How Does it Matter?

The journey with poetry that I had embarked on with my debut poetry collection 'Let the Night Sing' (2017), which gained more momentum in the following years with my later poetry publications 'Woman and Her Muse' (2018) and 'We Are What We Are' along with my co-author Priscilla Rice (2022) and MindScapes, the bilingual collection in Bengali and English along with Ipsita Ganguly and Gopa Bhattacharjee (2023) had shaped my identity in the mold of a passionate diaspora poet, as I wrote poems which unfolded my anguished spirit, my urgency to share our stories as women, as humans with languid wants and deep, raw wounds. In this fifth collection of poems (my third poetry collection as a solo author in English), there are still

voices in my head that I gave shape to, sometimes inspired by paintings and my travels and the nectar and poison of everyday truths, sometimes as my moments of cognizance.

With the passage of time, I hope my poems have gained some flesh as I have soaked myself in the earth, fire, water, wind of my life, embedded in the rhythm of the universe. And yes, it does matter to me somehow, that I myself, as a poet, am in deep solidarity with my fellow writers and poets whenever a greater cause, a universal truth, an inexplicable bond with the universe propels us to give birth to poetry.

So, here it is, a world of my fractured stories, my dismantled island of longings as you unfurl the pages, neatly dressed in three distinct sections, as otherwise it would have been too unsettling to present them in their haywire form. Many of these poems have made their appearance in various journals, e-mags and anthologies, and all this while, myriad

happenings have touched me profoundly, giving birth to these outpourings as poems, and voices in my head have grown manifold, asking me time and again: "How Does It

Matter?" Yes, after all, the bigger picture might matter, as in the end, you will strive to live on, only in the salt and brine of your own art. Not that the process of creating this art will matter to most people around you, but that is the whole magic behind its creation. The fact remains that you can upset still, unyielding air with your words, your verses, which will be the only

wind beneath your wings.