Scattered Leaves

Well, I should be on holiday – campsite booked, tent in the boot – and then my lovely lurcher got a grass seed in his paw! So, between hot poultices and visits to the vet, I’m writing a quick post: a review of Scattered Leaves by Kanchan Chatterjee (published in Presence earlier this month). I should point out that Chatterjee centre-justifies his haiku, but WordPress has an annoying way of cancelling that out. So, apologies for the layout changes – the poems read equally well left-justified!
Hopefully, we will eventually hit the road, so here’s wishing everyone a good summer, and thanks, as always, for reading. Now, here’s the review:

Kanchan Chatterjee, Scattered Leaves

Authorspress, Q-2A Hauz Khas Enclave, New Delhi – 110 016, India, 2020
68pp, $15, ISBN 978-93-89615-53-1, http://www.authorspressbooks.com

Scattered Leaves is full of the sights and sounds of India: tea sellers and border guards, monsoon rain and muggy nights. There is often a feeling of time passing, tinged with a sense of loss, as in the following:

long night …
the heap of incense
grows

fresh firewood
ashes at the burning ghat …
year’s end

Themes of aging and death often centre on the poet’s father:

dad’s monitor glows
through the ICU window
a sudden cuckoo

after the chemo
a cuckoo calls in between
dad’s whispers

Sometimes Chatterjee’s use of repetition can lack impact; there are a few haiku which are almost identical. Nevertheless, this book is full of finely observed detail, depicting a country where tradition and progress exist side by side, where ‘the faded chrysanthemums/ on mom’s shawl‘ and ‘a plastic rose/ nodding on the dashboard‘ inhabit the same cultural space.

Within this space, Chatterjee appears to live a quiet, sometimes lonely, life:

single, my status
in the hotel register …
deepening autumn

hotel parking …
a Nissan comes drenched
in spring rain

Of course, depending on how we read ‘hotel parking’, perhaps the hotel is the site of a secret rendezvous.

Many of the poems reference well known Japanese haiku, with rice planting songs, settling crows etc. However, Chatterjee is at his best, and most original, when he considers his own search for identity:

winter moon
a man eating two rotis
is what I am

Two rotis might well be an indulgence, but I don’t think the poet is passing judgment; this is a poem of self-acceptance. Later, there are hints that he becomes romantically attached:

Pink Full Moon
a faint sound of bangles
from next door

well then dahlink!
let’s go out and become
sunflowers

The first haiku seems to offer a tantalizing and erotic glimpse of a woman, possibly his future bride. The second (and final poem in the book) is affectionate in its use of the colloquial voice, and suggests the couple’s future is as bright as the sunflowers. It’s a good poem to end on, leaving us with a sense of hope and optimism.

Julie Mellor