Poet of small but memorable moments

It hurts, your silent au revoir

Purged by Jet fuel fire

White intense light un-seared

Blessed soul of light

Lady of deep blue skies…

The above mentioned stanza is from Seema K. Jayaraman’s poem “Salute to My Dear Friend”. The  Mumbai-based poet in this poem  is calling out to her childhood friend, one of the first woman pilots of the Indian Air Force, who departed untimely in a horrific chopper crash in October 2015. In her debut collection of poems titled Wings Of Rhapsody: A dalliance of Poems, she touches upon multiple subjects through her  poetry which are close to her heart.

A mother of two and a professional with over 20 years of corporate work experience in IT and Banking, Seema has been a poet at heart ever since her childhood days . As a young girl she was regularly going around the city to different schools reciting poems in Hindi and English. But somehow she lost touch with poetry as she moved on in life. But something in her moved when she saw horrendous images of a dead Syrian kid washed ashore. That incident inspired her to pick up the pen and write verses again. 

“I could not take that image out of my head. And being a mother I could really feel what the father of that child must have gone through. So I penned “A Father’s Grief”, and restarted my journey with world of literature,” says the poet.

Seema adds, “It took me around six months to write most of the poems in the book while a few of them I had written decades ago, just like several other poets I too feel that poetry comes from within where a universe just uses us as a medium to write these thoughts.”

Soon after she began writing  poetry, Seema started posting her poems on poemhunterz.com, which is an international online community of poets and poetry enthusiasts. The response she recieved for her work was encouraging. Several people grew fond of her writing style and could connect to her poetry. “I was surprised and taken aback when Laveners Poets Corner featured me as their poet of the month and carried my work on their website for the entire month of December.”

Seema later discovered that her poems were also being played on several privately run radio stations in the UK. Many local pianists were reciting her words with their notes.  “The biggest surprise was when I found out that I’ve been nominated for the Sanmati Literary Awards organised by the Aagman Publishers for upcoming writers.” 

Her book is a testimony to her poetic genius. Her poetic dicition is colloquial, which makes it easier for the poet to connect with a larger audience. She has written poetry on a diverse range of topics, covering several aspects of life. Her new collection has 105 poems in all. There’s a sense of beauty in her poetry — be it a child’s reluctance towards going to school or a father’s grief over his lost child or a friend’s goodbye to her long-lost friend. Seema’s poem in Hindi “Mummy Aaj Chutti hai!” also happens to be listed on a U.S.-based educational website.

She says: “Since the time I’ve started writing, I’ve had several small but memorable moments that are unbelievable. Like the first printed copy of my book went to Revathi, the celebrated South Indian actress whom I met at the airport while I was getting ready to board my flight home.” Seema says about her muse that the words comes to her unbidden sometimes. They resonate in her head like a song and if not noted or penned, they will be lost — such is her creative process. She plans to continue writing poetry and also wishes to write fiction and non-fiction.