The subconscious plays with the conscious just as the body with the soul. Words dissect desires and feelings of the flesh to arouse carnal instincts. The body sort of turns into a language in ‘A Strange Place Other than Earlobes’, an anthology of 70 visceral poems by Bini B S, Sreelatha, Jeena Mary Chacko, Ra Sh and Binu Karunakaran.
The poems in general explore the contours of the body, each part having an intercourse with the senses, sending nerves tingling and boggling the mind to reach a sort of nirvana. The writers voice their pangs and frustrations through metaphors and imageries journeying through the universe trying to unravel the mysteries of the unexplored crevices of the body and soul and through it life - of love, of passion, of loneliness, of yearning, impatience, of rape, condemned love and more, but through untrodden paths. Bold expressions turn the common into uncommon and sometimes border on the grotesque.
It may be the result of instinctual libido or sexual energy that Freud speaks about that gives birth to most poems in the anthology. Some allude to myths and legends to link the ancient with the modern and create new idioms. Focus is on body rather than mind.
Binu Karunakaran meanders through nature, linking it with humankind in ‘Ferry Crossing Periyar’ that rings a bell of timelessness. In ‘Amazing Feats’ he takes a dig at the various feats that humans try with their body to enter the record books. The monotony of routine chores is felt in ‘Washerwoman’. The lines are layered with meaning in ‘Sweet Ghazal’ and the words ‘sugar’ and ‘diabetics’ and ‘low cal’ mixes the authentic with the artificial sweeteners in all activities in today’s world. and its poisonous effect on the body.
A body of words flows out from Jeena Mary Chako’s ‘The Other’, from the mouth and the magic they play as they dig into the body and create a new world. The world where the body and its action turn into tomes, ‘a concise copy, proof-read, spiral-bound, each chip and scratch labelled you now neatly fit into my armpit’. ‘Womb Discourses’ and ‘A Brief Account of the Body’ are more of an assimilation of the womb and body through her mind. Of course, it’s a bloody journey which changes course from womb to tomb.
The words flow like hormones that help communicate between organs and tissues. Ra Sh (Ravi Shankar) takes one on an erotic trip through magic realism, mythology and mysticism. He virtually cooks poems with apt ingredients in astonishing diction drawing parallel between the sensual in food and love making as in ‘Waking the Cake’. But the thoughts run into erotic in the rest of his poems - Nemisis Revisited, Witch Burning at the Plaza ‘Butcher Girl’ series and ‘Skin Poem’ inspired by film ‘Pillow Book’ .
Lust and dark emotions ooze out of Bini B S’ verses. “Beneath his weight_ I was a mashed rainbow”. In ‘ The Craft of Vivisection’ she vents her feelings “I love my men...I let them sniff around me... Too permissive , I am”. In ‘May the Kiss Kingdom Come’, ‘Hibiscus’ and Fabled Lives of Animals, the desires of the flesh are delineated in different ways.
For Sreelatha Chakravarty each touch of the body spreads a wave of emotion that are as different as the innumerable nerves. Her words explore the vastness of body and that of nature finding similarities in both. In ‘An Egyptian Mummy in Love’ she speaks of after life. Her ‘Soul-Bazar’, ‘Transmittance’, ‘SoS’ have strains of pain and pleasure.
Words are not enough to portray the miracles and urges of the body . Collective behaviour apart, the writers try to convey that it’s the constitution of body that dictates thoughts and action.