I Will Not Bear You Sons

A poem can glisten like a fresh wound. Usha Akella pays tribute to her own life and to that of other women. Writing from her Niyogi Brahmin sensibility with which she grew up, her poems are the medium for the unsilenced voice both of her own story and those of women across various cultures. She calls for a united womanhood in her poems dedicated to women violated through rape, caste, FGM, foot binding, mysticism, politics, terrorism, and other patriarchal abuses to the women who have triumphed against subjugation building new ways of being. Rage has not caste, needs no algorithm, light a pyre with it of chopped thumbs and scripted dreams.

Usha Akella has authored four books of poetry, one chapbook, and scripted/produced two musical dramas. She earned a Master of Studies (Mst) in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge, UK. She is the founder of Matwaala (www.matwaala.com) and hosts www.the-pov.com, an interview and conversations website. Matwaala is the first South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival in the US that she co-directs with Pramila Venkateswaran. She is also the founder of the Poetry Caravan in New York and Austin.