Dear Life

by Shanta Acharya

Pub. February 14 2025

“...a collection of poems that are...concentrated, intense, deeply allusive and thoughtful. The reader is dazzled....”

In this, her eighth poetry collection, Shanta Acharya confronts an uncertain world, one in which she’s had to endure not only the Covid pandemic, but also her own ill health and her brother’s untimely death from cancer. In writing about it, she brings to bear her own particular mix of stoicism, mysticism and humour, combined with imaginative sympathy.

‘Being Alive’, with which the book begins, describes a CT scan (‘Moving through the scanner my body lights / up in a scrum of pain, building images // like slices of a loaf of bread of each organ’). Her ‘body now branded with the world’s // suffering’ and with medical experts unable ‘to diagnose the cause of my grieving’, it’s left to her to ‘heal myself with love, touchstone of the universe’. The title poem, with which the collection ends, makes it clear where her love lies:

I have nothing else to offer, dear Life—
words are what I breathe and eat, the clothes I wear,
dreams that sing me to sleep, silence that greets me awake:
words are the only wealth I possess—my truth, my love.
(‘Dear Life’)

Many of the poems take the form of interior monologues, reflecting both the enforced self-isolation brought about by Covid and her natural inclination. As she says:

Not knowing when the pandemic will end,
I accept solitude as a path to staying alive—
the conversation with oneself necessary as ever.
(‘Staying Alive’)

But her meditative poems aren’t a form of hermetic navel-gazing. She lets in the real world: ‘Shocking the sight of empty shelves in supermarkets. / The extra fine veneer of civilisation stripped / in a heartbeat with talk of lives not worth saving.’ Poems about dressing up alone during lockdown or finding dead bees in a gas boiler (in a sequence of unrhymed sonnets about the pandemic) sit alongside more abstract poems about keeping hope alive or the desire for religious faith (‘with my prairie-open mind’). Her feelings are often expressed with a confessional directness:

Why did I think it normal to crawl on the floor
of the ocean of exhaustion, hoping for redemption
.     .     .
Single, female, first generation immigrant, no security,
intelligent, neurodivergent, born to be different.
(‘Looking for Myself’)

Personal poems are mixed with others that address social issues. ‘A deadly virus held a mirror up to society, / revealing the extent of our inhumanity’, she says in ‘Strange Bewildering Time’. ‘Nesting’ describes a case of domestic abuse, which increased during the pandemic. ‘I Can’t Breathe’, about the killing of George Floyd, plays on the fact that the victim’s asphyxiation by Minneapolis policeman, Derek Chauvin, happened during the pandemic, when Covid victims were also suffering an inability to breathe.

Despite the seriousness of her subject matter, she is also capable of wry humour. Hearing someone in a hospital waiting room say:

One of the problems of growing old,
Isaiah Berlin once told Jeremy Paxman,
is not having any friends left to lunch with.
Unsure she was talking to me, I replied,
trying not to sound like Tina Turner:
What’s age got to do with it?
(‘The Waiting Room’)

While some poems are contemplative and abstract, others are more earthbound, such as the deliciously tactile ‘Taste of Childhood’, in which her madeleine moment is the opening of a pomegranate, or the equally sensuous, ‘This Is Where We Learn What It Means To Be Human’, about learning to cook in her Indian homeland.

Visiting her home city of Cuttack, she suffers insomnia due to jet-lag (‘Wokeness’) and visits the former headmistress of the convent where she was educated, now sadly suffering from dementia. We find her on a train in ‘Moscow To St. Petersburg’, or people watching at an airport in ‘Departures, Arrivals’: ‘Waiting at Baggage Claim I watch the theatre / of humanity unfolding as in an Advent Calendar. // The conveyor belts move like waitresses, / balancing their heavy plates of hors d’oeuvres—’

Other poems take on major events—the Holocaust, the Partition of India, the Bataclan attack, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of Aleppo, climate change—not in a generalised way, but how they impinge on private lives, or could impinge (‘Do not presume it will not happen to you— / bad things happen to good people. // Think of what you can do in the face of calamity, / not to be overwhelmed by its immensity’, she says in ‘It Happened’, which has an epigraph from Primo Levi: It happened, therefore it can happen again.) Her imaginative sympathy is engaged by the fact that, as an emigrant herself, she knows what it’s like to be an outsider: ‘feel my heart / beat with the compassion of one in self-exile,’ she says in ‘Exile’. Returning to her roots, she has a number of poems about Indian history and myth. The glossary and notes are helpful with these and others in the book.

Two of the most moving poems in the collection are those written in memory of her brother. One, ‘We Are All Returning’, is an elegy in five parts, celebrating his life and courage in the face of death, as well as her loss: ‘The most revolutionary thing one can do in the worst / of times is to live and love to the best of one’s ability.’ The other, ‘Where Did He Go’, is a shorter poem based on Rumi’s ‘Where did the handsome beloved go?’ (one of several ghazals in this collection).

Shanta Acharya’s poetry is marked by its intelligence, courage, honesty and above all its versatility. She is by turns meditative and mystical, humorous and grounded. I liked best the poems that were most deeply rooted in the physical world, although there is enough variety here to appeal to all tastes.

Stephen Claughton’s poems have appeared widely in print and online. He has published two pamphlets, The War with Hannibal (Poetry Salzburg, 2019) and The 3-D Clock (Dempsey & Windle, 2020). He reviews poetry for The High Window and London Grip and chairs Ver Poets in St Albans. Links to his reviews, poems and pamphlets can be found at: stephenclaughton.com

Dear Life is Shanta Acharya 13th book and her eighth collection of poems. Her writing therefore has the ‘long foreground’ Emerson said must have been true of Walt Whitman’s work. Shanta Acharya has written on the influence of Indian thought on Emerson, and this shows a dual identity grounded in an intellectual understanding of Indian and Western traditions as well as that which comes from the poet’s extensive life experience in both cultures. Acharya’s poems, however, are not restricted to the places she knows best but cover regions such as Palestine, Syria and Russia. The poems are accessible with any unfamiliar words explained in the glossary.

The collection is a rich one and, sadly, I only have space to look at a tiny fraction of its poems. I want to start with the title poem “Dear Life” in which the poet delightfully considers words as beings who like to rebel.

My words I minister to like my children offer them the freedom to be themselves –

warn them of risks from the moment they are born, their very existence an act of rebellion.

Their bones breathe the mystery of the universe, summoning all to love the way singing does.

I’m haunted by the enormity of their grief – of the equal and opposite possibility of limitless joy…

These lines show the importance of certain themes to the poet including those of mystery, love, grief and joy. The collection covers subjects ranging from the personal through concern for those who suffer injustice and onwards to spiritual matters. Various poetic forms are used ranging from couplets, triplets, sonnets, and other forms including a prose-poem, “Going Nowhere ..for Joy Harjo”.

Beginnings, very different from those in Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”, are also important for the poet. “Always Beginning” is a pantoum that urges us ‘to find the resolve to be always beginning’ and states that ‘In time everything changes, even our perception of truth’. In the poem “From the Book of Transformation”, for instance, we are told that ‘even a mighty river is a child entering the world’.

The second poem in the collection is the sonnet length “Something To Do With Love” which is set in the physically restricted world of the Covid lockdown. It begins

Surveying the locked down map of my world, windows opening to landscapes of uncertainty, time dances like a god in the changing light.

The word ‘dances’ suggests the god Shiva who is associated with both creation and destruction but not named here. Opposites are important in many poems in the collection and in this one we are told ‘As the death toll rises/so do fear and courage’ and ‘believing in blue skies, bird song/and spring in the dreadful winter of our hearts’. The words certainly fit with the last quoted couplet in the “Dear Life” poem above. The third poem is “Loneliness”, a hard-hitting poem that deals with a common experience regarded by some medical professionals as being as harmful as smoking. This poem begins ‘A professional assassin, strikes without warning, / works with exaggerated slowness and precision’, and later we are told that it ‘sucks the energy/out of me’. It seems in the early part of the poem that there is no ‘possibility of limitless joy’ but, after a few lines ‘Lying under the duvet, grief torn, I marvel /at shafts of light that lean in like angels of mercy.’ These ‘shafts of light’ reappear in “Solitude” which begins in a very different frame of mind:

Finding myself in this paradise of solitude, I discover continents in the embrace of solitude.

Shafts of sunlight, startled by the beauty of gods displaced, play in sacred spaces of solitude.

The ‘opposite’ experience to ‘limitless joy’ is expressed in “We are all returning”, a poem about the loss of the poet’s brother when ‘A roll of the dice suddenly changed everything./ We were unprepared for such a cosmic glitch.’ Terrible events that have befallen others make up part of the collection. One particularly horrific story is that of “The Tree Huggers”. It is based on an event that took place in 1730 and begins ‘When soldiers come to cut down the trees / for wood to build the Maharaja’s palace’. It ends with the tree huggers being ‘beheaded by the Maharaja’s soldiers’.

Some of the poems invite us to link two traditions as in “Be the Gods” whose ‘divine forces’ have been ‘conjured to destroy evil’. Durga was only made possible because ‘It took all the gods to conceive of such a deity/just as it takes a village to raise a child.’

Acharya compares spiritual beliefs in different traditions in “Song of Praise – prayers from different traditions”. Everything in the poem is carefully made accessible to Western readers. To take one example, in the line ‘Praise the eye of the guest-clear observant’ the word ‘guest’ may suggest the writings of Kabir but it works on a spiritual level without that knowledge.

In “Things” the poet expresses her awe of the scale of the universe compared to our interior cosmos. It begins ‘Inside each of us are galaxies of things / known only to the god of infinite things.’ Later the reader is told ‘The journey within is vast as the one without’.

Dear Life is a rich and rewarding collection due to the poet’s expression of experiences profoundly felt and considered. The book begins with a dedication to her brother Susanta and some beautiful quotations from Dickinson, Blake, Milosz and Tagore which are perhaps signposts to some important influences on the poet. Essentially, Shanta Acharya’s poetry can be said to concern everything that is summed up in the poem title “This Is Where We Learn What It Means To Be Human”. For instance, in “Weathering” the reader is told “Weathering is what we are here for” and it is such hard-won wisdom that makes Dear Life a collection I would highly recommend.

It is difficult to write a review of a collection of poems that are so concentrated, intense, deeply allusive and thoughtful. The reader is dazzled by the profusion of ideas and invention. There is wit everywhere. Her description of the face, for example, in “Meeting Le Rêve At the Tate Modern:” ‘The eyes to the right, the nose to the left...’

The title Dear Life is ironic. Yes, we cling to ‘dear life’ when confronted by something like Covid-19, but what makes life so precious when the world is in so many ways frightful?

These poems confront the enigma of existence and the grimness of the world head-on, asking what makes life endurable, despite terrorism, rape, environmental destruction and the pervasive lack of humanity. “Sunflower Seeds” mourns the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Another poem, and it is a very fine one, mourns the destruction of Aleppo in the Syrian war.

Once the beating heart of the world,
its flourishing trade routes,
the envy of nations, I lie in ruins…
Where are my scented gardens and fountains,
when will I hear bird song and laughter of children,
lose myself in a whiff of jasmine?

“In A Time of Siege” presents the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th 2015, as if from one of the victims’ point of view.

Moving to music in the concert hall, we shrugged
off gunshots, mistaking them for fireworks.
In an instant we got a grip on reality
as masked men sprayed bullets and blood.…

Unbearable this poisoned shroud that keeps
diminishing my world to nothing,
Release me from this coffin that I may breathe…

Faced with a world of brutality and indifference do we cling to our absurd little existences only out of an instinct that is irrational?

The question of what makes life worth living is answered here in many ways, firstly by the humorous poems and then those that find consolation in contemplating the natural world and reflecting through the medium of Hindu philosophy and religious concepts.

The collection starts with poems written during the Covid lockdown period such as “Staying Alive”. Ill health and isolation plunge the speaker intro despair: ‘My days measured in blister packs of agony’. Among the many pains of life is the sense of being an exile everywhere - to which one poem is devoted.

In “Nesting”, a woman's misery trapped with an abusive male is described with acute insight, ‘her body became his plaything, no longer hers’ ... ‘her tears knew every synonym of fear and loathing’. In “Wokeness”, the title plays on a fashionable word but uses it to mean wakefulness, as the author lies brooding at night on the awfulness of the world – rape takes place in India every fifteen minutes, how can we even take that in or live with it? – and finding the quietness of lockdown eerie and disturbing.

“The Waiting Room” is one of many poems that addresses the loneliness and isolation of existence, doing so with delicate irony, and in “The Questionnaire”, another poem about hospital treatment, she struggles to find an adequate answer to the final question “Do you suffer from depression?” In this mood of deep pessimism, ‘Hope lives like a virus’. One thing that helps to makes life bearable is a sense of humour. “Dressing up in Lockdown” is an ironic self-portrayal of how the speaker decks herself in a glamorous sari and jewellery for an evening in, alone, watching Downton Abbey on TV.

“This Is Where We Learn What It Means to Be Human” acknowledges the rewardingness of cookery as an art form and a source of cultural identity that kindles sociability. “If You Let Yourself Believe” is a positive poem about friendship. Several poems in this collection celebrate friends. “Somewhere to Come Home To” is in praise of Mimi Khalvati, the Iranian-born recipient of the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry. “Between Thoughts” is dedicated to Hugo Williams, the prize -winning poet, and “Hearing Eye” is about John Rety, the Hungarian-British poet who ran the Torriano Meeting house, a poetry reading venue, in Kentish town. He died in 2010.

“The Tree Huggers” tells a story from Indian history. In 1730 in Rajasthan, Amrita Devi and her three daughters tried to save the sacred trees of Khejarli from being cut down by the Maharaja to build his palace. The trees were venerated by the Bishnois as connecting them to the universe and the women embraced them as their shringara, their life and beloved. They and the other villagers who joined them were all beheaded ruthlessly by the Maharaja’s soldiers. By calling them tree-huggers the poem draws a parallel with contemporary struggle to save our environment. The villagers knew from experience that the khejri trees were precious. Nowadays we know that they are (like other members of the bean family) nitrogen fixing trees that enrich the soil and enable other plants to grow. They produce edible beans and their bark is medicinal. It is indeed a wonder-tree. The heroism of these women is celebrated in Acharya’s poem and we learn that the struggle to protect the environment is not new. The problem did not start with capitalism and it has not been solved by the fact that India is declared a socialist country in its constitution. It is in caring about such things that life becomes meaningful and therefore endurable. It is still painful, but at least the pain is meaningful.

“Thinking of You” appears to be a poem about God, a divinity to whom she still prays ‘caught between faith and doubt’. “The Forgiveness of Bees” is one of several poems that were written in 2022 for Earth Day, in a group then titled “Song of Praise” published in the Beacon webzine. It celebrates the wonder of these tiny creatures and their fragility, comparing them in death to the legendary Hindu warrior, Abhimanyu, who died in battle in a maze as bees do, trapped in a boiler.

The mysterious poem “Inside One’s own Singing” ruminates that while life around is bleak and comfortless, the mind has its own resources and one can retreat inwards to find a place of freedom, bright and hopeful, an inn space. This place is the soul. This seems to connect with the poem “Secrets”, about a self-sufficient introvert living stubbornly in her inner world of secrets. “Going Nowhere” is a prose poem about a dream that achieves a truly dreamlike quality. It is strangely beautiful and its conclusion that our destination is somewhere within, not beyond, chimes with the thoughts of “Secrets” and “Paradise In My Soul”. There is a cosmos all around us, and a cosmos within. Both are a source of wonderment and consolation.

Acharya’s ideas are taken from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and further afield. In “Paradise in My Soul”, she quotes Emily Dickinson’s ‘Much madness is divinest sense’ (which has been called Platonic) as well as the Sufi poet, Hafiz. In its conclusion, she finds ‘Vishwarupa darshan’ – a revelation of the divine in Hinduism. Elsewhere, she refers to time dancing like a god. “Song of Praise” is a hymn taken from prayers in different traditions, a syncretic celebration of the cosmos. It is St Francis meets Siddhartha, and by the time we reach the end of the collection with “If” and “Always Beginning”, the mood is one of exaltation, rapturously contemplating the wonder of the universe.

“Grant Us” is a prayer for all the virtues we need to live meaningfully, the wisdom to survive, imagine, rejoice, love and pray. Several poems of reverence for the universe follow. The collection ends with two poems dedicated to Acharya’s brother Susanta, who died of cancer in 2024. “We Are All Returning” is a moving elegy, a tribute to a man who lived well and left behind an indelible impression. Faced with death and loss how can “Dear Life” not be precious?

Acharya is what I call an Indo-Anglian, the reverse of an Anglo-Indian; an Indo-Anglian is someone originating in India who has not only lived in the West and become naturalized but has soaked up far more of the culture than most natives can ever aspire to. This is partly because India itself has a vigorous British and Eurasian heritage and partly because her mind is greedily eclectic, taking in, absorbing and synthesizing ideas and stimulus from everywhere to create a dazzling mosaic. This is complex, challenging poetry, that requires us to work hard to grasp the rapidly changing thoughts and many layered metaphors. Readers will find the effort deeply rewarding.

It is difficult to write a review of a collection of poems that are so concentrated, intense, deeply allusive and thoughtful. The reader is dazzled by the profusion of ideas and invention. There is wit everywhere. Her description of the face, for example, in “Meeting Le Rêve At the Tate Modern:” ‘The eyes to the right, the nose to the left...’

The title Dear Life is ironic. Yes, we cling to ‘dear life’ when confronted by something like Covid-19, but what makes life so precious when the world is in so many ways frightful?

These poems confront the enigma of existence and the grimness of the world head-on, asking what makes life endurable, despite terrorism, rape, environmental destruction and the pervasive lack of humanity. “Sunflower Seeds” mourns the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Another poem, and it is a very fine one, mourns the destruction of Aleppo in the Syrian war.

Once the beating heart of the world,
its flourishing trade routes,
the envy of nations, I lie in ruins...

Where are my scented gardens and fountains,
when will I hear bird song and laughter of children,
lose myself in a whiff of jasmine?

“In A Time of Siege” presents the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th 2015, as if from one of the victims’ point of view.

Moving to music in the concert hall, we shrugged
off gunshots, mistaking them for fireworks.
In an instant we got a grip on reality
as masked men sprayed bullets and blood.
…

Unbearable this poisoned shroud that keeps diminishing my world to nothing,
Release me from this coffin that I may breathe…

Faced with a world of brutality and indifference do we cling to our absurd little existences only out of an instinct that is irrational?

The question of what makes life worth living is answered here in many ways, firstly by the humorous poems and then those that find consolation in contemplating the natural world and reflecting through the medium of Hindu philosophy and religious concepts.

The collection starts with poems written during the Covid lockdown period such as “Staying Alive”. Ill health and isolation plunge the speaker intro despair: ‘My days measured in blister packs of agony’. Among the many pains of life is the sense of being an exile everywhere - to which one poem is devoted.

In “Nesting”, a woman's misery trapped with an abusive male is described with acute insight, ‘her body became his plaything, no longer hers’ ... ‘her tears knew every synonym of fear and loathing’. In “Wokeness”, the title plays on a fashionable word but uses it to mean wakefulness, as the author lies brooding at night on the awfulness of the world – rape takes place in India every fifteen minutes, how can we even take that in or live with it? – and finding the quietness of lockdown eerie and disturbing.

“The Waiting Room” is one of many poems that addresses the loneliness and isolation of existence, doing so with delicate irony, and in “The Questionnaire”, another poem about hospital treatment, she struggles to find an adequate answer to the final question “Do you suffer from depression?” In this mood of deep pessimism, ‘Hope lives like a virus’. One thing that helps to makes life bearable is a sense of humour. “Dressing up in Lockdown” is an ironic self-portrayal of how the speaker decks herself in a glamorous sari and jewellery for an evening in, alone, watching Downton Abbey on TV.

“This Is Where We Learn What It Means to Be Human” acknowledges the rewardingness of cookery as an art form and a source of cultural identity that kindles sociability. “If You Let Yourself Believe” is a positive poem about friendship. Several poems in this collection celebrate friends. “Somewhere to Come Home To” is in praise of Mimi Khalvati, the Iranian-born recipient of the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry. “Between Thoughts” is dedicated to Hugo Williams, the prize -winning poet, and “Hearing Eye” is about John Rety, the Hungarian-British poet who ran the Torriano Meeting house, a poetry reading venue, in Kentish town. He died in 2010.

“The Tree Huggers” tells a story from Indian history. In 1730 in Rajasthan, Amrita Devi and her three daughters tried to save the sacred trees of Khejarli from being cut down by the Maharaja to build his palace. The trees were venerated by the Bishnois as connecting them to the universe and the women embraced them as their shringara, their life and beloved. They and the other villagers who joined them were all beheaded ruthlessly by the Maharaja’s soldiers. By calling them tree-huggers the poem draws a parallel with contemporary struggle to save our environment. The villagers knew from experience that the khejri trees were precious. Nowadays we know that they are (like other members of the bean family) nitrogen fixing trees that enrich the soil and enable other plants to grow. They produce edible beans and their bark is medicinal. It is indeed a wonder-tree. The heroism of these women is celebrated in Acharya’s poem and we learn that the struggle to protect the environment is not new. The problem did not start with capitalism and it has not been solved by the fact that India is declared a socialist country in its constitution. It is in caring about such things that life becomes meaningful and therefore endurable. It is still painful, but at least the pain is meaningful.

“Thinking of You” appears to be a poem about God, a divinity to whom she still prays ‘caught between faith and doubt’. “The Forgiveness of Bees” is one of several poems here that written in 2022 for Earth Day, in a group then titled “Song of Praise” and other poems published in the Beacon webzine. It celebrates the wonder of these tiny creatures and their fragility, comparing them in death to the legendary Hindu warrior, Abhimanyu, who died in battle in a maze as bees do, trapped in a boiler.

The mysterious poem “Inside One’s own Singing” ruminates that while life around is bleak and comfortless, the mind has its own resources and one can retreat inwards to find a place of freedom, bright and hopeful, with space and resources. This place is the soul. This seems to connect with the poem “Secrets”, about a self-sufficient introvert living stubbornly in her inner world of secrets. “Going Nowhere” is a prose poem about a dream that achieves a truly dreamlike quality. It is strangely beautiful and its conclusion that our destination is somewhere within, not beyond, chimes with the thoughts of “Secrets” and “Paradise In My Soul”. There is a cosmos all around us, and a cosmos within. Both are a source of wonderment and consolation.

Acharya’s ideas are taken from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and further afield. In “Paradise in My Soul”, she quotes Emily Dickinson’s ‘Much madness is divinest sense’ (which has been called Platonic) as well as the Sufi poet, Hafiz. In its conclusion, she finds ‘Vishwarupa darshan’ – a revelation of the divine in Hinduism. Elsewhere, she refers to time dancing like a god. “Song of Praise” is a hymn taken from prayers in different traditions, a syncretic celebration of the cosmos. It is St Francis meets Siddhartha, and by the time we reach the end of the collection with “If” and “Always Beginning”, the mood is one of exaltation, rapturously contemplating the wonder of the universe.

“Grant Us” is a prayer for all the virtues we need to live meaningfully, the wisdom to survive, imagine, rejoice, love and pray. Several poems of reverence for the universe follow. The collection ends with two poems dedicated to Acharya’s brother Susanta, who died of cancer in 2024. “We Are All Returning” is a moving elegy, a tribute to a man who lived well and left behind an indelible impression. Faced with death and loss how can “Dear Life” not be precious?

Acharya is what I call an Indo-Anglian, the reverse of an Anglo-Indian; an Indo-Anglian is someone originating in India who has not only lived in the West and become naturalized but has soaked up far more of the culture than most natives can ever aspire to. This is partly because India itself has a vigorous British and Eurasian heritage and partly because her mind is greedily eclectic, taking in, absorbing and synthesizing ideas and stimulus from everywhere to create a dazzling mosaic. This is complex, challenging poetry, that requires us to work hard to grasp the rapidly changing thoughts and many layered metaphors. Readers will find the effort deeply rewarding.

Acharya’s eighth book of poetry is a transcendent blueprint for healing in a ruptured world, drawing on the poet’s experiences with marginalization as an Indian-English woman and the scars of colonization, police brutality, racism, war, the pandemic, and more. In Acharya’s poems, presence is a pillar of that healing; for example, in taking notice of bees, “the peace of wild things descends like a mantle woven with blessings.” Yet this presence also makes space for grief, despair, and uncertainty. “Are there journeys without destinations, // pilgrimages that don’t lead to self-discovery?” Acharya writes. Facing these questions, the poet looks to faith as her guide.

Spirituality appears as both a solitary venture and one of communion in Acharya’s collection. In the heartening “This Is What It Means to Be Human,” the speaker recalls “the warmth of the rasoi” and the congregation of the family kitchen as the spiritual and cultural binding agents that allow humanity to transcend base impulses and strive for the best versions of itself. Some poems, like “Song of Praise,” “If,” and “Grant Us,” invoke the style of prayer and affirmation, addressing the spiritual needs of the present day, including those relating to the existential woes of the climate crisis.

In this vibrant collection that touches on so many fragments of global society, one illuminating thread throughout explores the poet’s identity. An awareness of the self, along with spiritual presence, is essential on the quest for healing that Acharya so touchingly describes: “when I reconcile myself to the randomness // of the universe, everything falls into place.” Acharya’s collection is the light in the darkness, a note of hope in the symphony of the world’s sorrow, and it shows readers how to pull themselves from the depths of despair while asking them to “think of what you can do in the face of calamity, // not be overwhelmed by its immensity.”

Dear Life pairs classical poetry traditions with the poet’s Indian background to bring novel flavors and life to the poetry in this wide-ranging narrative. The collection consists of poetic reflections filled with humor, philosophical insight, and considerations of various modern themes, from being alive to wokefulness and self-examination.

Shanta Acharya delivers a finely tuned sense of perspective, self, and insights that are laced with literary acuity and personal inspection. One example of the strength of these combined approaches lies in “Looking for Myself,” which considers that:

Love may have a way of outlasting us,/change is our one true companion in life./…Living in a state of vulnerability, hanging on/to the tree of life sucking hope, each day a triumph.

Acharya’s emotional forays in self-realization are nicely augmented by equally powerful considerations of tradition’s influence on shifting perspectives about life. From prayers and pleas for enlightenment and wisdom to bigger-picture thinking about the meaning and evolution of human life, Acharya’s examination of possibilities and impacts generates strong connections between life events and challenges. One example of her plea for wisdom (one of the themes in her collection) is exhibited in “Grant Us:”

Grant us the wisdom to survive/like trees that live long, enriching the planet—loyal protectors of the realm, standing firm, asking for nothing in return of heaven or earth.

From wisdom to deception, realization, and “dreams of impossible things,” Acharya captures many of the fundamental existential questions and experiences of modern times. Given these especially chaotic years, her reflections represent a breath of fresh air that imparts hope and new possibility in a lively, thought-provoking manner.

Libraries seeking modern poetry that bows to tradition and free verse literary approaches will want to add Dear Life to their collections. It will broadly appeal, from patrons interested in hard-hitting messages delivered in surprisingly gentle observations to literary book clubs seeking works that provoke philosophical and intellectual discussion, yet remain firmly rooted in personal perception and experience.

There is pain in the poetry of Shanta Acharya, but also the spirit’s defiance during years of pandemic. She confronts the violence of history, and the terrors of the present. From the scents and sounds of many landscapes, her work salvages ecstatic memories of the explosive sweetness of childhood’s fruits. Acharya’s sense of the universe – and of universality – is beautifully balanced by her tenderness towards the smallest creatures of our world.

There is a stateliness and poise about Shanta Acharya’s poetry that is remarkable. Her poetry grapples with life, the vicissitudes of fate, and much beyond. The variety of themes she explores and confronts is formidable – life, art, illusion, death. One observes the integrity of the poet as her true being emerges. This collection has a momentum of its own, the poetry inexorably moving towards an inner core. One puts down the volume with the feeling that one has come face to face with a true established poet.

Shanta Acharya has an uncannily poetic way of relating to reality that is deeply Indian without being insular. Hers is a meditative spirit which however seldom abandons its interrogative scepticism that shapes its subtle politics. Her poetry quarrels with power in all its incarnations, divine and human, without ever being loud, and her emotional range is wide, from the pains of a girl growing up in an unkind world to the pleasures of love and the abjectness of abandonment. She realizes that ‘knowing is all’ and with it too that knowing is agony. Reading these poems together is like entering a house with many windows, each opening on a different landscape.

Shanta Acharya’s poems are inspired by her emotional experiences, for which simple but convincing words, phrases and sound effects have been found. There is nothing artificial in her statements and choice of forms. The complex and profound are equally well expressed in her imagery.

In this paean to life’s mysteries, Shanta Acharya takes a stand against everyday caprice and uncertainty: the ravages of war in the Ukraine and Aleppo, exile, the pandemic, and most painfully the death of her brother. Her capacity to wonder at the unexpected and embrace what is irrefutably human and of this world, are sources of hope and renewal in the face of loss. In these finely crafted poems, Acharya’s spiritual reckoning is tempered with wisdom and humour.

The incongruities of life are everywhere in Shanta Acharya’s striking and evocative collection of poems. A canal in Camden Town contains fish peering through a golden purdah. Coriander and cinnamon bark evoke love and desire. The poet sprays herself with Nirvana and Eternity. Time rearranges the past, turning home into “a place we’ve never been before.” All we can do, in the teeth of pain, is hang on for Dear Life.

Dear Life by Shanta Acharya presents a deep dive into the human experience through a collection of poems that reflect on themes such as love, trauma, resilience, and the transformative power of language. The poems range in tone and tenor, such as the harsh realities of existence exemplified in "Nesting," where a woman endures an abusive relationship during lockdown, ultimately finding the strength to escape. "In a Time Siege" captures the chaos and psychological scars of violence in a concert hall, questioning the roots of hatred and the quest for safety. The poem "Always Beginning" speaks on the beauty of perpetual renewal, urging readers to embrace change with curiosity and hope. In the titular poem "Dear Life," words are personified as cherished companions, highlighting their essential role in conveying emotion and fostering connection.

Shanta Acharya’s original poetry in Dear Life is a wonderful collection that impresses from start to finish. The poems are mostly in free form and are incredibly diverse and well-crafted, allowing readers to engage deeply with a variety of focal points. Acharya's ability to pull heavy emotions out of moderately sized stanzas is a testament to her skill as a poet. Among the many, I was particularly drawn to the poems that tap into a mix of the human experience with nature, the standout being "The Tree Huggers." This piece powerfully recounts the brave actions of Amrita Devi and the Bishnoi community in their fight against environmental destruction, leaning into their inextricable spiritual connection to nature. Acharya's beautiful use of imagery and language elevates her work, making Dear Life the breakaway poetry compilation so far for me this year. Very highly recommended.

Dear Life by Shanta Acharya is a collection of poems with many relatable observations and thought-provoking essays. The author shares her views on various engaging topics, including abusive marriage, COVID-19, violence, love, change, secrets, war, and cancer. "In Strange Bewildering Time," Shanta writes about misery, a deadly virus, and preserving the earth. The poem "If" beautifully captures the wonder of life and nature. "The Tree Huggers" brings our attention to a heartbreaking historical event about an unjust killing in Khejarli, Rajasthan, in 1730. We not only follow poems about the culture and history of India but are also reminded of important political issues involving the US and countries in Europe. From blissful memories to personal struggles and essays about serious world problems, Shanta's book offers a worthwhile and awakening encounter with poetry.

Despite being poetry, Shanta Acharya's writing sometimes feels like a collection of short stories, which I loved about this book! One of my favorite poems, "Taste of Childhood," made me remember my carefree childhood days with its collection of natural delights: "You spent orgasmic afternoons sucking mango, munching raisin, almond, and cashew, waiting for a flash of kingfisher’s indigo blue." I liked that the poem titles give us an idea of what the poems are about. The poems are usually concise and constructed to stick to a central topic. Ultimately, Dear Life is the creation of a poet who is passionate about the victims of war, the earth's preservation, and philosophy. The book is a must-read for those who are also passionate about these topics. It's a brilliant book for readers who enjoy poems about human experiences. A smooth mix of storytelling elements and poetic tools.

Shanta Acharya presents an enthralling collection of poems that explore the human experience in all its diverse colors with Dear Life. "Loneliness" is a beautiful poem that equates loneliness to a professional assassin who strikes without mercy while the victim desperately clings to life. "Staying Alive" narrates the experiences of a person who struggles to come to terms with the ramifications of the pandemic that upturned lives all over the world. "I Can't Breathe" is a poignant reminder of the gross misuse of authority displayed during the George Floyd murder. Riddled with doubt, the narrator yearns for the company of a loved one in "Thinking of You." "Against the Odds" is an empowering poem that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit amid adversity. "Sunflower Seeds" pays homage to those who lost their lives on the whims of tyrants.

Dear Life is truly an eclectic collection and contains poems that touch upon a broad spectrum of ideas and themes related to the human condition. From observational and confessional poetry to poems that tackle themes of love, war, loss, faith, and spirituality, Shanta Acharya displays a lyrical flair that feels unique and authentic and makes you introspect as well as think about the state of the world. Acharya's poetic storytelling is very immersive, as the carefully crafted stanzas invigorate both your mind and soul. These poems delve into some of the darker facets of humanity, yet they also leave you with hope and act as a soothing balm for your soul. Acharya's poetry style is intimate, but the universal themes will strike a chord with readers everywhere, regardless of background. Highly recommended.