"These are my poems. They hold the headiness of romance, the sensuality of desire, the heartache of loss and the vulnerability of being human." - Abha Iyengar
Abha Iyengar is an internationally published writer, poet and scriptwriter. She is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology contest winner. Her poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction has appeared in several anthologies, magazines and literary journals such as the Chicken Soup series, Breakaway Books, Gowanus Books, Conversation Poetry Quarterly, Arabesques Review, The Fabulist and others.
She holds creative writing workshops and does spoken word performances. She also does street photography and cyber art. Her poem-film, “Parwaaz”(flight), has won an international award in Greece. She has recently received a writing fellowship.
She believes in freedom and diversity of expression. Her work has been called ‘visceral’ by many, and she likes that.
I'm not a great reader of poems, but as a lover of literary expression in any form, I was drawn in by Abha Iyengar's poem in the sample poems from her book 'Yearnings'. Drawn in enough to immediately order a copy of her book from Serene Woods.
As the title makes clear, this collection is about longing, love, loss, passion and related emotions and situations. What I admire about Abha's poetry is its impressionist style of communication--it paints a quick, terse picture whose aim is to capture the moment and the emotion, and it does that effectively. In art, too, I have a deeper admiration of Impressionism than Realism. Realism merely portrays what the eye sees, albeit in careful, loving detail but Impressionism carries the heart of the artist as well--it is his choice to capture the subject in that particular moment, angle and light, and this choice and his quick strokes show intense focus and urgency to record and love that person, place or action.
Yearnings is a collection of 67 short poems that are a pleasure to read and re-read. In these poems, there's none of the embellishment that a lot of poetry falls prey to: the frills and lace that really point to nothing. Instead there's solid content, honesty and truth.
Some of the poems I liked are Aroma, Travel, Ice cream, Strange Lands, A Table, Two Poems, Echo, Grief, Shadows, Everything Natural and I Conserve.
Posted by ...Hasmita Chander
on Thursday, February 17 2011
wow! Abha the poems are simply fantastic, especially the one named Time and yearnings... I wish you all the best.
