There is not a dull moment in Neerada Suresh’s world. A sense of restlessness and anticipation mediated by intense silences pervades her poetic vision. She transforms the banal and the mundane into powerful images. The people inhabiting her poems are intensely conscious of the incongruities and open-endedness that govern their lives. The poet K. Satchidanandan writes of her as “Intensely self critical with a dominating urban experience and aesthetic vitality”

Her ability to hold up to the light, minute aspects of everyday life, has won her numerous awards such as the Surya Award for Poetry (twice in a row) and the KATHA & British Council Translation Award, New Delhi. She has published two volumes of poetry – Bonsais and Reeds In the Wind ( DC Books ) and is currently working on her third collection of poetry. Apart from being featured in some of the foremost literary publications of India, her poetic voice has also reached places as far flung as the UK, Turkey and New Zealand. 

In a freewheeling chat with Samyuktapoetry, Neerada talked about what her poetry encompasses- “ …an inner world in interpersonal  relationships, family, nature and moments in everyday life. I look at man-woman relationships in particular, portraying below the surface depths, certain thought processes, palpable but unuttered. There is an underlying tartness and tension of unresolved issues, feelings, which may get resolved or not take off at all. For me, writing poetry is all about focusing on a moment that is captured in all its intensity, a moment that cannot be caged in words. An ordinary moment takes on an extraordinary dimension.”

This week, we feature six of Neerada’s poems that talk of love, ambivalence, tenderness, indignation and tea.