Today on Write Spot

Posted: Thursday Sep 28, 2023

Dunedin-based poet Rushi Vyas has released his debut collection 'When I Reach For Your Pulse', which untangles slippery personal and political histories in the wake of his father's suicide.

Listen to this OAR FM kōrero https://bit.ly/RushiVyasOAR with Dunedin-based poet Rushi Vyas, who launches his first solo collection 'When I Reach For Your Pulse' (Otago University Press) at University Book Shop Otago at 5.30pm today (Thurs 28 Sept).

In this electrifying debut, Rushi untangles slippery personal and political histories in the wake of a parent’s suicide. ‘When my father finally / died,’ he writes, ‘we […] burned, / like an effigy, the voiceless body.’ In this tough and tender, gently powerful collection, grief returns us to elemental silence, where ‘the wind is a muted vowel in the brush of pine / branches’.