‘Autumn 2020’ by Kamana Rai – The Power of Poetry

We were excited to receive this entry to our The Power of Poetry campaign from BA English with Creative Writing student Kamana Rai.

She says:

Hi, I’m Kamana, a final year QM student studying English with Creative Writing. I am a writer/poet hoping to publish more of my poetry this year. This poem is about hope, renewal and the beauty of nature. It is inspired by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, an Asian-American poet. I have come to really admire her work. She writes beautiful poetry that I think is one of a kind. 

Read the poem…

Autumn 2020

The nights are hung, more dark blue than azure

or the summer remnants, of ocean

and warm breeze, in reminiscence, 

still, melting — how it finds a sweet spot on the body, rests, 

releases on the succulent skin, baring, now wished away. 

The seasons, they listen, give and work in life cycles;

await and thrive; survive the torrential man-kind. 

Bloom with the new autumn morning, exhale as night falls.

The leaves are changing with the light. 

Burnt sienna in spectrums, intrinsic golden shapes.

In reflections of pools, living forms making homes

under daylight, in conversational affairs with the horizon, 

like how our irises hold an affinity with heaven. 

The leaves are in love with the waning sunlight,

releasing themselves, vibrant, leaving their remembrance.

Transgressing the summer remnants, in new hues, 

spectrums of light filtering the veins of every leaf.

I can’t help but learn immensely, being present to the environment.

It does not need to talk to me, just open in beauty.

The autumn light permeates every follicle of the cell, raises a warmth 

in the atmospheric sphere.

‘Syllable Syllabi’ by Boudhayan Nag – The Power of Poetry

We’re excited to publish this poem by Boudhayan Nag from the School of Law – Centre for Commercial Law Studies.

About Boudhayan: “If I had to, I’d describe myself as a pretentious wordsmith in search of the next surrealist checkpoint under the hand embroidered patterns in my head.”

Syllable Syllabi 

 Every fourteen years 
 the world changes
 The beginning or end of the time period,
 irrelevant
 It is merely the length of an era
 A span of childhood
 Some people remain children forever
 others grow up before the seventh summer of their lives
 What is the distance between your past and present?
 Asks the meta-matician tasked with teaching me the eons
 The singular tune of a songbird is only half of all music
 The other rests on the shoulders
 Of a card-carrying Kapellmeister 
 I deal in nomenclature
 When words lose their meaning
 I stand over their graves watching, 
 waiting for a new beginning
 The beauty of definition
 is that it cannot lie
 For in its depths,
 it carries the heart of the word
 The first feature film to be shot on mars 
 required actors to wear anti-gravity boots
 so, they didn’t shoot off frame every day. 
 I only took care of makeup
 Underneath their helmet
 they were on a Parisian catwalk
 No atmospheric pressure, 
 just the collected calm of forever around them
 The last time I drifted out to sea
 we spacewalked to the edge of the world
 When we fell right off
 the last thing I saw was the blush on her cheek
 I want to live in a world 
 where metal has no meaning
 Liquid gold is coffee 
 on the rocks 
 Below us a decompressed spinal cord
 waves its tail at our surgical incompetence
 No one wants to be a caffeinated beverage
 And yet we are all a means to an end
 The final rush of blood 
 to stick to a deadline 
 derived from the discovery
 of a Moroccan Sufi mystic
 How can you survive in a world,
 where doing right is wrong 
 most days of the week
 We cannot break
 through the tradition of fear
 without a little indifference 
 I was trained in a Platonic cave
 The superhero of revenge 
 stuck in an allegorical epileptic fit
 governed by a candlestick pattern.
  
 Boudhayan  

3 Poems by Sara Kärpänen – The Power of Poetry Series

Sara Kärpänen is a London based writer, poet and multidisciplinary artist (MA) exploring the experiences of belonging and displacement in her work.

She is also founder of Women of the Wick platform and community space. 


This is a Radical Request to Love Yourself

I am a tree

I am the roots
I am the soil
I am the soil where New 

will flourish.

I am what I am
I will protect it
I will build a garden around it

I will water the soil with my teardrops
I will let the light in, I am not afraid of its brightness
I will let love find its space and pace, I will not push it away.

I stand on firm ground
I smell the blossoming of life,
I dip myself to take baths in it,
I let butterflies land on my shoulder blades and teach me
how to stay still.

I am here to listen
I am here for the river and the wind to navigate through me
I am here for life
the life I create, the life I belong to.

Petals

I looked inside my heart; it was full of flowers
soft pink yellow white petals
stacked on top of one another

How haven’t I dared to see them before?

My Flamboyant Heart 

Stopped and dropped the shackles of disbelief

now pounding hard, 

my Flamboyant Heart. 

Forcing me to watch what’s underneath 

perfectly shaped 

stonewashed over a thousand waves 

Yearning

to be heard

in her mother tongue,

rolling r’s

to be seen 

in the way her body forms into a new shape

sturdy and gently

tomboy and a lady

no translation nor identity-check

flattened to please

not adjusted nor erased

My Flamboyant Heart

Holding her space.

‘me’ by @poetinahijab – The Power of Poetry Series

📓 We’re excited to publish our first contribution from @poetinahijab called ‘me’. ⁠

📓@poetinahijab says Maya Angelou’s ‘phenomenal woman’ and ‘still i rise’ inspire most of their poems like this one. ⁠

📓 Inspired to create? Please do submit your work via sed-web@qmul.ac.uk whether it’s a poem you’ve written, poem you love or poet we should discover. ⁠