Mark Twain once said that humour is like a frog, which could be dissected, but it dies in the process. Similarly, the analysis of poetry spoils all its pleasure, but still, as John Lennard says, it re-doubts admiration. Fathima Shareef’s collection of poems is a reflection of her zest for words and poetic forms to bring out her treasured but troubled emotions that could sublimate her little anxieties in life into winged thoughts. Roses and thorns seem to crisscross within the dark pathways of her self which she sculpts in her monologues, which form a sort of never-ending loop.
Written rules and age-old taboos seem to disturb her zestful spirit of creativity, and at times she finds herself all endurance when she locates her self caught in a crossfire standing all alone like a stone structure.
As a schoolgirl, she vends out words from the little lyre of her mind. Words are let to cool themselves as if from a boiling pot of recollected feelings and thoughts, and poetry becomes a sort of jumping board to delve deep into the blue waters of diverse dreams. Poetic smiles and epithets are given a chance to peek into the little poet’s dream world, and they get their ink prints on blank pages like widely travelled storyteller jotting stray lines in his travel logbook. Written rules and age-old taboos seem to disturb her zestful spirit of creativity, and at times she finds herself all endurance when she locates her self caught in a crossfire standing all alone like a stone structure. But she was her poetic self to keep her ell nigh steadfast to motivate her to stand up and resist as a fighter with sword sharp words.
Despite all the anxieties of the matters that are over her head like gnats and bees, she keeps aglow her yearnings for sculpting a poetic self and identity of her own. Death and life do play a see-saw within the jigsaw puzzle of the shifting realities of life. Even in a state of being half-dead, she has a binding vine of sweet life to keep herself ticking, insulted from the worries of everyday life. The ugly and the beautiful play their dicey game of uncertainty but the passion for words transmutes her self into a state of blissful love. Time lost is re-made and rehabilitated from the past as the self pines, standing beside the window in a dramatic monologue with tears that could blend sorrow and joy. Love sustains her zest for life and creativity when she says ‘let us sew the ripped parts.’ The pointed fingers tat constantly remind the poet of her mistakes bug her like defining forces but her poetic self wriggles out of such strangleholds of life with resisting words of spikes armour in the long trek of life.
The book is published by Kairali Books
(Introduction of the book)
| Fathima Shareef with Dr. N. Sajan
| Other books written by Fathima Shareef
