OMG: Vandana Khanna is One of My Favourite Poets

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

puckered with lightning,

my body leaked over

the prison floor

like the moon’s cold

drizzle to dawn,

my womb swept clean

for the last time.

I can already smell

the cow’s milk on your skin,

the wet grass and marigolds

where you will roam.

When you arrive in town,

the cows shine yellow

with turmeric: your birth

announced not as a god,

but a boy, son of a cow herder.

Your whole life in disguise.

Now every time the wind

rustles I know it’s your flute

calling over hillsides and rivers,

across fields of rice—a world away.

My ears how they prick, how they lie.

When I read this poem at a Zoom meeting full of American poets, they too exclaimed, awestruck by her fresh metaphors and unique world view. Here’s a sample from ‘Why Sita is Chosen’ –

The forest left its branches on her chest

Now doesn’t that make you stop in your tracks, stop your heart? Khanna has done a take on Indian goddesses. Persona poems are many – Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife comes to mind – but Khanna’s irreverence, spot-on takes on mythological figures makes you sit up and take notice.

Consider these lines from ‘Parvati, in the First Blush of Love, Has a Premonition’ –

Bless me with your thumb in red paste—

tika-marking my forehead. Leave behind

this night’s throb and pulse on my skin.

Whoa! It reminds me of branding – the original term – of stamping cattle, searing them with heat, to leave the owner’s mark.

Or how about these lines, from ‘The Goddess Tires of Being Holy’ –

This is what you get for begging to be

chosen: every god in the universe eyeing

you through the clouds like a hot wound

he can’t help but press.

Indian gods can give Greek ones a run for their money – but while there are many there to call the latter out for doing so, Khanna is the one who reveals the reality of the former.

My favourite is ‘Parvati Rewrites Her Own Myth,’ from Khanna’s Burning Like Her Own Planet. (See the image on the left for the poem)

I’m looking forward to her fourth book, which is a series of poems as letters from Penelope to O.

I attempted a persona poem from Draupadi's perspective, inspired by Duffy. I won the Orange Flower Award for Poetry in 2020 for it.

I also wrote a book of persona poems, when I became a mom and needed new role models, but that felt flat because I was too busy trying to narrate their story rather than imagine their lives.

Will try writing in Khanna's style and see if that helps in creating better poetry.

This post is a part of Blogchatter A2Z.