Poetry can be a refuge, but it could also pull the rug from under your feet — sending you flying or leaving you sprawled on the floor with your shattered assumptions. Wild Women , the anthology of sacred Indian poetry edited by Arundhathi Subramaniam, deftly does both by the sheer power and range of voices it packs. The collection’s overarching feminine voice overthrows all previously held ideas on what constitutes sacred poetry, uncovers a realm of experience never collated in one place before, gently, offers clues on redefining pathways to refuge.
At the Bengaluru book launch of Wild Women , Arundhathi called this book an attempt to “recover a powerful ancestry.” She wanted the poets whose voices we have barely heard over time, “to be named, to be accorded the dignity and attention they deserve.” She started with an “elegantly curated list of 20-25 poets” but ploughed through when at least double the number sprung out of research and demanded to be included.
“I think this was a parallel, subterranean stream, waiting to be acknowledged,” she says. She wanted to showcase the work of women of very “different temperaments, backgrounds, orientations and women who had made very different life choices” Thus, in this book, “you will find the voices of Buddhist nuns alongside that of vedantins, bhaktas, sufis, tantrikas and more. You will find poets — some cerebral, some devotional, some meditative and others more ecstatic.
” Whether they wore ochre, blu.