When I first picked up this beautiful, handbound, limited edition of Pallavi Padma-Uday’s new collection of poems, Lola in Belfast, at the Belfast Book Festival in June 2024, I was perplexed by the title. Lola, the female name, has certain associations of a twelve year old girl, lost and misled. But when you open the book, the introduction explains that “lola” means sorrow. The reader is struck by the ingenuity of the poet in giving the collection this title, as it connects her authentic roots with the new world she inhabits. It is, like Padma-Uday’s first collection, Orisons in the Dark, clearly a woman’s story, and a feminist one, too.
William Sieghart, British entrepreneur, publisher and philanthropist and the founder of the Forward Prizes for Poetry, firmly believes that poetry can heal. The publisher of The Poetry Pharmacy is not the first person to state that “poetry can save lives”. In the same way that reading a poem can give us solace in times of grief, or give us hope when we feel lost, Lola, in this collection, expresses herself in moments of anguish and loneliness in verse. And yes, poetry does its miracles and indeed, it could be prescribed as her medicine.
This is a beautiful collection written by a young woman who finds herself in a new world during the Covid-19 lockdown, completely alone and with a life-threatening illness lingering in her veins. Her poetry is her medium, a way of connecting with her new environment. In her poems, she is in dialogue with this new world that can be hostile or indifferent, sunny or rainswept, but is also often speckled with random acts of kindness from the people she meets. Lola creates this connection by sharing vignettes of her life, her moments of vulnerability, often presenting a mirror to her environment.
The collection has three parts. In “For Those Who Never Cry” we get a picture of her arrival. She is in her ill body, insomniac like many of us were during lockdown, even as she deeply cares about the world at large. This is beautifully expressed in the lines of the poem “Headspace”:
“Gently, you think nature can lull senses,
make us breathe, go to sleep
only to wake up to some war.”
In the poems contained in the part “Dear Adam, this Night is for us”, female desire is juxtaposed with the lockdown’s loneliness. The poem “21st Century Daydream” rightly depicts this:
“Look, I am that woman
on the bench by the park
weeping under my sunglasses
and wishing for the man
who just blew me a kissfrom the Albert Bridge
to pause a little, sit by my side,
and hold my hand
without meaning much.”
In the third section, titled “In the Queen’s Garden”, the poet gives an account of her experiences while trying to fit into a prominently white society. The poem, “How to be Civilised” is a tongue and cheek example of her sharp observatory skills.
“Join two or many in a group.
Just ask a question. Anything,
as long as they laugh.
This is how you get to stay.”
The poems are often sad, but always poignant. The registers in this collection are so varied that you read it like a novel, not able to put it down. Padma-Uday’s poetic magnetism is not rooted in the selection of metaphors or imagery, but in the voice that takes you in, embraces you and offers a hand.
The poetic forms are varied, too. The poet refreshingly experiments with concrete poetry as in “Blood Clots” and “Girls Want to be Birds”, and other, original forms in free verse.
The poems in this order tell a story, from arriving to settling; from utter loneliness to finding a community. The poet observes the fractured society of Belfast with honest curiosity, recognising the similarities as well as the differences with the world she left behind in India. With her inherent openness she embraces this new place that offers her, albeit ambivalently, a purpose and a new home. The poem “Titanic Quarters” sums this up:
“The year I came to Belfast,
my friend in Jammu said, watch out,
that is another Kashmir.
How naïve, my friend, truth is,
in our heaven on earth, internet
randomly shuts off, (every day) soldiers
go to war, government goes after
peaceful protesters, cops and civilians
clash, complain and you are brash,
say “democracy” and you are a mob,
worse, you are still looking for a job.”
Ireland likes its writers. Within a short time, since her arrival, Padma-Uday has been supported by the Irish Writers Centre, Arts Council of Ireland, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, John Hewitt Society, Doire Press, and Centre for Creative Practices in the Republic and Northern Ireland. The trust she has been offered has rightly paid off. We are looking forward to reading more works by this extraordinary talent.
Csilla Toldy is the author of five books including, most recently, Bed Table Door, and is winner of the Desmond Elliot Residency 2023.
Lola in Belfast, Pallavi Padma-Uday, Writers Workshop.
