World Poetry Featured Poet Tasneem Shahnaaz from India!

World Poet Tasneem Shahnaaz

 

Tasneem Shahnaaz is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Sri Aurobindo College, Delhi University.  Her Ph.D. dissertation is on the feminist American poet, Adrienne Rich. She has been teaching English Language and Literature courses to undergraduate students for more than 20 years. She is also interested in translation work. She has published reviews of works by poets and authors and literary articles in scholarly journals and critical anthologies.  She writes poetry and has won first prize in the Indian Poets’ category in the contest organized by the Chetana Literary Group, Mangalore in 2006. Her poems have been published in many literary and poetry journals including SGL (Baltimore, USA), PoetCrit (India), Contemporary Vibes (India) etc. She has co-authored a Delhi University text book, Business English, for B. Com students, which was published in July 2008. Her latest article on the Australian poet, Gwen Harwood, has been published as part of an anthology, Critical Essays on Australian Literature, ed. K. Balachandran, New Delhi: Arise Publishers, 2010.

Love’s Abandon- I

Conversations in the mind

Of love’s abandon

Ripening stalks of urges

Feverish bales of urgencies

A meet of entanglements, limbs, torsos,

Wild desires rise and clash

Over veneers of civilization

Orgiastic phrases, muttered moans

Sighs of satiation

Faces and bodies towards our walls

We sleep

Recharging for new hungers

And abandonments.

*                 *           *

Love’s Abandon II

More conversations with you and me

We saw, we met and love conquered all.

Abandoning ourselves to a new relation

A new quadrant in our lives.

Extroverted feelings, introverted urges,

Sharing secrets, bodies,

Joys of wildness,

Throes of passion

Epiphany or emotional closure –

That is the question.