Kiran Bath's INSTRUCTIONS FOR BANNO is a profoundly moving work of prose. Through ritual, performance, and syntax, this is a book that shatters the crystallization patterns that familial and sexual trauma bring. How does it do this? Incantation: "I waited for Kali. I revived, I survived, I revive, I survive." Each Banno, each field note, each instruction, each attempt to write what could not be written before: make a pathway from creativity to survival. The last lines, when you reach them, will touch the middle of your heart, I hope. As they touched mine.
BHANU KAPIL
The age old concerns of how to be part of a family, and also one’s own person, are given new life here in Kiran Bath’s delightful debut collection. These poems are at turns lush, defiant, modern and ancient, a lively and loving record reminding us that life is designed as much as it is inherited. “I save everything,” Bath writes, “I do not seek rebirth. I am accumulating.” These lines are a mere glimpse of the strong and sophisticated speakers whose voices we are fortunate enough to encounter in this daring debut.
TARFIA FAIZULLAH
