Anju Kishore, INDIA

Exclusive: Best of Women Poetry: Edited by Padmaja Iyengar-Paddy

Anju Kishore

I…

...am the deepest of the oceanic deep

Swallowing the storms that failed to breathe.

Thoughts upon thoughts have I pressed

On to its throbbing, silent bed.

There are times when I rock the sea's chest

Tossing ships with my tempests.

Times too when I let you deep into my generous depths

And empty myself of my selfless wealth.

Some nights I am the tide that leaps

Restively towards an unattainable moon.

Other days find me contentedly

Lapping the shore like idle dreams.

I dare to sing and sigh, dance and roar

With equal passion, on different notes.

I throb with life or brood like death

Who knows what currents I have in store!

I...

...am a woman with the heart of an ocean.

Or am I the ocean folded into a woman?

Listen to the song that plays in my alleyways,

Tell me if you do not hear it in the waves.

The music with which my silences beat,

Isn’t it the one of the oceanic deep?  

Anju Kishore, poet, editor and a former Cost Accountant, is a recipient of The Prime International Poetry Prize 2020, for her maiden poetry collection ‘…and I Stop to Listen’

(2018) that was also one of the winners of The Great Indian Poetry Award 2018. Her poems have been featured in several e-zines, magazines and poetry anthologies, and have won numerous online poetry contests as well.  Anju is a part of the Editorial Team of India Poetry Circle that has launched two anthologies in 2019. She is also a Senior Editor at Pinkishe, the print and e-zine of the Delhi based NGO, Pinkishe Foundation.

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Best of Women Poetry -2020 :: Setu, March 2020