In Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Edward Said describes the "contrapuntal" music of those living in exile: the awareness of at least two cultures providing a "plurality of vision," a simultaneity, ways of perceiving that wind in and out of each other. Shanta Acharya's new collection provides the reader with just such music. One of her most powerful poems opens "Alien, outsider, firangi, gaijin, exile / are some of the names of the pariah gods of exile." Born and raised in the Hindu religion in India, transplanted to pursue academic studies in the West, and having spent years working in the financial industries, the various strands of her music weave fascinating tunes. Her poems are concerned with identity, home, distance, love, and the world's violence, and succeed in addressing questions of faith more directly than most contemporary UK poets.
"Looking For Myself" eloquently explores the theme of identity and Acharya states the complexity of her position: "Single, female, first generation immigrant, no security, / intelligent, neurodivergent, born to be different." This difference is often associated with the poet's spiritual beliefs, her scepticism about the either/or of rational Western thought which she counters with the Hindu concept of divinity as neti, neti (not this, not that). But prayers often go unanswered, and the poet has to come to some sort of negotiated settlement with the silence: "All I seek is a place in your temple / to sing."
This poet's singing voice is particularly evident in this new collection in its use of the ghazal. This couplet form, with its return at the end of each second line to a refrain, perhaps suits the "contrapuntal" songs of exile, the voyage out, the returning back. A particularly powerful example (the title phrase serving as refrain) is "Find Me," with couplets addressing the plight of a child refugee, an old woman, the disappeared, the dead in shallow graves, and "the bones of exiles." "Things" is a marvellous listing ghazal (infinite things, love of things, I-don't-know-what-to-believe-in things, nothings) culminating in Acharya's final imperative of faith, seemingly unshakable despite the horrors of the world from which her poems never shrink: "Waking to the mystery of the Thing of things, / live in peace that passes the understanding of things."
Martyn Crucefix: Between a Drowning Man was published by Salt in 2023; his translations of Peter Huchel (Shearsman) won the 2020 Schlegel-Tieck Prize. A Rilke Selected Poems, Change Your Life, has been published by Pushkin Press, 2024. Martyn's blog is here.
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