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Poem by Kavita Joshi

I met Kavita Joshi (pictured above) as part of the East-Side Educational Trust mentoring program - she was selected (after winning a competition) to be the London school poet I worked with over the spring and summer of 2005. She has since become an undergraduate student at Leicester.

Although still only in her early 20s, she represents one possible future way forward for poetry in the 21st century, as her work combines interest in philosophy, alternative (often grunge) music, wit, enviornmental and urban concerns, religion, with a cultural background that avoids easy recourse to the usual tropes. Her poems have been published at Nthposition, and in Future Welcome, the anthology from DC Books. Eyewear is pleased to showcase her work here this Friday.

Spin freely

Stop the birds singing.
They distract me from voices in my head.
They subtract the melody of confusion.
The bulbs in the television demand attention.
The bulbs won’t dance in such calm.
Do not stop my head from spinning.

The voices on the television are singing
at me. Intensifying my confusion.
No wonder my head is spinning.
I am not drugged or deranged, I merely lost calm
to this distracting grip on my attention
that traps my head.

Sin freely, while my attention
is elsewhere. Go straight over my head
while the bulbs are captivating me in their spinning.
While they create a strange vision of disordered calm.
Spin freely, singing
as you do. I love this confusion.

Listen to the singing.
Watch the spinning.
Non-existent (but still ever-present) calm
has that effect on my head.
Pay no attention
to the strangeness of this song. Embrace confusion.

If the voices, the songs, the bulbs get louder, allow my head
to be over-taken by spinning.
I wish for no singing
of birds, so calm,
that they steal my attention.
Allow us to spin freely in this glorious confusion.

Boundaries in my head
will take a turn. When no simple calm
saves me, I will listen harder to louder singing,
chanting, that causes such spinning
that will not let my attention
go. Causing catastrophe, heightening confusion.

If this confusion
does not rouse volatile spinning
there must be something wrong with my singing.

poem by Kavita Joshi
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