The Shape of a Poem: The Red River Book of Contemporary Erotic Poetry

Like flowers from first love, we have pressed poems between the pages of this book. Poems of every orientation, every preference. Lean, shapely, voluptuous. Poems shaped like an hourglass. Those that look like pears. And those that are thin enough to disappear on paper. Poems proud, brash, loud, silent and shy. Those that have come out of the closet and those that do not even know about the existence of the closet. Poems that shout their intent from rooftops and those who gently nudge you. Now they are ready to meet the world. You hold them in the curve of your palm.\nSome of the finest contemporary poetic voices from Bangladesh, Canada, India, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Scotland, the UK, and the USA make a compelling case for the pursuit of pleasure, for the excitement of the erotic. When explored in a space of consent, the erotic is a formidable force. It is not an easy animal to fathom. Often misunderstood and mistreated, it is trivialised, confused with pornography, considered taboo, too bold or risqué. It is sometimes greeted with a whiff of disapproval and embarrassment and sometimes, even dismissed. This erotic anthology celebrates sex and desire unabashedly. But it also seeks to makes a case for permission, for the celebration of all bodies, genders, and orientations. When it is from a place of consent, even a salt shaker passed across the table is erotic. Finding the erotic in the mundane is an often surprising, and always thrilling experience. That draught of water on a warm afternoon. The silence of snowfall. The anticipation. The gratification. That delight.\nSRIVIDYA SIVAKUMAR is a poet, teacher, columnist and speaker. She has two collections of poetry, The Blue Note and the critically-acclaimed The Heart is an Attic. Her weekly column, Running on Poetry, appeared in The Hindu’s MetroPlus for twenty-two months. Her column, Srividya Speaks Poetry currently appears in the online literary magazine, Narrow Road. Srividya is a Best of the Net nominee (2018), and was shortlisted for the WE Kamala Das Poetry Awards 2020.\nPoet, artist and editor PARESH TIWARI has been widely published, especially in the sub-genre of Japanese poetry. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he has published two widely acclaimed collections of poetry. His collection of haibun Raindrops Chasing Raindrops is the recipient of the ‘Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards – 2017’. He is the co-editor of the international haibun anthology, Red River Book of Haibun, Vol 1, and is the serving haibun editor of the online literary magazine Narrow Road.