Old Songs

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The poems range from personal narrative to some fairly imaginative retelling of well- known myths – ancient Indian and Greek stories that, in the poems, highlight the trials of contemporary “human-hood”. Read Letter to a Mother about Dionysius, or Oedipus Rant, the sad tale of a mother-lover, or Electra – why didn’t she kill her mother herself? Beehive and The Lord’s Dream are Indian, but perfectly understandable to anyone. Two love poems to a dead father. Many about meditation, growth, love.

The novella is called Sita and retells the Indian epic The Ramayana in the voice of its heroine, Sita. This story has never before been told, in fact. It is a leap of imagination to capture the voice of an ancient queen, to set her in her time and place, so foreign to the reader, and yet her story is familiar and important. The end of The Ramayana is not often told, since it brings the glory of the epic down to mundane and somewhat sordid human-ness. But Sita’s story really begins and ends here, and is therefore worth hearing.