Our Correspondent
Kohima, May 2 (EMN): 'Our petals', a collection of poems written by Vizosienuo Shuya and Chozila L Sangtam, was released by Assistant Professor, Kohima College Kohima, Theyiesinuo Keditsu at Ura Academy on Monday.
"Our petals' defines our own lives, each petal consisting of a story to tell. As we decided to come together with our shared love for poetry, we began to see our lives as petals, growing and learning from each other, reading each other's poetry and adding petals of fragrance in our writings", the writers wrote in the prelude.
Their poems in the book deal with various subjects and are prompted by different events and feelings.
‘It is written with a firm hope that every reader will relate to it’, they went on to add.
Author Chozila L Sangtam is currently pursuing her master's degree in Linguistics from Nagaland University. To her credit, she also wrote her debut book 'Meraki', a collection of poems in 2020. As an avid reader herself, she encouraged to read books.
Vizoseinuo Shuya hails from Meriema village and has a master's degree in English Literature. She said that they worked for a year to bring out the book.
'We could have laid in bed and dreamed about it but we took the step and turned our dream into a reality', she said on releasing their book.
Theyiesinuo Keditsu who released the book remarked the book as a 'marriage made in heaven’.
‘It is every teacher's dream come true as one can analyse and create a wonderful connection at every point’, she said.
She observed that both the writers wrote as women and their language is different and involves learning and re-learning.
The professor commended their collaboration which makes the book 'perfect'. Poets are selfish and for two poets to share the space with each other is "brave and dangerous", she said. Yet, the "most beautiful thing" is collaboration without competition, she added.
“It is an example of a feminist piece/writing and showed an example of how women can lead the way and overcome societal tribal issues. Further, the book is ‘transformative’ as both of the writers overcome various kinds of struggles and that takes a lot to say, write and publish. The writers have written themselves into speech and into being, which is transformative,” Keditsu added.
“Society all over the world teaches women to be silent. Similarly in the Naga context, speech in social/public spaces is the prerogative of men while silence is the prerogative of women. In public speaking, many women are paralysed by fear in front of others,” she said and pointed out that women should write as writing is a way to express themselves.
Speaking about poems, she said that publication houses do not publish poetry and appreciated PenThrill Publication House for taking the initiative.
“The prose is easy to understand while poetry is not. Poetry is serious and sensible and the demand of Nagas is that it should be easy to understand. But the merits of poetry lie in its inaccessibility”, she argued and questioned why people want it to be easy to understand.
'Each word in a poem is a universe in itself. Readers need to digest it, let it sit, and grow in you', she remarked.
Publisher of the PenThrill Publication House, Vishu Rita Krocha said that publishing the book was an attempt to promote poetry “with the belief that all these fresh voices also represent the hopes, aspirations, struggles, and happiness of the youth today”.
The writers hope that the book will inspire upcoming artists to rise above and live out loud to the best of their abilities.