Swati Pal

In Absentia Swati Pal

Intensely personal, these poems arise from deep grief. Like everyone else, the author has experienced the loss of loved ones; these poems are about the pain of such loss. They are about the longing for the bodily form, the desolation at the realization that memories cannot always heal and are never enough. As the title suggests, the poems acknowledge the presence of absences in one's life - absences that define reality and decide the paths taken by those left behind. This reality is primarily grim and bleak, yet a specific strength can be discerned from how reality is confronted. Do people endure in the minds and hearts of those that remain on earth? In Absentia is about motherhood and the loss of identity and selfhood when a mother loses her child - her existential despair at the meaninglessness of life and her questioning the purpose of her existence.