OCTOBER NIGHT

OCTOBER NIGHT
Seema Gill
The moonlight
stretched out to touch
my feet, as a daughter's blessing
... The breeze synchronised music
in my ears
like a lover's kiss
While out there, like an errant vulture
the night was playing
a game of light and shadows
wrapping in it's wings
death and destruction

This journey from peace to conflict
is just another power struggle

Peace, a rare commodity
displays itself in disguise
in the name of war
Peace is....
Peace is my guardian angel
Is my mother's aching feet
I touch it
to bless my journey!

This poem was published in a peace poetry anthology we compiled after the 9/11 event and is still fresh! To buy the peace poetry anthology, SUN DOVES, BUMBLEBEES & BLUE STREAK BANANAS, please write to:seema@seemagill.org

A FIREFLY RIDE

Seema Gill

The sky is spiced
with rose petal clouds
touching raggedly on
my blue black hair
Like a thirsty rider
on the zigzagged alley of her dreams
I’m chasing illusion in the calm of a whirlpool

As the winding road slides ahead
like a slithering rattlesnake
like the monsoon drizzle on a pee pal tree
like an image from Kroyer’s painting
like my heart beats with solitude
like the shining bush of stars bending down
to touch my mother’s feet
like I shiver in anticipation

The sun skitters down through a
tiny black hole in my window fantasy
And the metaphorical
rain from my words pour down
I touch the scattered vapours with my eyes
A storm gathering
cryptically intended
My finger tips are twittering like birds
My feet grow taller with a burning itch
I’m traveling through the blizzard of a time machine
I hold my vulnerability in my hands like a crystal ball
I smoke the fireflies from its intangibility
I paddle vigorously on my journey
I shut out all the other noises
The earth is spinning with me
like a woman’s raw fantasy

Showers of illusion drown themselves
in a ambiguous horizon
I’m lost in this jungle of truth bewilderment
A moon walker trapped in the light like a dead wasp
shakes me up, ruthlessly reminding
“Look, you got to keep on moving.’

(This poem was published in 'Reach'.

I DON'T WANT TO SELL MY HEART

Seema Gill
I don’t want to sell my heart
Selling is for suckers
They suck the blood of the dispossessed
The pot-bellied monsters will never confess
They sell pieces of their soul to claim fame
They sell their dignity with no shame
They will send the boy to fight a war
If he ever comes home, he’ll carry their scar
Many more are dying, many more will tell tale
All their glory will be put to sale

I was sitting on a bench in a famous park
A bit scared and lonely, it was getting pitch dark
I had a three legged monkey in my back pocket
And a beggar asked whether I've seen his ‘rocket’
Are you a terrorist? trembling I asked
He looked me up and down and laughed
No madam, but I got a story with a twist
If I ever tell it to you, you’ll admit
That I just wanna lighten up my freedom
No, no, no, I don’t wanna end up in martyrdom
If freedom will be rounded up for interrogation
I’m afraid I’ll loose my fifty pounds salvation

Where do you think the freedom will end?
When she’s let loose she got no one to offend.
An I ‘m sitting on a lonely park bench
with the pinch of freedom in my heart’s content
My freedom and I are never apart
An I’m not selling you my golden autumn ache-heart

I MET YOU ON THE FAST TRACK OF TIME

I MET YOU ON THE FAST TRACK OF TIME
Seema Gill

I met you on the fast track of time
I, in my whithering elegance
And you in your divine prime
Like a shuddering sunray
Your image tickled my minds doubt
The glint in your eyes made me sway

Beneath the words we spoke
Between the lines we wrote
From the lines we didn’t cross
Freedom was caught
in desires golden cage

Without my wish
The concepts were drawn
On the battlefield of life
The distance is spread like dragon’s wing
Before the opening of my heart
Thursting to enter when we’re apart

Behind the walls of norms
Ritual was never performed
In between the canvas of trust
Images were yet drawn
Choices were never made
So the freedom didn’t bleed
And yet I ask this question
Why didn’t we feel the need?

I cage my golden wish
Hold it suspended in the air
My wish a razor blade
Ready but doesn’t dare
I met you on a fast track
That lights the fire in my heart
Pulls me back and yet we’re apart

FISHER WOMAN OF KERALA

FISHER WOMAN OF KERALA
By Seema Gill

She is not walking
She’s churning the sea
Sculpting hope
Each step cast on the tight rope
As sharp as the edge of a tidal wave!

She is not watching
Her eyes shower stars and dreams
hung upon the barbed wire
of survival!

She is not breathing
She’s melting the ring of fire
Each flame drips the sweat of her labour
into the fat belly of a shark!

She is not living
She is clothed in the layers of misconception
chasing the light and shadow
as they squeeze her body in a python grip!

She is not sleeping
She’s getting ready
to swim the life’s unglazed clay pot
risking her self
desperate for salvation!

She is not rising
She’s fuming with discontent
fighting to get free
from the claws of slavery
Wrapped in her arms is a bundle of hungry children!

And yet the roof over her head is a tattered norm
as fragile as the ray of Sun
hitting her conscience with an iron glow!

SEEMA'S NOVEL IS SVERA'S SONG: BY MARK CANTRELL

Seema’s novel is Svera’s song

Reading a novel by an author you know personally is fraught with dangers; all the more so when the novel in question is the author’s first. So Mark Cantrell approached Seema Gill’s Svera Jang with a certain sense of trepidation. What he discovered is a beautifully crafted novel about one woman’s resilience – and the strength of the human spirit

Svera Jang
By Seema Gill

Indigo Dreams Publishing: www.indigodreams.co.uk

Paperback (386 pages) | ISBN: 978-1-907401-14-5 | Price: £8.99

WHEN I got hold of a copy of Svera Jang by Seema Gill, I must confess that I wasn’t entirely convinced that the novel would suit my reading habits, but in truth I hadn’t really bought the book to read at all – I just wanted to own a copy.

Already familiar with Seema’s poetry from our mutual involvement, some years ago, in Bradford’s literary scene, I was curious about her prose, so I was motivated by something of a collector’s urge. Seema, naturally enough, was delighted to learn that I had partaken of her work: thus did she throw down the gauntlet and beg me to review her pride and joy.

Suddenly, I found myself caught in tangle of the ethical and the personal – what if I didn’t like the book? What if I thought it poorly written? A review is worthless for both potential reader and author alike, unless honestly given; likewise the truth has the capacity to hurt the author (or indeed swell their heads).

There’s a safe distance between reviewer and author when the two aren’t acquainted personally, so I suddenly found myself running the risk of slapping Seema unbidden in the face. I can’t say that I relished the prospect. So, would I dare to confront the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Yes, I dared, with misgivings. And then I started to read… and read… and read. Fate, or rather Seema’s writing, had slipped me a saving grace. All my worries evaporated as I was pulled into the story of Svera Jang and became seduced by Seema’s evocative prose. In one respect, though, I was right. The novel exists beyond my usual reading habitat, so it was an added pleasure to find my literary horizons become expanded. And, in this case at least, the grass was indeed greener on the far side of the fence.

Quite simply, Svera Jang is a beautiful book. Filled with warmth and compassion, the writing has an eloquence that speaks from the heart to convey a life-affirming story that has a resonance for us all.

Svera Jang dared me to be honest, which in a curious kind of way is what her story is all about, but it is also about much more than that. As Seema wrote: “[I]t’s a story of life.” These few words, buried deep inside the narrative, stood out as I read them for the way they innocently encapsulated the entirety of the novel.

The life in question is that of the character Svera Jang, but it is more than that, since the narrator is the older Svera. Born of the same mother’s womb, they are nevertheless separated by time and space and experience, but the older woman has the clarity – or perhaps the cloudiness – of hindsight as she undertakes a journey to reconcile Svera past with Svera present.

As much as it is about Svera’s life and times, it is also concerned with the chains of motherhood that link us all, one generation to the next, in a great flourishing tree of humanity. Motherhood, yes, and convention too, the great waves of expectation that demand we conform to half-comprehended norms and values; we are all shrouded this way, but it is women who are bound the tightest and in many ways Svera Jang is an urgent plea to shed these webs – and be true to each other and ourselves.

In that respect, though the themes of the feminine course strong throughout the novel, it is above all a book of humanity: man or women, young or old, we are all born of a mother’s womb. If this sounds philosophical to the point of becoming esoteric, then yes it is, for the book is also resplendent with a spiritual aura (but don’t mistake that as necessarily religious), as the narration makes its impassioned plea for the human soul to shine through the veils of age-old stifling custom.

Svera’s journey of self-reconciliation starts in the Punjab, India, where the young Sikh woman’s artistic spirit is already straining against the everyday expectations of culture and country. From there, she strikes out on her own, running from an arranged marriage, but her idealistic pursuit of a life lived true and of a love unbound by conventional expectations lands her in a union with a “philandering Marxist”. Worse still, he proves a wife-beating coward; the very antithesis of everything that young Svera hoped and lived and loved for.

When Svera finds herself living in Copenhagen, she perceives in Europe a land free of the stifling conformity of her homeland, and in young Peter, her blond Viking as she calls him, the very essence of the unconventional man. A Marxist, a revolutionary, he appears to stand against expectation in his desire to change the world, but poor Svera learns – too late – that Europe and her Viking are every bit as bound in expectations of conformity as her homeland.

Peter’s Marxism is little more than a confirmation of his conventionality; a twisted parody of his role as the patriarchal authority figure he would no doubt claim it dismisses. The whole revolutionary show, no matter his personal and sincerest conviction, is but a vehicle for his self-centred narcissism; the demonstration of his stoic devotion to duty and self-sacrifice but a mask to hide his selfish interests and a justification for the neglect of his young wife. The man abandons his young bride on their wedding night to attend a party meeting, surly a sign of things to come as he warps the relationship to suit his own shallow needs.

We are all the sum total of our personal and societal contradictions, Peter the Marxist might say; true enough. Equally do we all carry within us the seeds of a tangled hypocrisy, but as the young Dane matures – in flesh if not in character – alongside his put-upon wife, those Marxian contradictions slough away to leave merely the hypocrite.

The story follows the increasingly mismatched pair from Denmark, to Bradford, England, where they settle for a time. That is, until Peter's wanderlust takes him to partake of charity works in Africa. There his more base lusts see him wander in pursuit of the local women. Svera's suspicions are eventually confirmed; sex with Indian women is so predictable he sneers, compounding his wife's humiliation. To my mind, this middle-aged man, so flushed with a sense of prowess at bedding African girls half his age, thereby further compounds his wrongs with a rather racist undertone.

Indeed, though he himself may not perceive it, he reveals himself as something of a caricature of the old colonialist, albeit it in a 'progressive' guise, striding forth under the weight of the 'white man's burden' to uplift the poor 'natives'.

Ironically, Svera demonstrates a far greater patience and compassion towards Peter than does this review; but then this reviewer found in Peter's curious amalgam of political and personal flaws an echo of his dealings with many a minor figure of the Left: the same familiar arrogance, the same distortions of ideology to justify selfish preferences, the same tendency to disparage others for their own personal failings.

The recognition, for me, made him a deeply unsympathetic character, but also a strangely compelling one. Perhaps Svera felt the same compulsion; certainly, in her story she demonstrates a tremendous energy in trying to reach out and pull the lost essence of her idealistic blond Viking out of his pompous shell. Ultimately, however, Peter proves to be a lost cause.

Reading the story, it is easy to find contempt for Peter as the years pass and he reveals his inadequacies. In truth, however, he is a pitiful and pitiable creature, completely unworthy of the mother of his children, or indeed of the politics he claims to uphold. It is clear that he cannot handle the free-spirited, artistic soul he has wed. The man is crippled by his own conventionality, stunted by his conformity, and the surface radicalism of his politics is but an expression of his stagnant spirit.

Deep down, one suspects he knows this; a tiny sliver of self-awareness that provokes him to take it out on his wife, but even this pathetic man’s fists ultimately prove unable to dowse the light of Svera’s spirit. Though she is forced to endure much pain, grief and shadow in the course of the relationship, she finally manages to liberate herself and rise above Peter to “soar like a firefly” as Seema writes on the book jacket.

The subject matter might sound grim and gritty, a journey in to some kind of misery-lit, but far from it. Svera Jang is a life-affirming story, a demonstration of one woman’s indomitable spirit and determination to remain true to herself. One might also describe it as a kind of ‘coming of age’ tale, the way that the older Svera confronts herself in the mirror of introspection and memory to come to terms with her younger self, yet remain true to her youthful ideals. This is a woman not content to let herself become staid and bitter as she rediscovers the threads that bind Svera through each of her living incarnations. In that, Seema demonstrates a lesson for us all.

Seema’s writing slips seamlessly through a number of narrative approaches. The story doesn’t simply interweave the contemporary with flashbacks of her earlier life, but slides back and forth along her timeline with graceful ease. At times, the prose slips into a delightful magical realism and Seema’s writing is lyrical whether Svera narrates herself, or whether the story slips into the observations of ghosts or even the house in which she dwells. They all take a turn in revealing Svera’s story.

An unusual approach this might be, but it conjures up a beautiful and at times dream-like quality that never loses its roots in the real. This is very much a reflection of Seema’s incarnation as a visual artist and poet, almost painting her story with the palette of her colourful language. Indeed, her prose is imbued with the living spirit of poetry, with its ebb and flow of its cadence, the rhythm lively with the eloquence of human speech in full flow.

“Admirers of Seema Gill’s poetry will not be disappointed by her first novel,” said Bill Broady, quoted on the cover. “Most poets damp down the fires when they venture into prose but she has gone for a full-on conflagration. Language is stretched to its breaking point – and often beyond – in its swoopings between the rhapsodic and the aggrieved.”

When it comes to stretching language to its breaking point, however, I must disagree with Broady: oh no, Seema shows herself too subtly aware of the malleability of her metal as she shapes the story into the fine filigree of its narrative strands, weaving them into the delicate sculpture of her living language, until with a gentle breath she stirs it to vibrate in a mellifluous melody.

For all of its poetic verve, don’t be fooled by an assumption of indulgence, of purpled-flowers blossoming to tangle and choke the pace of Seema’s prose; she stays in control of this emotive and emotional journey to create both a compelling drama and a celebration of the human spirit.

This is a brave book, not least for the poetic expression the author uses, but also because Svera is none other than Seema herself. Fictionalised though it is, she reveals much of herself to the critical eye of her audience – and herself – as she airs her own struggle – her jang – to rise above an abusive relationship and reconnect with her self. The novel is as much Seema’s voyage of self-re-discovery – a mirror to her life – as it is Svera's and she invites us to keep her company along the way.

“So my mirror came to name itself Svera, meaning the dawn – an awakening – and Jang, meaning the battle. Svera Jang. I am not her now, but she was once me,” writes Seema as she embarks upon the novel.

“The more I wrote, the more I realised Svera was constantly fighting and searching for something. Hope? Longing? Desire? Or was it the freedom from those illusions? Hang on, hope is not an illusion. Or is it? I know I was searching for a place, a land where freedom prevails in its real sense. One thing was sure, it was a universal search. It started. It ended. It started and ended. It started over and over again. And again. A never-ending story of life, mapped out on the face of every breathing soul. The search for that total freedom of mind was her dream and the dream was her search.”

That’s something we can all share, if – like Svera, like Seema – we dare to look back at the path we trod and to face ourselves in the mirror. It’s called being human. It’s called life. And in this literary incarnation, it’s called Svera Jang.


Mark Cantrell,
Stoke-on-Trent,
12 September 2011


Copyright © September 2011. All Rights Reserved.

MY HOUSE SITS ON THE HILL

MY HOSE SITS ON THE HILL My house sits on the hill overlooking the famous Cliffe cemetery. A wonderful place of rest, resplendent in reflected glory, where obelisks point high to a hopeful God and the bones of merchants lay in tombs fit for Caesar. Where undergrowth spreads gothically in the unexplored parts. Vast expanses of bramble bushes arched over like cathedrals providing the perfect hiding places for insects, spiders, small animals and dope dealers, like the underworld spreading through this city of intolerance and separation, of fear and suspicion, of words that should not be spoken, of issues that cannot be raised for fear of that midnight knock, of segmented ghost towns which lie cheek by jowl with the net curtain clipped accents, of gypsies and thieves, of long gone Germans and Irish men who rolled up their sleeves and dug the canals, those flat, straight works of art, of Asian nightshift workers who toiled on dangerous machines, of penniless Ugandans who dragged themselves up by their bootstraps, of fading trolley lines and fumed up bottlenecks, of sixties white elephants and exotic back alleys. This city has it all. It’s where they burnt the book against the words of the Prophet where cappuccino drinkers admire Hockney, where Charlotte and Emily penned their rugged books on moors that look down from their parallel world. This city where I continue my search. Why here? For what reason? For one, it was here that the ghosts would depart from me. (from my book Svera Jang)