Book Review - 'no urgency to be home' by Neha R. Krishna

By Amy Lee

“subway station
i wish to go
nowhere”

​Poetry can sometimes become too cumbersome and preoccupied with forms and rules that it feels heavy and contrived.  Yet the elegance of simplicity and the quiet power of ‘less is more’ is alive in Neha R. Krishna’s first volume of modern Haiku, no urgency to be home. 

This exquisite series of Haiku feels like a soothing companion to your wandering spirit and broken heart with its beautiful collection of three-line Haiku and five-line Tanka poems. Her words do not have to say everything. It leaves enough space for the reader to explore those brave breaks, leaving the reader to their own imagination to fill in their own blanks. This literary experience leads the reader to an intense state of mind and connection to their inner self to ignite their own stories. Yet at the same time, these words aesthetically says and makes the reader feel all that the reader needs to feel right now. 

The joys and delights of first meets are excitingly captured.  The rich descriptions of nature and homage to her Indian homeland are striking and alluring (“mango blossom sitting under the shadow of mating birds”).  These delicate moments invites the reader to reminisce their own similar beginnings and placements. Family and domestic life nostalgia are tenderly recollected (“on sale…my grandmother’s rocking chair and her bedtime stories too”).


Life’s poignancies are delicately observed:

 “fireworks
the little things i ignored
last year”.


The way these Haiku expresses vulnerability and sadness surgically strikes the heart, articulating the awkward truths in relationships:

“how was your day?
he didn’t ask
i didn’t tell”

Despite doubtfulness and uncertainties about the future, an admirable learning from no urgency to be home is its spirit of braveness which can be so easily lost in today’s calamities (“just follow the damn clouds i tell myself”). The power of courage embodied in these Haiku inspires the reader to go hard in their own adventures of womanhood - making this book a perfect travelling/soul searching companion. 

About:
​
Neha R. Krishna is a poet from Mumbai, her work has been published widely, including Under the Basho, Presence, Frogpond, Haiku Masters - Japan, Failed Haiku, Human/Kind Journal, Frameless Sky, Haiku Foundation, Bones Journal, Prune Juice Journal and Moonbathing Journal.  ​

She is the winner of Weighing Raindrops Haiku Contest by Narrow Road and Glass House Festival 2020.