Bearings

Karthika Nair's debut poetry collection grew out of a wish to hold on to a language that was intimately hers but no longer part of the world around her. In her own words, the poems were the only visible proof of that attempt to stay connected.

The book is arranged in three sections: Virga, Damaged Goods and Terra Infirma. Together they circle around directions, moorings and disclosures, playing on the many meanings packed into the title. Bereavement and absence, fading memory, lost love, and questions of home and identity run through the poems.

Nair likens the collection to a logbook of voyages with no fixed destination. Language is a map that keeps changing shape, and the urge to say something and share it is the only compass, though not always a dependable one.