You Walk With Me: Poems

By Sreekala Sivasankaran

This book is divided into two parts, short and long poems, though the underlying principle of both are of haiku. They break the thumb rule about the number of syllables in haiku, yet Sreekala's poems remain close to their spirit, in brevity and experience: as a sudden bolt of lightning that illuminates all however briefly, the joy released by an unexpected passionate kiss, a blue domed flower in the painful world....So brevity, which is the soul of poetry in haiku tradition is an expression of evanescence as the inescapable fact of experience. Though Buddha said that evanescence-anicca-is the source of misery-dukkha, in the world of haiku poems the same evanescence can be the source of joy and celebration. And the longer poems are garlands of such haikus held together by a name or theme. In Sreekala's world there is no overarching presence of stillness or silence. What I first discovered in her poems was something stark, stubborn, strident but compelling--a quality I had noticed in the likes of Yehuda Amichai or IB Singer, which emerge from a certain Jewish sensibility. My initial impression was confirmed when I read them together before going to press - H.S Shivaprakash in the introduction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1726759377
• ISBN13: 9781726759373
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 81 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.7" x 0.2" x 8.3"