Poems

ABSTRACT

‘Impact’ conveys the ironies underlying violence–the dialectical tension between love and hate, pleasure and pain. I wrote ‘Skin Deep’ in sonnet form to convey the ugly irony behind the love for whiteness. (The sonnet is a traditional form for love poems!) I wrote

‘Palimpsest’ as a sestina to convey the haunting nature of history, as if entering a cave of echoes, here, the ironies of caste inherent in classical Indian dance.

KEYWORDS:

• Colorism
• othering
• devadasis
• classical dance
• appropriation

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Notes on contributors

Pramila Venkateswaran

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013–15) and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002) Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line Press, 2011), Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich Press, 2015), Slow Ripening (Local Gems, 2016), and The Singer of Alleppey (Shanti Arts, 2018). She has performed the poetry internationally, including at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and the Festival Internacional De Poesia De Granada. An award winning poet, she teaches English and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College, New York. Author of numerous essays on poetics as well as creative non-fiction, she is also the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Long Island Poet of the Year. She is a founding member of Women Included, a transnational feminist association.