Book Description
These poems look at the social fabric of protest and dissent from an insider's point of view. They bear the stamp of societies going through upheavals with a focus on sharp cleavages in humanity. Guha plays with satire and undercuts it with a subtle sense of despair that pervades his poetry. India's North East - and the hills where the poet resides - surface as a motif of hope and nostalgia, and occasionally retreat. The poetry here is personal and social, and at times, a painful denial of the present.PRAISE FOR THE BOOK"In nimble verses, contoured and earthy, playful and dense, bouncy and placid, Ananya S. Guha's I am Not a Silent Poet lays bare the oxymorons of life - it takes us to a hilly Shillong tinted with a robust "fullness," an abundance of colours, an existence taut with many hues of experiential realities; it weeps over the brazen political ideology of a country that muffles honest voices like Gauri Lankesh's; it hinges on myriad contemporary slices of life ranging from a burning Manipur to a wronged Asifa, the demise of innocent children in a violent, hollowed out, India to a society's modes of creating "others" or the peripheral matter - the collection is laced with a unique verbal felicity, a bounce, desires of varied textures and a dreamy nonchalance - the poet has to be heard as his poetry is his protest, his retaliation, and his healing. As he is not a silent poet!"- Dr. Namrata Pathak, author of That's How Mirai Eats A Pomegranate