poetry – Page 4 – Sharanya Manivannan

Two Poems In Far Enough East

The first anniversary issue of Far Enough East carries two of my poems – “Aubade With Cannonball Flower” and “Monkeyshine”. Read them here.

This is so cool (I hope you think so too): Issue Magazine has turned my little poem from Witchcraft, “Mamihlapinatapai”, about the near-untranslatable Yahgun word from Tierra del Fuego, into desktop wallpaper!

A Poem In Cordite

A poem, “Southern Cross“, appears in the Gondwanaland issue of Cordite.

A Poem In The Lake And Its Coda

The Lake has published a poem, “Smoke“.

This poem has a coda of sorts, called “Note“, which I’m sharing on my Tumblr, where you can find more such odds & ends and bricolage.

A Poem In Heron Tree

Heron Tree has published my sestina, “Two Names”, and you can read it here.

A Poem In Kindle

Kindle has reprinted my poem, “The Chicken Trusser“, which first appeared in Dark Sky Magazine in April 2011.

“My City”, For India Today‘s Simply Chennai

I saw the most beautiful bull a few days ago. Its hump was covered in a fabric of sea green sequins, its horns unpainted, and a dark, intense-eyed man held its tether. They were attempting to cross a curving one-way main road at the end of July, half a year away from the harvest festivals.

I see myself as a manqué, with my folders of unfinished endeavors, rare dehiscences of poems and stories that sometimes make solo forays into the world yet remain uncollated. Abandoned by the muse, I have been forced to abandon my manuscripts. But among the five (yes, five) of them, the only one I suspect I may yet realistically finish is the one full of poems about Chennai. This is the place where I can encounter a beautiful bull for a few seconds and never find an explanation for why it was there. This is also the place where I have seen bouquets of live chickens hanging upside down from the handles of a motorbike, kids in a slum swinging in their mothers’ sarees on the day before laundry day, Narikuravar children performing balancing acts on the pavement while their parents sold beads below them. The city where the perigee moon rose out of the sea with false auspiciousness en route to an assignation, where I once spontaneously poured palmfuls of roses the colour of live coals into the ocean because that was the kind of evening it was – a confluence of sea and flowers and my need for a ritual. Where, with uncanny correlation, fortune-tellers routinely tell me I am the kind of woman who should have been born a man. Where the rooftops are made for kissing and the roads for the psychopompic dappan koothu. Where disputed art deco houses still hold court as the streets around them change. Where I can take a walk before the rain and come back with my braid blessed by at least three types of blossom or leaf: and the miracle of being able to name some, and the miracle of being able to learn about the others.

Despite all else, these are moments of inexplicable wonder.

I recently read an interview with the author Tash Aw, in which he said that the city in which one struggles in their 20’s is the one that becomes important to them. Chennai is certainly mine. My struggle, I mean to say, but listen to how it comes out sounding anyway – it is mine.

This appeared in India Today’s Simply Chennai supplement for their 8th anniversary issue.

A Sequence of Poems In Kindle

Kindle Magazine has an all-poetry issue out now, and I am so pleased that they have republished “The Ten Idylls” – an old sequence of mine inspired by translations of 2000-year old Tamil Sangam poetry by A.K. Ramanujan. The poems were written in two bursts in 2002 and 2006 and published in a handmade chapbook, Iyari (2006), and then in a book, Witchcraft (2008). Here they are online.

A Poem In PIX

The Recovery issue of PIX — a photography quarterly — also has lots to read, including my poem “Tin Men”. Also includes poems by Annie Zaidi, Sumana Roy, Anindita Sengupta, Anand Thakore and an essay by Prayaag Akbar, as well as several wonderful photo features.

A Poem In Prairie Schooner

I have a poem, “Benediction For The Feast”, in Prairie Schooner’s online Fusion series. Guest editor Sudeep Sen has this to say about the poem in his introduction to the issue: “Sharanya Manivannan’s ‘Benediction for a Feast’ has a seductive oral quality to it—it almost urges you to be anointed through her wordplay”. Read it here.

A Sequence of Devimahatmyam Poems

Open Space India/Talking Poetry have published “The Secret of Secrets: Five Poems After The Murtirahasya“, a sequence inspired by an appendix to the Devimahatmyam, a seminal Hindu text on the Goddess (more on the reference used here). These were some of the last poems I wrote, back in mid-2011, and I am delighted to finally be able to share them.

A Bop Poem In Brilliant Corners

I have a poem in the bop form, “Afterwards, The City Takes On A New Patina”, in the Winter 2012 issue of Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature.

A Story And A Poem In Wasafiri

The new Global Youth Cultures issue of Wasafiri carries a short story and a poem. The story, “In Asterisks, For Action”, is from some years ago, and precedes the themes and narratives of the manuscript I’m finishing (finishing? hmm) now, The High Priestess Never Marries. The poem is called “Chennai – II”. You can find out how to get the magazine here.

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