Birthing Poetry
Introduction to my poetry collection, Being Born Book details: My first tongue is poetry. Long before the writing of stories, my initiation into the creative cosmos of writing happened…
I Am And So Are You
You’re wondering if anything you’ve done on this strange ball spinning in outer space amounts to something crucial, am I right? It’s a slow lingering thought that follows you like…
Some People Never Change
20 years later, Alfred Nambiar is back on Coal Island. 20 is nothing, not even half an eye-blink, but the human head has distorted time, it has stopped learning from…
This World
In the most complex moments, the best language available is poetry. It’s hard not to consider events, global or local, from wars to socio-cultural/ethnic injustices, and remain grounded; poetry is…
Choosing
By accident, I stumbled upon a YouTube video. Well, I doubt many things are accidental on the interweb these days. A single click—yes, by accident—can determine the future of your…
Ode to Earrings
I’m obsessed with odes. Odes celebrate, elevate, magnify. They treat their subjects as though they are the only things that exist. They insist on focused attention. I like them so…
“I And This Mystery, Here We Stand”
It would happen on nights gloomier and quieter than usual. Tucked in bed, my mother beside me, squirming in the unique way children do when they get metaphysical: what are…
“No Human Heart Is Made For Crowds”
Malikka told me when she was wiping oil off my back that I was talking about the human heart in my sleep. They assigned me to be her burden after…
Post-Op: Dear Kali
Recuperation has opened me to a world of care, of the slowing down of time, of discerning what success and healing actually mean. I’ve not been able to do too…
The Human Body is Remarkable
I Eat Fears
Once when I was 10, I had a few luxurious hours alone at home. It was bright daylight. The height of afternoon, I think. There was no identifiable danger lurking…
Parting the Curtains
I take a one minute break from writing essays that have been tearing my heart open. Just one minute, I say to myself again, not long after I had taken…
Encountering Peacocks
Once in a while, I like to post a poem, newly written, still carrying the frenzied fragrance of that first act of creating something seemingly out of nothing. Although it’s…
Poetry on the Move
“Two days later, I reached Medellin” was the most repeated sentence in my narrative of how I’d travelled two whole days to the other side of the world for poetry….
Review of Being Born: A Poetry Collection
Reviewed by Yee Heng Yeh In this collection of 64 poems, ShivaniSivagurunathan turns a keen eye upon the natural world. Well—not just the natural world, though it is the main…
Excerpt from “What Has Happened to Harry Pillai?”
The triplet sisters are famous on Coal Island and yet, most people can count the number of times they have seen the sisters with their own eyes. There is island-talk,…
Capturing Homes
My first and so far only visit to Sri Lanka was in late 2009. Just a few months before, in May, the civil war that had been going on since…
In the Mornings, We Dream
Early mornings are friendly. At least that’s been my experience. Out of all segments of time in a day, early mornings are the most open, most encouraging, the most attuned…
Novel Excerpts from Yalpanam published in “Singapore Unbound”
The novel centers on one hundred and eighty-five year old recluse, Pushpanayagi, who is on the brink of a transformation, and finds herself traveling back in time to 19th century…
World
— for Akka Home is its own geography. Where we stood as children of stilted iguanas, Condenses in a thought, It returns to us on days aged by flagging mint,…
Coral
Crackling pink, a sea bird’smorning eye plunders deepdown the water cage andfinds coral beds firingpolyps to contact the sun. Vision of a wound, fromacreage of stolen incidents,an eye borne of…
Novel Excerpt from Yalpanam
The gibbons in the jungle awakened. The one-eyed dog beneath the jacaranda tree opened its eye and peered at dew-kissed swifts flying low. By the well behind the house, the…
Excerpt: Essay on Misogyny, Misandry
This is an excerpt from an essay on misogyny, misandry and the healing of collective trauma for women. This essay is part of a collection of essays on the general theme of healing trauma. The collection is expected to be published in 2022/2023.
Beetles
Let us lag behind the stolen beetles,captives of the sun, garrulous greendots, half complete in the bushbut luminous, spendthrift lightvulnerable to the night antsand our spent crawlthat stirs what is…
The Bat Whisperer
I own the best stocked supermarket on Coal Island. It belonged to my father who handed it down to me when he died. He was an angry man because he…
Bees
Bees froth above the surface,their ancient porridge in-made, asign they are to crack out ofstripes, pearl shut-ins, the mono-diurnal churn and flit. Two bees, or are there ten?You count, re-name,every…
Catching Iguanas
What people didn’t understand about me was that I returned only because I had no choice. They saluted me for coming back to the island, when my thoughts were with…
Excerpt: Essay on Healing from a Sense of Separation
This is an excerpt from an essay on healing from a sense of separation. This essay is part of a collection of essays on the general theme of healing trauma. The collection is expected to be published in 2022/2023.
Day at the Mosque
The mosque at dusk was close to Forster’s,except, we did not have the moon,or the species of feet, soot-slabbed,curled like the dagger behind the glass casethat I alerted you to,…
The Constellation of Buttons
The ants pause on their journey. They see twenty or so lying dead, flattened, disemboweled, juiceless. They have come far from the pink Tin Tower to this oblong bridge that…
Excerpt: Essay on Colonisation & Decolonisation
This is an excerpt from an essay on colonisation and decolonisation. This essay is part of a collection of essays on the general theme of healing trauma. The collection is expected to be published in 2022/2023.
The Code
No one came to eat on Sundays. During the week the world was seated on the plastic chairs and the great pillar fans blew away the flies and the piles…
Anatomies
I’m alive to the anatomy of a starfish-weedtilting in the grass:I can’t say exactly how being alive works,how suddenly all of one’s cells collectto find a friend in the anatomies…
Excerpt: Essay on Healing from Separation and Toxic Shame
This is an excerpt from an essay on healing from a sense of separation and toxic shame. This essay is part of a collection of essays on the general theme of healing trauma. The collection is expected to be published in 2022/2023.
Samy Kandiah
After the sun- just a moment ago ridiculously orange and too titillating for Samy Kandiah who was walking the town twice as he did daily except for weekends- slipped into…
A Sequence
I. The tumble you were pestered out of me.rose bramble, thorns and pink hornsI had saved from the grotto by the mangrovewhere the intertidal prawnswaited for you,have simplified into a…
May I always choose you
May I always choose youwhen my old lovers return.May I remember your nectarwhen I cannot taste it.May I grovel but knowthat your hands will come.May I hold your lighteven when…
Excerpt: Essay on Self-Knowledge & Returning to Wholeness
This is an excerpt from an essay on self-knowledge and returning to wholeness. This essay is part of a collection of essays on the general theme of healing trauma. The collection is expected to be published in 2022/2023.
I Am And So Are YouNovember 10, 2024
Some People Never ChangeOctober 29, 2024
This WorldJuly 30, 2024
ChoosingJuly 21, 2024
Ode to EarringsJuly 14, 2024