Review of the poetry pamphlet 'Bulbul Calling' by Pratyusha
Pratyusha’s pamphlet ‘Bulbul Calling’ published by Bitter melon Press, is at once a dense and a fluid reading where emotions carve out a translucent space, reminiscent of the portrayal of Nature often evoked in the poems. It reiterates the magnificent power of words when used with perceptive control to breathe life into fresh, unusual imagery. This pamphlet brings to life the poet’s main absorptions – nuances of mythology, familial emotions, history, Nature, and language itself, and she succeeds superbly in most cases. The usage of Urdu and Tamil words – which make themselves an integral part of the work right from the cover art - strike not as forced inclusion for the sake of inclusion, but as a natural path to an honest emotive display. There has been considerable debate about italicising or hyphenating words of other languages used in a largely English text; is it ‘othering’ the language? The annoyingly simple answer is that it depends on the intention of the writer and the charac