Let the Smithereens: Thayil Editions

by Karthika Nair

English 152 pages 1 edition

Let the Smithereens is a clarion call, a reckoning, a fierce attempt at speaking truth to power. In this collection, poet and dance librettist Karthika Nair confronts a universe in disarray – one where Black [and coloured] lives don’t really matter, where women and whole cultures get scored out, where love collapses into itself. To step into Let the Smithereens is to enter a landscape that knows seismic shifts, is acquainted with the daily jolts of racism and erasure, and is familiar with the chaos of war and attack. Words here discharge shock, not just through the meanings they harbour, but through form – they shiver, spiral, zigzag, take the shape of forgotten continents, a migrant’s split-open ‘pettee’, a lover’s temporary clasp. This is Karthika Nair at her most dazzling – grasping for the precise geometry of language; and hoping – against all hope – that the dot, the line, the dash can glue together a world that is splintering. And, if not that, bear witness. For remembrance is also resistance.