There are easier ways to spend one’s time than writing poetry.
Dr Nadia Ramoutar knows this perfectly well. Sitting in conversation about her latest collection, Radical Notions of Love, she cheerfully acknowledges that poetry ranks somewhere near the top of the list of activities unlikely to generate wealth, security or commercial success. The observation is delivered with characteristic humour, but beneath it lies a serious point. Poetry survives because people continue to find something in it that cannot be measured in sales figures.
Ramoutar has been finding that something for most of her life. “I’ve never not done it,” she says. “I’m like Emily Dickinson. I have shoeboxes of poems and poems and poems.”
The comparison is made lightly, yet it reveals something important. Poetry for Ramoutar is not an occasional creative outlet or a hobby revisited every few years. It is a constant companion, one that travelled with her when her family emigrated to America when she was seventeen and remained part of her life long after many people had left poetry behind with their schoolbooks.
She traces that early love partly to an inspiring English teacher and partly to circumstance. Living abroad, poetry became something portable, a connection to Ireland that could fit into a notebook.
However, what surprises her is how many aspiring poets seem reluctant to read poetry.
“There is actually a statistic that more people write poetry than read poetry,” she says, “It’s a very unusual thing that people don’t actually read other poets’ work.”
Ramoutar makes a point of reading contemporary poets as well as established names. While she admires writers such as Mary Oliver, she is equally interested in living poets and emerging voices. Reading only the classics, she suggests, risks turning poetry into a museum piece rather than a living art form.
That belief in poetry as something alive and accessible runs throughout Radical Notions of Love, her second collection.
The book explores love in its many forms: romantic love, grief, desire, forgiveness, connection, regret, creativity and self-acceptance. Rather than treating love as a single emotion, Ramoutar approaches it as a collection of contradictions. The anthology is divided into seven sections, each pairing seemingly opposite ideas: Love is Desire and Love is Serenity, Love is Justice and Love is Forgiveness, Love is Mischief and Love is Regret, Love is Grief and Love is Connection, Love is Nature and Love is Incantation, Love is Creative and Love is Mundane, Love is Perfect and Love is Flawed.
The structure emerged gradually as the collection took shape. What began as a book about love expanded to encompass heartbreak, loss, self-doubt and personal growth.
“I realised that maybe what I thought was love wasn’t love,” she reflects. “It might have been attachment, or it might have been lust, or it might have been convenience. It wasn’t necessarily a loving experience.”
The collection arrived at an interesting moment in her own life. Having completed most of the anthology while single, she met her current partner shortly afterwards. What followed was an unconventional courtship. He became the first reader of the manuscript, reviewing every poem line by line over a series of weekends.
It was, she admits, an unusual way to get to know someone.
By the end of the editing process, both the relationship and the book had deepened. Two additional poems found their way into the collection, including one called Smitten, written during the early stages of the relationship.
The collaborative spirit extended beyond the writing itself. Radical Notions of Love is fully illustrated with Ramoutar’s own artwork, created through an elaborate process involving marbled papers, collage and sketches inspired by individual poems. Seventy poems generated seventy sketches, although only the most memorable images ultimately found their way into the finished book.
The scale of the undertaking reflects a recurring theme in Ramoutar’s creative life. She rarely chooses the easiest route.
Yet despite the labour involved, what emerges most strongly from both the book and its author is a belief in accessibility. Poetry, she argues, need not be intimidating, obscure or reserved for specialists.
At the launch of Radical Notions of Love, friends and readers selected and performed poems that resonated with them personally. The exercise revealed something that Ramoutar values deeply: people connecting with poetry through lived experience rather than literary analysis.
One poem in particular has generated a powerful response. Beginning as what appears to be an apology to another person, it concludes by revealing that the subject is the reader’s own body. The poem has resonated strongly with survivors of illness, trauma and personal adversity, encouraging a different perspective on ageing and self-criticism.
Perhaps that is ultimately what Ramoutar hopes poetry can do. Not provide answers, but create a pause. A moment of reflection. A chance to see something familiar from a different angle.
For a poet with shoeboxes full of unpublished work, that may be reason enough to keep writing.
https://buy.stripe.com/00w7sE7txbrb0izfNveME00
https://www.audible.co.uk/author/Nadia-Ramoutar/B075FDBVNS
