Love in a Handful of Dust
http://loveinahandfulofdust.com
Love in a Handful of Dust, Kirk Ramdath, Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-47-8, 80 pages, Paperback, 6″ x 9″, $15.95
Ramdath’s intensely personal lyric strives to make meaning of love’s worlds in these poems. He’s wandering and wondering through vicissitudes of lust and sanctity — which prove to be two sides of the same coin. “Are you fed by me as i am fed by you?” he asks…. If consumerist iterations are crass and fleeting, then how do you leave a gentler mark? By peeling back the larger realms, Ramdath works his way down through the political and the intimate, towards the loss that separates us from self. –Weyman Chan
Trinidad, Calgary is a place where walls collapse because they are enemies, where the gods of poetry demand only truth, where an army of kirks fights for love. Here, poems can take footnotes, but they rip your teeth out, too. Here the words are bald, feelings are volcanoes, love is revolution. Kirk Ramdath’s poetry doesn’t posit a better world, it demands it, These poems are a blueprint of hell. Where is your Britney Spears now? Ramdath’s dust is an incendiary device in mid-ballet. He is destroying the world as he saves it. All we can do is live here. —Bob Holman
In this stellar collection Kirk Ramdath explores the realm of love as he circumnavigates the concept from a plethora of different directions and perspectives. As the book opens to the reader so does the poetic notion of Eros, as Ramdath slowly reveals a fragile yet astute eye. There is great beauty in his vision! At the core of these poems Ramdath addresses social issues and dreams of a world without hatred or separation between people. His poetry lives in a world of change in which humanity is the most important concern. These poems are precise, finely crafted, and live on the page as well as the stage. The language Kirk Ramdath plays with will bring you to your poetic knees, and yes, Kirk Ramdath is a poet to watch! — Sheri-D Wilson
Kirk Ramdath is a mainstay among Calgary’s poets and spoken-word artists. His “Passion Pitch” poetry series has brought together a wide range of writers to share their words and music, drinks and discussion in an era when the open mic reading, so fertile a ground for many writers practicing today, has been abandoned. He has organized poetry in the park readings and as well as some of the readings in the Single Onion series. Kirk’s poetry has appeared in chapbooks, journals, and on stage – he was one of the first readers in the Calgary Spoken-Word Festival’s “Smart Men, Hot Words” readings. His poetry is noted, appropriately, given the reading series he founded, for its passion and sensuality.
we move in the night
escaping the ghosts that haunt our boots
our heads shorn like penitent monks
to distract the heavy gaze
of the face inside the mirror
love is a game of roulette
we are dizzy from the spin
of thinking love is a game
to lose or win
clad in second-hand finery,
we both play the bullfighter
one hand dances the red cloth
the other is poised to strike
not with a sword, but an embrace
the moment pretence falls away
the vulnerable pulse is revealed
the nakedness of thirst
i hold you like you are going away
but i am the one evaporating
becoming a whisper
until the silence of the space between us
becomes a secluded stage
until the sound of two drums
plays a secret rhythm
syncretizing into the first movement
of symphonic sensuality
you let me drink from your well
till i weep, and lift my voice to you
you stop me, saying you prefer
my kisses to my song
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