{"id":101,"date":"2019-04-23T09:23:28","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T09:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kalpnasinghchitnis.com\/?page_id=101"},"modified":"2024-05-27T08:29:29","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T08:29:29","slug":"books","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kalpnasinghchitnis.com\/index.php\/reading-room\/books\/","title":{"rendered":"Books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Trespassing My Ancestral Lands <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Finishing Line Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here to order the book<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Trespassing My Ancestral Lands<\/em> captures the poet\u2019s eye roving the landscapes to see and discover the many layers of self in a multi-layered world of family, nature, and cycles of life. Kalpna Singh-Chitnis\u2019 voice is a hypnotic opera of cautionary tales. These heart-wrenching poems burn and sing to understand the primordial codes and rituals we depend on to give our lives meaning: \u201cMothers fold sorrows like laundry. An astute observer of the smallest details, she grips us with the travails of having feet firmly planted on both sides of the worlds and cultures: \u201cSchool desks were chipped\/into kindling.\u201d This brave poet walks the precipice and captures the testimonials of human grief, and the dangers of love, loss, and war. Singh-Chitnis creates a voluminous experience of color and imagery rendering the mystical traditions and the hope in chaos. Kalpna-Singh Chitnis blows the shofar and shows how the power of language and story can lift us from despair, to reclaim our passions and our ghosts, the only way poetry can. This collection is indelible, you will come back again and again to a Motherland of wisdom\u2014a talisman and guide to living with the fullest of fire and breath. \u2013Cynthia Atkins, author of \u201cStill-Life with God.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reader, if what you seek is an illusion, phantoms, and figments of imagination written in fleeting, figurative language, then move on. Seeker, if what you wish to read is real, fleshed-out through direct, honorable verses that linger without pretentiousness, then don\u2019t pass by this book. \u201cIf you are a woman,\u201d Ms. Singh-Chitnis sings, \u201ctell my story to your sons. If you are a man, tell it to your daughters. If you are a preacher, teach it as a sermon to the believers.\u201d Here is a Human Being speaking equally to all other Human Beings, one who \u201ctrespasses,\u201d too, across limitations of gender, ethnicity, and nationality; whose story thus becomes a story worth telling, and retelling, and retelling again. For in the poem, \u201cThe Salt of a Woman,\u201d as she writes so sublimely, \u201cHer story is much older than her civilization\u2026\u201d The story found in \u201cTrespassing My Ancestral Lands,\u201d is in fact as old as Creation itself. \u2013Jennifer Reeser, author of \u201cIndigenous\u201d and \u201cStrong Feather.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to stand on street corners asking people to read Trespassing My Ancestral Lands.<\/em> The enduring necessity of this collection of poetry far exceeds the ordinary every day and as such, I would wish it to be widely shared. Very infrequently, in my role as editor, I come across a collection that blows me away. Figuratively, literally, and spiritually. Singh-Chitnis is a deeply modern writer, who dips her pen in ancient history and acknowledgment of what came before us. She blends these disparate worlds together in such a way we learn and grow with each insight. This is the sheer essence of a poet, to be both translator and third-eye for the reader. When we are unable to articulate our feelings, the poet can. Singh-Chitnis has an uncanny canary-in-a-coalmine prescience that feels at times like she\u2019s reading our minds. If a poet cannot speak for her readers, she\u2019s stuck in a confessional style that grows dusty with time. To stay alive long after her physical form has passed, she must transcend time and space and be the mouthpiece for our deepest fears and joys. I would go as far as saying if you don\u2019t like poetry, you might well be converted by this poetry because it\u2019s poetry, and it\u2019s more than poetry. She will be a poet we talk about in two hundred years. Her name won\u2019t simply be synonymous with good writing, it will be a legacy. \u2013Candice Louisa Daquin, Senior Editor \/ Indie Blu(e) Publishing and author of \u201cTainted by the Same Counterfeit<\/em><\/strong>” among others.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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