Author(s): Lakshmi Kanchi

Poetry

Warm, accessible, distinctive. This first collection navigates the complex terrain of the migrant journey. Kanchi writes to place herself in both India and Australia. She writes with a curious and observant eye and with great sensitivity towards the natural world. There is a gentle, but heartfelt warning here of the consequences of ecological disaster, whichever part of the globe one calls home. The poet uses the resources of poetry—its playfulness, its attentiveness to sound, its capacity for comparison—to draw us, again and again, to beauty: the beauty of place, of language, and of connection in relationship. She also uses the same resources to probe the depths of anguish. Her observations of the complex dynamics of the maternal relationship are particularly insightful. These are poems that stand at the edge of the cliff of longing and sing. — Miriam Wei Wei Lo

LAKSHMI KANCHI, pen name SoulReserve, is an emerging Western Australian poet of Indian descent. Her poetry explores love and its tumultuousness, fantasy and zest in nature, and allegories that provoke thought and evoke tender feelings. Her writing anatomises the complex linkages between history, language, culture, perception, and nature. She is the current Poet-in-Residence at The Wetlands Centre Cockburn, working towards making poetry accessible to everyone in the wider community. She is a Centre for Stories fellow and the recipient of the 2021 Pocketry Prize for Unpublished Poets. Her poem ‘Watermarks’ was shortlisted for the South Coast Writers Centre’s 2022 Poetry Prize. Her poem ‘The Sacred Place of Lotus’ was “Highly Commended” in Poetry d’Amour Contest, and ‘1064°C’ was “Commended” in Ros Spencer Poetry Prize—announced at the 2022 Perth Poetry Festival. Read her published works in—Social Alternatives, Portside Review, Burrow Journal, The Saltbush Review, Blue Bottle Journal, Seagift Journal, Recoil 12, Poetry d’Amour—2019, 2020, & 2022, Letters To Our Home, Brushstrokes II, Under the Paving Stones, The Beach Anthology and Creatrix.