{"id":2379,"date":"2020-10-11T14:19:23","date_gmt":"2020-10-11T14:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2379"},"modified":"2020-10-11T14:24:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-11T14:24:27","slug":"shanta-acharya-what-survives-is-the-singing-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2379","title":{"rendered":"Shanta Acharya, What Survives Is the Singing – review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of Shanta Acharya\u2019s What Survives Is the Singing<\/em> suggests a central difference between it and the other two books (Wing<\/a>, by Matthew Francis, and The Martian’s Regress<\/a> by J O Morgan). In them, general ideas arise by implication from particulars. In it, general ideas are the overt driving force. This approach limits the reader\u2019s freedom of imagination and response. Its advantage is the sheer intensity of passion or acuteness of realization it can produce. One very strong poem is \u2018Can You Hear Our Screams\u2019, a haunting catalogue of femicide violence starting with the rape and murder of an eight year old girl (Asifa Bano, murdered in Kashmir). Variations of the poem\u2019s title appear every six lines, creating a powerful rhetorical momentum, as does a cascade of verbs, largely in the passive voice because the poem is about the these women and girls are subjected to violence of different kinds. The writing is vivid, concrete, unadorned and alive \u2013<\/p>\n

A chirping bird who ran like a deer
\nwas how her mother described the eight-year-old
\nwhose broken body was found in the bushes.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great deal of anguish in the book. Some springs from human cruelty and folly, as in the graphic poems on honour killing and genital mutilation, bull fighting and a street stabbing. Some reflect the way sadness and pain, whether physical or mental, are unavoidably threaded into life.<\/p>\n

Against wrong and pain, Acharya pits \u2018the singing\u2019 in many senses \u2013 literal, joy-bringing birdsong in \u2018Woodpecker\u2019 and \u2018Spring In Kew Gardens\u2019, poetry and other expressions of the creative impulse in other poems and, most widely, intense feelings of joy or love or oneness with the universe. Some of these poems seem to me not to succeed completely, not giving sufficient imaginative body to their argument, even though they contain brilliant individual lines and phrases. However, the reward of Acharya\u2019s courage in writing a poetry that whole-heartedly seeks moments of visionary rapture comes in pieces like \u2018Day The Clouds Came Home\u2019, a simultaneously religious and earthly celebration of water as the great bringer of life, joy and hope to plants, animals and men. The climax is the breaking of a nameless woman\u2019s waters. Here, the cosmic, the communal and the utterly personal, the gut-emotional and the visionary are marvellously fused:<\/p>\n

a promise splashed across the horizon,
\nturning into tears to brighten the eyes,
\nholy water to leaven the soul, water that kissed
\nour lips, leaving us laughing, crying \u2013
\nin an astonishment of meaning.<\/p>\n

What Survives Is The Singing<\/em> by Shanta Acharya. Indigo Dreams Publishing, 24, Forest Houses, Cookworthy Moor, Halwill, Beaworthy, Devon EX21 5UU. 82pp.; \u00a39.99<\/p>\n

I would like to thank Patricia Oxley for permission to post this review, which appeared in Acumen 97.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of Shanta Acharya\u2019s What Survives Is the Singing suggests a central difference between it and the other two books (Wing, by Matthew Francis, and The Martian’s Regress by J O Morgan). In them, general ideas arise by implication from particulars. In it, general ideas are the overt driving force. This approach limits the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shanta-acharya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2379"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2384,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions\/2384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}