This is the first in a series of 3 poems recorded by the poets who will be reading their poems to mark one year of Poetly on October 4th. Today’s poem is the inspiration for the title of the poetry reading- “New Language”. Rajutai’s poetry is a kind of sensorium, her words open their plumage the way the chorus of a love song outruns its excitement. Her poems are filled with delightful onomatopoeia that let you roll your tongue over the smooth sibilant sounds, or trip on the deliberately jarring hard phonemes.
In “New Language”, Rajutai hovers gently on the surface of a river of love, of two people discovering space, forging meaning and culture with the sweet lute of language. Raju lets the salty-sweet lozenges of the many different Indian languages melt slowly in the mouth, with the tenderness of a parent stroking their child’s hair. Her fervent search for the essence of a word, and the backstory of its birth within a cultural context, opens up untrodden pathways that lead past the sidechambers of relationship, and the cornerstones of unbridled passion. She startles us with the everydayness of her metaphors, and curious questions that pepper the imagination of a wandering mind that knows how to savour experience, and translate it into poems with beating wings.
Rajutai is a writer, a teacher and a writing teacher. Currently, she is teaching and designing the language curriculum at the SIFF Scholars Program for under-resourced children in Bengaluru. She is overjoyed when kids and women write and surprise themselves.
Make sure you join the zoom session on Sunday, October 4th to listen to Rajutai, along with Vimal Chitra and Srividya Sivakumar help us find our bearings during these surreal times.
Link: New Language
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