Book Review: Trips Climbs Circles by Madhu Sriwastav

Powerful and Poignant: a review of Madhu Sriwastav’s Trips Climbs Circles (Authorspress New Delhi-India, 2020) by Dr. Sutanuka Ghosh Roy

• Author:  Madhu Sriwastav
• Page: 90
• ISBN: 978-93-89824-84-1 (Paperback)
• Edition: (2020)
• Published by Authorspress New Delhi-India.

     Trips Climbs Circles is Madhu Sriwastav’s debutant book. She is an academic and a poet based in Kolkata. The reverberations of the sixty poems that form Trips Climbs Circles can be felt throughout the book.  Sharmila Ray writes, “ her poems are doused with a deep desire for the expanse and liberty of the open sea. Many of her poems are encounters, encounters with identity—private and unsuspected. They surprise the reader when she comes face to face with herself. The poet discovers resonances hitherto not addressed. But a close reading reveals a myriad of colourful emotions that apparently read as black and white.” Sriwastav writes, “Heart tormented/ heavy and sore/ Smiles taunt/ Laughter piques” (“A Call”). Life often thrusts us into unanticipated moments, and by the time we try and wrest control, for better or for worse, things spiral otherwise, often changing lives in ways we never thought they could. “Paper kite’s in danger now/ gets wet and soggy/ downwards bound…/Steadily it’s dragged/ headlong fall/ crushes with the thought of wind/ sun and sky/ in its wings!” (“A Kite”).