Poetry: Rachna Joshi

Rachna Joshi

Silences

Tillie Olsen

Talking of women

Having fallow periods

When they don’t write.

And of breaking

The silence

And giving us

Their impressions.

Norton Anthology of Poetry

From the Middle English ballads

To the Romantics

And the fragmented moderns. 

This book brings together

The best of English poetry.

Morrow Anthology of Poetry

Young American poets

Some who are 

First generation writers

Coming from

Working class backgrounds

And expressing themselves.

***

Living Abroad

There is a strange sense of unreality

While living abroad.

Going to the Syracuse University library

By campus bus

And sitting there till 8 p.m.

Taking coffee from the dispenser

And having a chat

With friends.

Flipping through the Reading List,

‘The Bow and the Lyre’ by Octavio Paz,

‘Understanding Poetry’ by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Pen Warren

And ‘Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End’

By Barbara Hernstein Smith.

***

Canadiana

Watching Yentl in Toronto

Or Umrao Jaan Ada

Listening to Ravi Shankar in Calgary.

Maple syrup and pancakes

Potatoes in their jackets.

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s ‘Anne of Green Gables’.

Eating chaat in the Indian market 

Or Peking Duck in Chinatown

Where the immigrant crowd hangs out.

Going on a 20 km ski trip in Banff

Topped up by hot chocolate and apple cider.

Reading Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood

All this is Canadiana.

***

Alberta Vocational Centre

Canada is a place of mystery,

Doubt and achievement.

I worked at three different jobs-at the YWCA,

Through the Calgary Catholic School Board

And finally through the Alberta Vocational Centre.

Teaching at the Alberta Vocational Centre

Was an escape

From the drudgery of domestic life.

Teaching survival skills

To adult immigrants.

It was a crucible

Where I wrote it out

And ultimately

Became a writer.

***

Imagism

Images flow past me

As in Pound’s

‘Petals on a wet, black bough.’

Mom reading

‘The Golden Bough’

With memories of the Fisher King

A fertility myth.

Sonnets, haikus, villanelles and sestinas

Meter, rhyme and prosody.

Two or three line poems.

***

Bio: Rachna Joshi is a poet and reviewer who has lived in India and North America. She has written five collections of poems: Configurations (Rupa & Co., 1993); Crossing the Vaitarani (Writer’s Workshop, 2008); Travel Tapestry (Yatra Books, 2013); Monsoon and Other Poems (Tethys, 2020); and Unraveling (Authors Press, 2024) She has a master’s in Creative Writing from Syracuse University in upstate New York, and has been widely published in magazines and anthologies in India and abroad. She worked as Senior Assistant Editor at the India International Centre, Delhi, for 28 years and lives in Noida, U. P.

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Setu, August 2025