Blood and Ink

by Salman Akhtar

Published 4 November 2016
A shimmering blend of good-hearted joy and mesmerizing surrealism, the poems in this collection reflect a deeply and authentically lived life. The images and metaphors used by the author are wide-ranging and cosmopolitan. At one moment, he speaks of flying dogs, four-year-old grandmothers, Mexico, Hindu gods, and Carmelite nuns. At another, he invokes Persian mysticism, the nights of London and Amsterdam, Nazim Hikmat, trees that want to be near a river, the rising mound of caramel under a silk blouse, and his own death exploding in thousand fragments of toothless remorse. This is heady stuff, suffused with abandon and pure delight.