Jennifer Robertson is a poet, critic, and an independent consultant based in Bombay. Jennifer’s critical essays have appeared in The American Book Review, The Scroll, Telegraph, Mint, and Vayavya. Her poems have been published by the Emma Press, UK, The Missing Slate, Almost Island, and Domus. Her poems have been widely anthologised in the Global Anthology of Anglophone Poetry published by Poetry Foundation, USA; the 40 under 40: Anthology of Post-Globalisation Poetry published by Poetrywala; Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi); and The Penguin Book of Indian Poets. Jennifer’s poem have been translated to Chinese as a part of an Indo-Chinese translation project entitled Himalayas: Contemporary Indian & Chinese Poetry. Jennifer has convened the literary chapter for the PEN All-India Centre at Prithvi Theatre, and was the literary curator for the ‘Celebrate Bandra Festival’.Her debut poetry collection Folie à deux won The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective’s Editor’s Choice Award. The American edition of Folie à deux was published by Everybody Press in the USA.
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Folie Á Deux
$18About the Book
Jennifer Robertson’s first book of poems, Folie à Deux, introduces us to an assured and sophisticated new voice in the world of Anglophone poetry in India. Robertson celebrates the sensuousness, the warm flesh of language. Her poems sharpen our awareness of things viscerally experienced, our memories of things held and cherished, our desire to secure forever the ephemeral yet compelling images of photography and cinema. In her handling, the resonance of the breath crafted into sound takes concrete occupancy of its environment, becomes a percussive force; she writes: “I wonder about sound invading space, wounding, astounding space and stories rising like a Phoenix.”
Here is a poet who captivates us, enchants us into spaces that “have two doors and no exit”.
– Ranjit Hoskote, author of Jonahwhale
Jennifer Robertson’s poems invite us to a world of “intimate strangeness” where poetry is “nuts and waywardness” and poets are “hoodlums” who leave behind “delinquencies” as their legacy. Although thickly silted with references to literature, painting and cinema, this is not a world of glibness or slick cultural sophistication. A throbbing vein of disquiet runs through Folie à Deux reminding us of relationships that could lean towards “darkness and magic”; lives lived in “intermission” with fragments spilling over “in the dark, under the seat”; and a self that yearns to drown into “a sunken civilisation”. This is a poetry of crafted surfaces and unexpected trenches, beeping microwaves and buried cities – allusive and “alluvial” all at once. Folie à Deux is a strong, self-assured début.
– Arundhathi Subramaniam, author of Wild Women
Lexically restless, geodesic, and unapologetically omnivorous, Jennifer Robertson’s Folie à Deux is a dialectic that considers the fulcra of observance and animacy, liberation and stagnancy, tranquility and obsession. Robertson’s poetry applies a painterly heat to our bodies, and readers to scratch at persona, and to map a self through the historical detritus of art and signs. What disturbs me most about this book is that, ravenously, Robertson “reinvents time travel”.
– Jhani Randhawa, author of Time Regime