OF ISAACWe all know about Abraham, the great religions emanating from his skull, but what about Isaac, where is his world taken into theological thought,mulled...

"I wonder sometimes where people store all their different faces." ~ Trina Nileena BanerjeeThe face he wears every morning Reminds him of his mother Combing his hair...

Last HeronAs the last heron goes, rooks fall from the sky like old black rags to carpet the new-laid field.Six days now, six days and nights without...

The following poem is taken from the anthology Tales of Two Londons: Stories from a Fractured City, ed. Claire Armitstead, Arcadia Books, London, 2019.Ferdous...

   My Kodak Brownie didn’t work but I have a picture of the green dress. The film was black and white, my memory is colour.We’d eaten our lunch...

Last HeronAs the last heron goes, rooks fall from the sky like old black rags to carpet the new-laid field. ____________________Six days now, six days and nights without rain...

                        To Fady JoudahI was waiting at the platform For a train to Calcutta In...

There are times when I remember / all of them fondly enough for them / to be here once more, all around / this house, which is far away from / where they were around, and at this hour, / far away again from my childhood fears. / Now I can just think of them. And / what is thinking except the mind’s / imaginings, the heart speaking to itself / in the darkness of default, fearing alien / ears, the world’s participation in the shame / of being touched in front of others? [...]

The rosy almost-heartwood of larch, / which sounds like lark, which sounds like singing, / which sounds like the wood could open its rosy throat / and pour forth the song of boats / sighing in the harbour, / swimming onto slipways, knocking against pontoons / The grainy planks of teak, / which sounds like talk, which sounds like the boatbuilders / as they ease about the wooded space, handling compass planes, / talking of cleats and chines and carvels, making tea [...]