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About the poet: Originally from Karnataka, South India, Sudha Rao (see Cap #84) migrated to Dunedin with her parents and trained in classical South Indian dance. She moved to Wellington to establish Dance Aotearoa New Zealand (DANZ). In 2017, Sudha completed her Master’s in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. On Elephant’s Shoulders is her first collection.
B O O K
Re-verse I N T R O D U C E D BY C H R I S T S E
MIGRANT
In brief: This poem, along with two others in Sudha’s collection, was originally commissioned to accompany an exhibition of portraits of migrant women of colour by Auckland-based photographer Abhi Chinniah. In keeping with the title of the exhibition, A Migrant’s Path, this poem describes, with evocative imagery, the lived experience of a migrant moving across borders and waters.
This is not a place for a wild hunt. By grant of a native wind my sky withers, as a migrant. I, seeking not favor, an aspirant, a blue moon, flee a torrent, as a migrant.
Reverse
My breath forms prayer beads of advisements. Under cover of darkness, I become a consignment, as a migrant.
Why I like it: “Migrant” is a potent poem made up of seven rhyming couplets, each presenting a different perspective on the migrant experience, from the decision to leave to the moment feet touch upon new soil. In between are sobering snapshots that emphasise the reality of risking your life for safety in a new land (“sleeping on sand, burying sirens”). This peril is reinforced by the repetition of ‘as a migrant’ to end each couplet, which may also comment on the way “migrant” can be a loaded descriptor in different social and political contexts. The poem suggests that there are battles that continue long after arrival, with migrant stories and lives rendered “semi-transparent” or reduced to “a pigment”. Despite the lurking claustrophobia throughout the poem that threatens to consume the speaker (“my sky withers”), it does end on a hopeful note.
On a hunt carrying dreams, I am fragrant with enticement and frightened, as a migrant. What can I see? A wide front of sea, compliant, sleeping on sand, burying sirens, as a migrant. By current I fly as time makes me a pigment likened to dark or light, as a migrant.
Light must, like fine dust, make me semi-transparent. At this seafront, regnant Dhasu runs, as a migrant. By Sudha Rao From On Elephant’s Shoulders (The Cuba Press, 2022)
Read more like this: Although the topic of migration is threaded through the history of Aotearoa’s poetry and literature, there are some notable absences from the kinds of voices published. However, collections and anthologies like More of Us (Landing Press) and A Clear Dawn (Auckland University Press) have featured stirring work by writers from diverse migrant backgrounds who have made Aotearoa their home.
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