Shikha Malaviya’s clever and inventive poems inhabit the contested space where Western culture collides with Hindu mythology, in a resplendent crash of forms that range from prose poems to lyrical litanies, all of them deeply felt and elegantly crafted.

On reading Geography of Tongues, I felt I was looking at a new world, rain-washed and young, yet bi-focal. Shikha Malaviya’s lines ricochet from the suddenness of the reality that seems to encounter her. This is quicksilver, effervescent poetry, borne headlong on a strong impulse.