Sugu Pillay’s thought provoking work shifts effortlessly between New Zealand – with a seamless integration of Maori themes – and Asian locales, especially India, but is also informed by classical thinkers and artists. A challenging read, with its allusiveness, but one with rewards for those open to its startling juxtapositions and time warps.
The title is from Flaubert’s comment: “Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat our tunes for bears to dance to when all the time we long to move the stars to pity”.
Previously titled In Medias Res, the collection was Highly Commended in the 2012 IP Picks Best Poetry Awards and is a collection of mostly published poems from 1995 to 2012.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
The poet moves from deep and measured observation of the world around her to leaps through space and time, drawing on allegory and myth to sustain her powerful images. At times, the reader senses the voice of an outsider looking in, ever sharp of eye and ear, alert to nuances that may escape those on the ‘inside’, transforming what she sees and hears into a colourful kaleidoscope that she makes triumphantly her own.
– Fiona Kidman, DNZM, OBE, multi-award winning author
When Sugu Pillay looks at a landscape she sees its history as well as the presence of its skylines, waters, vegetation and human inhabitants. She sings as an immigrant, talks as someone familiar with the land and laughs as a human who lives in many places. She fills a ‘new’ country with a rich inheritance from an ‘old’ one. She writes with love of both. These are poems to read slowly and savour.
– Nelson Wattie, author, translator and editor
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
In Sugu Pillay’s poetry “the word and the world/feed on each other” . Cities, countries, cultures, customs, jostle in her poems from a mind well-stocked with images, stories, and quotations from myriad sources. She draws around her like a many- coloured cloak luminous fragments from the multiple worlds and word-worlds that are her complex heritage. These rich and supple poems instantly draw the reader in but also repay close reflection and re-reading.
– Peter Simpson, Director of The Holloway Press, University of Auckland, author and editor