Wild Embers
Author - Nikita Gill
Publisher - Hachette India, Rs 499
With powerful poems about female rebellion, Nikita Gill deals with engagement of the individual with the cosmic forces and takes the reader from anguish to action, writes SHWETA DUSEJA
Nikita Gill, a sensational poet in the world of social media, takes her readers on a journey of life where the starting point is Despair and the destination is Hope in her latest book, Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty. The book cover has the shadow of the female body surrounded by a galaxy of stars which paves the way the book must be read. The reason why she became a social media sensation is that she writes about the human experiences that each one of us can relate to. The power of her poetry lies in its simplicity. She does not try to ornate her poetry with fancy words.
One of the major themes of this book is the placing of the individual in the universe. The poet draws images and metaphors from the cosmic world to bring hope in the human lives.She writes at length about the human condition by comparing it to the elements of the universe. The two most compelling Universe poems in this collection are “The Sun and The Moon” and “Venus”. The former talks about the unconditional devotion that the Sun has for the Moon. In this poem, Gill compares the Sun to a male lover and the Moon to the beloved. The Sun loves her, “Whether she is in fractions/or she is whole.” She tells the readers to aim for such a love that lets you be who you are and loves your imperfections as much as your perfections. The latter sheds light on the planet, Venus who despite being lonely shines “brilliantly”. The poet uses this example to let her readers understand that solitude is not a curse. One can make the best of what one has only if one realises its true worth.
Gill raises several important questions related to gender-based oppression and guides her female readers to break free from it. Here, she alludes to the internalisation of the patriarchal thoughts and asks her readers to unlearn what has been taught to them. In a poem titled, “Unlearning”, she says, “Womanhood/is rich with unlearning,” where to be a woman, one needs to forget all the narratives given to women and instead create their own glorious ones.
She talks about creating positive body images by loving and accepting oneself in more poems than one. She goes on to relate the truth behind abusive relationships and how it cannot destroy a woman. Her power lies in rising above the abuse, rising each time someone tries to suppress her, rising to survive, rising to heal herself and break free from the traumatic relationship. Poems like “learned Helplessness” and “Her Skin” have some beautiful lines which harp on the latent power that each woman has; she just needs to realise its potential.
The most powerful lines from “Her Skin” can fill anyone with hope of renewal, hope of survival, 'She will ascend,/like a battle cry/from a war you thought you had won.' In “learned Helplessness”, Gill highlights the unrealised power that the woman possessed but could never bring herself out of the abusive relationship she shared with her partner and the closing lines of the poem are nerve wracking, ‘Why didn't you leave himIJ/ Because, you will say quietly,/ he had convinced me/I was no longer human.’
Another fascinating thing that she does in her book is rewriting the fairy-tales with a feminist twist. She incorporates several of them in this collection, “Cinderella”, “Snow White”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Belle”, “Ariel” and “little Red Riding Hood”. These short retellings are written in prose. I would not call them prose poetry because they hardly contain any poetic elements in them. So, placing the prose works in a book of poems is slightly misleading.
However, each of these prose pieces, is extremely powerful in the way it reconstructs each of these female characters. Cinderella, for instance, has been shown as someone who doesn’t care about balls and glass slippers. She is not waiting for any prince to make her his princess. In fact, she denies the prince’s invitation to a ball because she had an important business meeting. She knows if she becomes a royal, she wouldn't get enough time to build her father's empire.
Aurora, the sleeping beauty, would refuse the man who kissed her when she was asleep and wouldn't marry the person who she barely knows and would rather choose to rule her father’s kingdom on her own in Gill’s narrative. Gill says, that she would narrate these fairy tales to her daughter and not the conventional tales that we grew up hearing where the female protagonist endlessly waited to be rescued by her prince charming.
The book is rife with hope and tries to take the readers on a path of healing by showing them their latent power, by guiding them on the path of love, by teaching them the art of survival, by convincing them to forget the disturbing past and the trauma it generates. In all of these places, the book is at its best.
But there are quite a lot of poems which seem lacking in poetic vision. The first half of the book overpowers the second half in terms of the strong emotions that touch the deepest chords in the heart. In comparison to the first half, the second half seems slightly dull and disappointing.
The reviewer is an Assistant Professor of English literature in Delhi University