Kirun Kapur
Kirun Kapur is a poet, editor, teacher and translator. She is the author of three books of poetry, Visiting Indira Gandhi’s Palmist (Elixir Press, 2015) which won the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize and the Antivenom Poetry Award; Women in the Waiting Room (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), a finalist for the National Poetry Series; and the chapbook All the Rivers in Paradise (UChicago Arts, 2022). Her work has appeared in AGNI, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares and many other journals. She serves as editor at the Beloit Poetry Journal and teaches at Amherst College, where she is director of the Creative Writing Program. Learn more at kirunkapur.com.
March in the Garden
Cutting back the climbing rose in paradise,
Your fingers learn: a bush of thorns grows well in paradise.
The ground still grooved in mud and ice--
My heart is wrapped in shawls. One night it froze in paradise.
I miss you. I miss you. I miss and miss –
Good God, grief’s tedious! It gusts and blows in paradise.
A high wind clears the last leaves from the cherry.
Only storms of tears dissolve the snows in paradise.
The languages you taught me, the poems you knew by heart--
Where did they go? I must coax them to regrow or I foreclose on paradise.
The garden is divided into four rooms, like a heart.
Today, each chamber’s occupied by the crows of paradise.
Your heart sports shining feathers. Your death flies back and forth.
Bees bump the limes and pomegranates, reincarnation’s pose in paradise.
Look, poet, not much is lost forever, or so the garden claims:
White double cosmos bloom again—no end to the embroidered clothes of paradise.
-Kiran Kapur
Cutting back the climbing rose in paradise,
Your fingers learn: a bush of thorns grows well in paradise.
The ground still grooved in mud and ice--
My heart is wrapped in shawls. One night it froze in paradise.
I miss you. I miss you. I miss and miss –
Good God, grief’s tedious! It gusts and blows in paradise.
A high wind clears the last leaves from the cherry.
Only storms of tears dissolve the snows in paradise.
The languages you taught me, the poems you knew by heart--
Where did they go? I must coax them to regrow or I foreclose on paradise.
The garden is divided into four rooms, like a heart.
Today, each chamber’s occupied by the crows of paradise.
Your heart sports shining feathers. Your death flies back and forth.
Bees bump the limes and pomegranates, reincarnation’s pose in paradise.
Look, poet, not much is lost forever, or so the garden claims:
White double cosmos bloom again—no end to the embroidered clothes of paradise.
-Kiran Kapur
Poems
https://missourireview.com/i-ride-upon-a-tiger-kirun-kapur/
https://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/poems-week-2021-2022/poem-week/grackle-kirun-kapur
https://yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem-Of-The-Week-Anthem-By-Kirun-Kapur
https://missourireview.com/i-ride-upon-a-tiger-kirun-kapur/
https://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/poems-week-2021-2022/poem-week/grackle-kirun-kapur
https://yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem-Of-The-Week-Anthem-By-Kirun-Kapur
Reviews
https://pionline.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/book-review-visiting-indira-gandhis-palmist-by-kirun-kapur/
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kirun-kapur/women-in-the-waiting-room/
https://sundressblog.com/2020/10/14/sundress-reads-a-review-of-women-in-the-waiting-room/
https://pionline.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/book-review-visiting-indira-gandhis-palmist-by-kirun-kapur/
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kirun-kapur/women-in-the-waiting-room/
https://sundressblog.com/2020/10/14/sundress-reads-a-review-of-women-in-the-waiting-room/
Interviews
https://masspoetry.org/new-book-kapur/
https://www.thecommononline.org/some-voice-has-spoken-an-interview-with-kirun-kapur/
https://wordmothers.com/2015/05/28/interview-with-poet-kirun-kapur/
http://artsandletters.gcsu.edu/interview-with-kirun-kapur-past-poetry-prize-winner/
https://masspoetry.org/new-book-kapur/
https://www.thecommononline.org/some-voice-has-spoken-an-interview-with-kirun-kapur/
https://wordmothers.com/2015/05/28/interview-with-poet-kirun-kapur/
http://artsandletters.gcsu.edu/interview-with-kirun-kapur-past-poetry-prize-winner/