A Dinner Party in the Home Counties
Author: Reshma Ruia
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: Skylark Publications UK
Year: October 2019
Formats: Paperback
Blurb: This poetry collection explores the diasporic experience of leading a translated life, yearning to belong to a past that one no longer owns and a future that is murky and unclear. There is a sense of melancholic nostalgia in these poems but also a fierce kind of determination to embark on a new beginning and make the best of one’s circumstances. The poems are particularly relevant to our times when there is a growing sense of parochialism and hostility towards ‘the outsider.’ They will resonate with all those who have portable roots and are at home everywhere and nowhere.
The poems also portray the emotive minefield of relationships, questioning the ambiguity behind maternal or filial love. Society conditions us to love our parent or child or partner, but the poems challenge this by describing the tug of war between a woman’s sense of self and the roles she is expected to play.
There is an undercurrent of mortality running through some of the poems. A sense of an ending and a reflection on what the passage of time can do to one’s dreams and aspirations.
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