FlowerSong Press,
2024. ISBN: 978-1-963245-96-7 / 96 pages.
---
Dr. Belinda Rom├бn
Megha
Sood’s, Language of the Wound is Love, is a deeply redemptive
eye-of-the-modern-immigrant-oeuvre where the reader is compelled to witness the
barbarous inequities in society, conveyed via a poet, whose social activism is
intently conscious. Her writing acumen derives from her ability to empathize
with suffering and expose the pulse of modern society in all its contrary,
sometimes sordid machinations, reflective of her unfolding awareness of this
world’s failures and successes.
The
long-held argument; can you separate the artist from the art? Is divisive in
creative fields. On the one hand, is a creative like Bukowski with rampant
hatred of women, able to be appreciated for his superlative output, regardless
of who he was as a man? Same with Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Picasso and many
more. Whichever side you land, I would argue, we may say we can divorce the
creator from the creation, but it’s a lie. Perhaps we choose to in order to appreciate
their work regardless of who they were in real-life. But unless we don’t know
the creatives real-life experiences, it’s likely we’ll never really separate
them, in part because a creatives creativity and output IS inextricably linked
to who they are.
The contagion sitting boisterously
hiding in the bushes
will be ready to spring at us
at any given moment
while we will split between
the pain of burying our past
and grieving for the future
we once had (Of Today and Tomorrow).
I
make this argument because Megha Sood, author of Language of the Wound is Love,
is described as a social activist. In my mind, you cannot separate a social
activist from their work because their work is the social activism. Thus, the
two are symbiotic and you read one, with the other in mind. Sood came out of
relative obscurity, having mastered the English language on her journey from
India to America: stranded on our islands / cooped in the isolated corners
of our little home (Shelter in Poetry). She started out writing a blog and
joining writing prompts before being catapulted into the spotlight through some
clever partnerships with big projects. Those included the highly successful
Black Fire This Time, (Ed. Dr. Kim McMillen) Her literary partnership “Life in
Quarantine” with Stanford University, and her work being part of LunarCodex
project in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX. Sood was also co-editor of The
Kali Project, (Indie Blu(e) Publishing) a highly successful award-winning
anthology of Indian women poets. Her collection My Body Lives Like a Threat,
won first place in the BookFest Awards, 2024.
In
the collections opening poem, Poem and Its Hunger, there are lines that stay
with you throughout:
There is always a death standing at
the end of the sentence,
not every enjambment gives meaning.
Some lines are meant to be left
orphaned. Like the day they found
an old crumpled picture of my
bombed city in my wallet.
Beyond
what is being said, there is another layer, that of inextricable displacement
and loss, an unfinished picture, a demolition with only a photograph as
witness, being carried through time. There is figurative death as well as
literal, a sense of dislocation and hunger; memories of mother’s hair and loss,
urging to reclaim.
They always forget only your skin
has a color
that sets you apart
your soul is colorless. No taste
and no odor,
like water (A False Arrangement).
This
is the nuance only a poet can convey; whereby we understand the surface message
but also the deeper one; what is not quite said, but hinted at. By not being
overt, the poet saves themselves the ultimate exposure, but lends enough pain
to join our own experiences with theirs and expand outward to a greater
awareness. Not just as a first-generation immigrant, a woman, a person of
color, an Indian living in America. But all those things and then, far more,
until we’re all connected without barriers dividing us.
Empathy stems from the mouth of
love, of hunger, of acceptance
an incessant desire to be known as
a countryman in a town full of
wonders. (My Identity as a First-Generation
Immigrant).
Sood
would come to describe herself as a social activist as her work increasingly
took on social themes, not least George Floyd (awards won). Sood’s outrage at
racism, her hard-won fight during #metoo and #BLM are symbolic of what matters
most to Sood at a primal level. The basic right for all people’s to be treated
the same. In Sood’s earlier works, there are numerous references to the
disregard society has for ‘other’ and her own experience as an immigrant, as an
Indian-American, as a woman, as a woman of color, are what became her social
activism on a larger scale.
We are all the same
same heartbeats
sliced and splintered into a
million pieces,
and the same God we worship
holding books with different verses
(Brotherhood).
Positioned
geographically in an intense melting pot of voices, Sood’s grew exponentially
and her 4th collection, Language of the Wound is Love, really
evidences this growth both as a writer and social activist. In no way
denigrating earlier work, it is clear Sood’s writing has taken on another layer
of depth and sophistication in how she selects her activism and describes it: Pain
is always interred in our memories and takes shape in our vivid dreams.
(Every Pain Has a Story). The crux of her writing has always been, we are more
similar than we are dissimilar; one of her basic long-standing-themes: the
isolation of the immigrant and the necessity for compassion and outrage when
equity is revealed.
I want to rip apart this entrapment
pry open the obstructed view of the
open skies
let the fraying ends come loose (Unclaimed Freedom).
Her
language has expanded and become honed through experience and working through
what it really means to be ‘other.’ One could argue, Sood’s writing is the quintessential
outsider’s experience, where she can bring a thirst for belonging, alongside
the reconciliation of love for all humanity.
Don’t be a mute spectator
they will speak through you
like an apparition,
like a ghost in the machine
and will beg you to stay.
Be a Messiah
ready to be burned at the stake. (Rise).
The
dehumanization of society is a theme that Sood is eloquently able to articulate
through myriad poems, with a deliberate urgency in her pace, she questions and
rages at the injustices of her adopted country, whilst retaining hopefulness
and a belief healing is possible. Like where she says: What a terrible act
of survival. It’s either them or us. The existence is beautiful and yet so
devastating. (The Beautiful Death Around Us). Whilst always personal,
Sood’s writing is universal in its appreciation for our shared experience; and
it is this that renders her an activist, because she never writes in isolation.
Sood’s language is a unique blend of her Indian ancestry and her adopted
countries vernacular, and in this, she is distinct and memorable; a witness to
what she observes with her eyes wide open.
Sound cannot travel in a vacuum
It needs a medium for itself to
carry
the fear of the unknown
of hate and anxiety,
of skin color not known to use
poisoning minds of the free. (The Perfect Solution).
The
purposing of social activism is to not simply speak but act upon those words,
as when she says: But every day in me, I find myself a bridge that needs to
be built. / A dark corner that needs to be lit. (A Bridge Needs to be
Built). The abstraction of love is a vein that runs throughout these works,
because without love there is no empathy or mercy, no way to reconcile the
pain. At the same time, the Indian heritage of these words is what elevates
them to a higher beauty than the mundane; ensuring themes are evoked throughout
beauty as well as outrage.
A zoetic language: a soft growl
turning into a wail,
aunting that resonates, leaving me
like a thrumming harp wire
such is the riveting effect of his
words
an unraveling of his intricate mind (On Listening to Jericho Brown).
Poets
who write for social justice, utilize their platforms to educate, elucidate and
electrify to action, those seeking truth and change. Words alone may not
suffice, but a social activist use their own experiences to express global
suffering and suggest methods by which we can individually and together, make
the greatest impact. We share collected grief, the collective truth that
makes us human. (To Begin Something, Something Needs to End). There is a
historical tendency to look to poets and writers for ideas and themes to
galvanize to action. This is the crux of social activism as a writer, something
you become when you live it, rather than report it. Just as when Sood says: There
is more to this mysterious life / than your mere needs and wants (Needs and
Wants). As an immigrant, as a woman of color, as an Indian woman far from her
own culture and land, Megha Sood goes well beyond reporting her observations;
she asks us, what are we going to do to make things fair? It is both a demand
and a necessity that we respond to this.
This perplexing state of existence
has pushed me toward the edge,
every time
but despite this, I turn around,
driven by my hunger
that says to me aloud;
Stay here, Look, we all are dying
living in a collective state of
disbelief (The
Collective State of Disbelief).
***
Megha Sood’s Bio:
Belinda Roman
Megha
Sood is an Award-Winning Asian-American Poet, Editor, Author, and Literary
Activist based in New Jersey, USA. She is an Associate Editor at MookyChick (UK),
BrownStone Poets (USA), and a Literary Partner in the project “Life in
Quarantine” with Stanford University, USA.
Dr.
Rom├бn’s Bio:
