Winner of Runners-Up award at the London Book Festival 2024
Reviewed by Anjana Basu
Chaitali Sengupta’s The Crossings covers the
related worlds of war. Migration and
survival – the sections into which the poems
are divided. These are world that she
traverses through her imagination and
experience some of them experienced
through the memories of relatives during
the Partition, others from the stories of war
and the constant interaction in the papers
that highlights the problems of those who
wander from space to space with nowhere
to turn.
War and migration have gradually become
deepening concerns for the world – Russia’s
attack on Ukraine launched the first
European war in decades, a conflict that still
persists with the addition now of Gaza and
Iran’s entry. In a world strung taut, the poet
expresses her concerns through vivid
metaphors. Not that all the wars described
are modern – with Partition as a backdrop it
would not be. She writes about the Jagged
Line that divided her family and the nation:
“The strong white fingers pencilled a jagged
line on our map. The Radcliffe line.
Read the whole review at: The Confluence magazine, UK https://confluence.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/May-June-2024-issue-.pdf
Book Event at the Eindhoven Library-The Crossings.
