Birthing History

Birthing history is a slow process that takes place in the forlorn landscape of human memory before mythicized in the collective consciousness of a community. This collection of poems explores how language undertakes this by centring experience and colonizing the mind. Words fan out of the page, escape out of a sealed mouth to scald a territory, carve a kingdom. And bards swell out of wombs to weave metres of poetry, to barter tales of coffee brewed from flakes of skin. When memory erodes, and attempts to fossilize history, both the personal and the collective fail, words like prayer beads fall in the silence between sounds, in the space bar as the poet keys her poems.

Uma Gowrishankar, an artist and writer, lives in Chennai, South India. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in online journals that include Qaartsiluni, Buddhist Poetry Review, Curio Poetry, Words Dance, Carcinogenic Poetry, Pure Slush and Postcard Shorts.