New Delhi Love Songs

Book excerpt: A sensational debut collection of poems by a fresh new voice 'In these whimsical, deeply affectionate poems, New Delhi is both context and protagonist, alive in its dust, smog and everydayness, in the vibrant colour of the first lychees of the season, in the mysteries that lie between "city and sprawl." The city finds an ardent archivist in Michael Creighton--one who stoutly keeps the faith that "warm rains" will always "come to clear the dust." Suffused by rare tenderness, these poems return through the welter of streets and residences to an address that remains at the abiding centre of this book--the place that the poet terms "the place I imagine my heart to be."'--Arundhathi Subramaniam 'New Delhi Love Songs is a collection abounding with shakarkandiwalas, jasmine-sellers, FM radios and cyclists, the Ghaziabad flower market and Moolchand flyover; the Delhi all around us, the Delhi of "your flesh, your seeds, / your skin," of "sweat and soil / mixed with clover, sun and wind." Unusual, deeply affecting in their attentiveness to life that seldom makes headlines, these poems reinforce the skeins of humanity that sustain us. They are tender and droll--two qualities we desperately need, in the capital but also elsewhere--yet steadfast in their eschewal of easy sentimentality and facile observations. New Delhi Love Songs makes the heart ache; but also sing, from time to time, for this is where "even a dead river looks lovely."' --Karthika Nair