“ Paper Asylum “ is a collection of Prose and poetic related Haiku’s, which are very amazing, alluring, and astonishing by way and beauty of its poetic glamour and bliss. The well designed book cover page attracts many readers, and most of her poems reminds of famous Malayalam Poet Late Kamala Das, please accept my congratulations dear honorable poet Rochelle Potkar.
Haiku poetry, mixed with prose is a way of figuring things out, or if not that much, jotting it down immaculately and I was blown away by the ability of poet Rochelle Potkar to say things in such less words. Some were rhymed, some were free verses, but the ability to hold on something in one line and create curiosity out of it, and burst it open in the next line or the last, is an amazing experience.
Poetry is beautiful because it is created with the most attentive instances of our human minds, it’s appealing because most of the poems are meant to be read by others. Though it is not a first instinct to write something that is appealing, but it is an inadvertent implication of writing a poem altogether, mixed in real situations of from life, Poet Rochelle Potkar tells her own truth and facts without any kind of fear and tear from all the corners. The pages depicting” Typewriter “ , “ Retake 2 “ are her real life experience. And as it was written in one answer, not almost all her poems are appealing, it depends on the reader, what he takes from it, how we could interpret them, what is the takeaway for the reader.
The human body is effusive and most ample, placing honorable Poet Rochelle Potkar in the historical background of Indian poetry in English, especially haiku’s. Her poetry should not be equated with the stereo-typical feminist poetry that concerns itself with the body with a fondness, lust and love towards human in general.
Her whole composition becomes a declaration of the greatness of love that even while being expressed through the body also with the transcends the body. This is good enough for whetting the literary desire of those interested in the Indian poetic scene, especially on the trends for prose poetry as well as haiku oriented compositions, dear honorable Poet Rochelle Potkar , please accept my congratulations for compiling such alluring novel themes on haiku’s poems along with poetic lines of excellent prose from your golden pen, keep growing , wishing you happy writing in future, stay blessed.
-Williamsji Maveli
About Poet Rochelle Potkar
Author of The Arithmetic of Breasts and other stories and Four Degrees of Separation, Rochelle Potkar is the alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and Charles Wallace Writer’s fellowship, Stirling. She was the winner of the 2016 Open Road Review story contest for The leaves of the deodar. Her story Chit Mahal (The Enclave) appears in The Best of Asian Short Stories, Kitaab International. Her poem, The girl from Lal Bazaar was shortlisted for the Gregory O’ Donoghue International Poetry Prize, 2018.
She is co-founder of the Arcs-of-a-Circle artists’ residency program, Mumbai. (A U.S. Consulate project). She acted in a small role in the Tamil feature-length film, Taramani. (Director: Ram). Co-editor of the Joao Roque Literary Journal that promotes literature around Goa, she is editor of the Goan-Irish anthology, Goa: a garland of poems, with transcreations by Gabriel Rosenstock; and an upcoming book of prose and poetry ‘Golden Goa’ by Joseph Furtado.
Her poem, Skirt has been adapted into a poetry film by Philippa Collie Cousins (UK) for the Visible Poetry Project 2018, USA.
Her recent book Paper Asylum has been released during year 2018 by Copper Coin Publishing.
Congratulations to Honorable Poet Rochelle Potkar
Stay blessed
Williamsji Maveli