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I first encountered Megha Rao last year, on the bookshelf of Café Sienna in Kolkata. I read a page from her book at random, as is my habit. It resonated with me, so I wanted to buy it. A friend bought it for me and said she'd borrow it when I was done, which is yet to happen. A performance poet, Megha Rao’s poems confront difficult emotions for women, like anger. Here’s one of Megha Rao’s poems – Lost Jewels Those who have seen me burst into whirling dervishes. Robes spinning

I first heard Mani Rao at the Pune International Literary Festival. Her musical voice, lilt as she read, introduced me to the importance of auditory aesthetics when it comes to poetry. She had carefully selected her words and arranged them to create music rather than words in her poems. I bought her verse translation of the Bhagawad Gita, and for the first time, thought of the Gita as a poem. She inspired me to attempt my own translation of the Gita, as a summary, with Arjun’

Pantheon By Harnidh kaur "I want Eve to walk into a church naked, Snapchatting her strut to Kali, who responds with her own tipsy stagger into a temple, clothes from last night hanging off her in crumpled ribbon-strings, tongue stuck out with two fingers held up under in the sign of peace (or is it one of triumphant victory?), the antics from the evening enshrined into digital immortality on Amaterasu’s Instagram page, hashtagged with #FreeTheNipple, a cheeky homage, echoed i

I discovered Khanna’s poetry in a list of poets mentioned in a mail about an International Women Writers Guild (IWWG) workshop on the Eternal Feminine Divine (as usual, she was the lone Indian). I started with this one – Krishna’s Mother Speaks of Her Regrets I am stiff with losing. Child after child unfurls from my body— each one a peacock feather, each one turned to ash before I can name it. All except for you— my last one, my blue one. At first push, the night sky puckere