CURB

April 15, 2021
This intensely multitudinous collection reflects the poet's heritage. Born in India, Victor has lived in Singapore and the U.S., and she explodes language through Tamilian-Anglophone lyrics. The book opens with the names of Indians and Indian Americans murdered by white supremacists in the wake of 9/11. This injustice serves as a refrain throughout, with GPS coordinates marked on certain pages to guide readers to find the exact locations of these atrocities. This is one way Victor tethers local incidents to global networks of information, art, and politics. Other poems co-opt language from U.S. immigration forms and imagine alternatives to bureaucratic discourse. Confronted with requests for concrete proof, the speaker considers the intangible evidence that establishes family relations, like recipes for sweet tea and dough batter. Other images prove to be unforgettable, such as an impromptu vigil (""you burn camphor on the stoop / so our names are spelled in flames""), the view from within a womb (""a ray breaking / the sticky pane / cranberry stained / glass womb"") and an intimate encounter (""how a mountain range marks the cusp / where one nation plunges / into another""). This is an incredibly well-crafted collection by a globally minded, locally rooted, exceedingly brilliant poet.

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