Suparna Ghosh: poet, painter, journalist
(Canscene) — To me, the ideal way to appreciate poetry is to hear in the poet’s own words, the spoken text. Providing of course that the poet has the gift of conveying the full import of his/her expression of feelings.
Dots and Crosses, published in 2006, is a long poem by Suparna Ghosh who is also an accomplished artist and whose arresting images acompany the poems in both this book and a previous volume, Sandalwood Thoughts. As a journalist she is webmaster of the Suprana Ghosh site, about which more in our next issue.
Suparna , who has lived in Canada since 1974 was born in Allahabad, India to which her archeologist father had moved from Bangladesh. The family moved to New Delhi where Suparna became a player in radio drama. She grew up speaking English and is fluent in Hindi and Bengali and also learned Urdu and Punjabi.
The true, gentle but firm expression of Suparna’s poetry comes in the CD she has made of Dots and Crosses, the story of Manu and his wife Manavi. She breathes her passionate soul into the reading of such lines as
Under the canopy of blurs and shadows
and the restive tick of the clock
many years have died
This is the house of Manavi and Manu
And their grown and indifferent children
Tara and Tapas.
Excerpts from the poem can be heard on Suparna’s web site at /suparnaghosh.com/ and the CD can be ordered via the site or by writing to suparna@rogers.com; the cost is $10 plus shipping. The books are also available at $15.00 each plus postage from the same sources.
In our next issue, we shall publish some material from the web site, including a searching take on the use and abuse of the word “Indian.”
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