Red

Red is the second of Sudeep’s projected three volumes of EcoPoetry ­­— on the themes of the environment, ecology, and the climate crisis ­­— high quality poems with high quality art photographs.

So Red is a multi-genre book, rich in both colour tones and inventive framing. Each aspect complements the others in oblique ways without being merely illustrative. The wonderful tension between words and images sets up an immersive dialogue. The ‘image’ is central — both textual and visual, centripetal and centrifugal.

Extending and building upon Anthropocene, Sen’s first volume of EcoPoetry, Red pushes the debate wider and deeper.

Red starts in South Africa, in the socio-paleolithic highveld land­scape of the ‘Cradle of Humankind’. This UNESCO World Heritage Site, which occupies 180 square miles, contains a complex system of limestone caves, believed to be home to the largest concentration of human ancestral remains anywhere in the world. Specifically, Red focuses on the landscape at Nirox Sculpture Park and its environs — simultaneously wild and tamed.

Red is equally about India and about the rest of the world — about borderless lands, skies and oceans that connect us. Red is about the secrets of dolomite and “my intimate skies”, about the community of artists (present and absent) engaging through intricate works of ekphrasis. Red is about the politics of colour, language, body — about the complex neural transmissions that link each cell and sub-cell.

Red is intellectually stringent, tightly wrought, amniotic, visceral, raw.

Yet Red is also poised, subtle, choral, and always elegantly crafted — a tour de force.