In This Room, The Poems Come And Go

Poems by Sarabjeet Garcha Section curated by Ranjit Hoskote Photographs by Chirodeep Chaudhuri

To write a poem is to manage stresses and balances, develop a structure held together by contrary forces such as the gravitational drag of the language as common currency and the lift of the language as re-invented and re-calibrated by the individual poet. The beams of the individual lines, the slabs of stanzas, and the columns of assonance, off-rhyme and anaphora hold the structure that is the poem together. To read a poem is to apply variable loads to each part of the text, to test its capacity to bend, bear up, distribute pressure, and push back against the voice that would occupy it.