Monica Mody : An Elliptical Note on Ordinary Annals

 

 

 

 

 

I wrote the poems in ORDINARY ANNALS moving through uncertainty, anger, grief—as we all were, collectively, in so many different ways, last year. The violence targeting Muslims that broke out in northeast Delhi. State brutality against certain categories of bodies. California fires. Anthropogenic climate change. Lockdowns. Through this period, I was contending with the contingency of my own stay/status in the United States as I applied for a visa. These poems think about the role of the poet and the language of poetry in a world where neither has power, on the face of it, to change the world—yet it is a world in which both language and the poet find themselves complicit. How then might we participate, and what might we enact? Without looking away from this gap where we do not know if our speaking is effective (could it be that we need to fall?), these poems falter towards a ripple, a ground of healing. I hope they array some new familiarities for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monica Mody's poetry collection Bright Parallel is forthcoming from Copper Coin Press. She is the author of Kala Pani (1913 Press) and Ordinary Annals (above/ground press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in anthologies including Extinction Violin: The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets, What is Time: An Anthology of New Indian Writing, Hibiscus: Poems that Heal and Empower, and &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing. Her poetry also appears in Poetry International, Indian Quarterly, Almost Island, Boston Review, and other lit magazines. She has been a recipient of the Sparks Prize (University of Notre Dame), the Zora Neale Hurston Award (Naropa), and the Toto Funds the Arts Award for Creative Writing.

Photo credit (top): “Light and Shadow” by MicdeF is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.