Book Review: Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets written by Gopal Lahiri reviewed by Nabanita Sengupta

Nabanita Sengupta reviews Gopal Lahiri’s Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets: Selected Poems observing how it felt like searching the alleys of the mind 

• Published by Rubric Publishing
• Price – 275 INR
• Pages – 137

That some books should be judged by their cover, is evident from poet Gopal Lahiri’s newest anthology of poems – Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets. The hardbound book has an enigmatic painting on its cover – ‘Uncanny’ (oil on canvas) by academic, poet, and painter Jharna Sanyal. When alleys are full of ‘future alphabets’ they are bound to be a bit uncanny and therefore the cover design becomes a relatable entry point to more than a hundred poems contained in this anthology. 

Gopal Lahiri is a prolific poet whose poems are a rich repository of images drawn from both the mundane and the scientific, the real and the imaginary. With seventeen volumes of poems to his credit, in both Bengali and English, he is an important voice in the Indian poetry scenario. This current volume of poetry is divided into 7 separate sections – Voyages In, Voyages Out, Cityscape Silhouettes, Macrocosm, Haiku Series and Micro Poems, Travel Diaries, and Pandemic and Resilience. The poems are eclectic. In Gopal Lahiri’s poems, words are a powerful tool that introspects, celebrates, agonises, and forces the readers to deeply engage with the poet’s vision.