Shmoshanbrikkho (The Tree at the Cremation Ground)
Amina Shelly
Poetry · Existence · Bangla
Poetry of life and new possibilities amid decay.
At a Glance
From soil to metropolis, from love to separation, from the body to the cremation ground, from birth to death—Shmoshanbrikkho brings the opposing experiences of human life, relationships, and existence into a shared poetic landscape.
About the Book
Shmoshanbrikkho repeatedly looks at life through its opposites. Birth beside death. Love beside separation. The body beside decay. Faith beside doubt. Rural soil beside urban dust.
Soil, inheritance and the poetic self come together in this book. Soil is more than a birthplace. It is also a source of memory and identity. At times, the soil itself becomes a page for writing—rivers, haors, water, boats, old sails, the faces of boatmen, even a love letter.
But this is not a peaceful world. There is decay. There is rupture. Yet signs of life remain within it. The stone-built ghat breaks down, while the leaves of the shmoshanbrikkho remain green. Within all this is the body. Love. Desire. Motherhood. Illness. Wounds and memory. With love come distance, absence, distrust and separation. People move away. Memory remains.
Village and city appear side by side. On one side are haors, paddy leaves, farmers, ancestral homes and childhood. On the other are the dust of the capital, traffic, glass, walls and mechanical time. Alongside these come questions of class, poverty, labour, the environment, the state, religion and social inequality.
There are experiments with language too. Familiar words and ideas sometimes come together to create new meanings. Perhaps this tension is clearest in the title itself. Shmoshan is a symbol of death and dissolution. Brikkho is a symbol of life, roots and growth. Bodies break. Relationships break. Beliefs break. Yet the leaves of the shmoshanbrikkho remain green.
Book Details
Book: Shmoshanbrikkho
Author: Amina Shelly
Genre: Poetry · Existence
Language: Bangla
Poems: 60
Pages: 96
Edition: First Edition
Publication Date: November 2018
Publisher: Ashaloy Prokashon
Cover Design: Charu Pintu
ISBN: 978-984-34-5409-6
Price: BDT 250
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from Baatighar - Shmoshanbrikkho (The Tree at the Cremation Ground)