Excerpted Poems
Rubai: Walk Softly
Poem on a Paper Aeroplane Floated Across the Border
Tell Her
This Is Nowhere
Concrete
Arterial Procession
Book Review
"A Primer for the Small Weird Loves" by Aasim Akhtar for Dawn
Excerpt: The earliest poems set a tone that persists throughout the collection (though in an increasingly expansive form) — short jabs of expressionistic imagery drawing heavily on the natural world; taut, compact lines; stanzas held together more by internal rhyme and assonance than by metre. The influence of European models is very evident. There is a strong vein of brooding romanticism that echoes the later generations of expressionists — the symbolist poems of Mandelstam. There are also links to poets such as Emily Dickinson and Poe, lending her poetry that strange European/North American fusion quality.