Shirali Publishes Award-Winning Poetry Collection summonings

In her poetry collection summonings, Raena Shirali, MFA, assistant professor of English, investigates the practice of witch (“daayan”) hunting in India.

In her poetry collection summonings, Raena Shirali, MFA, assistant professor of English, investigates the practice of witch (“daayan”) hunting in India. In summonings, Shirali, an Indian American poet who was raised in Charleston, South Carolina, explores how both antiquated and existing norms surrounding female mysticism in India and the United States inform each culture’s treatment of women. summonings was awarded the 2021 Hudson Prize by Black Lawrence Press. 

Her new collection follows Shirali’s debut collection, GILT, published by YesYes Books in 2017, which won the prestigious 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Shirali also serves as a faculty advisor for Folio—Holy Family University’s literary magazine dedicated to publishing works by undergraduate students at the national level.

summonings will be published by Black Lawrence Press this month. For more information and to purchase, please visit blacklawrencepress.com/books/summonings.

Docupoetry

While this genre may be unfamiliar to some, docupoetry is a poetry tradition that incorporates nonliterary texts and primary sources, such as news reports, legal documents, and transcribed oral histories, to create a “mixed media” work. By combining historical research and poetic expression, docupoetry can comment on culture, identity, injustice, social change, and historical narratives.
 

Below is an excerpt from Shirali’s summonings. Brackets indicate language sampled directly from anthropological sources.

ghazal against [declining to name the subject]

Bahura Bai, it matters that you have a name. that you live 
past the story : you were young, 

Teerath Sahu, chased out of your home by twelve or more friends, 
men, family, called [antisocial], [killer]. younger

still, the children falling sick, cattle keeled over, growing
rancid in yearlong heat, buried as afterthought. in your own youth

you thought daayans real. [the process of attraction—the power of girls 
to inflame passion, to subdue boys at their will] made your young skin

prickle. here, there is no archetype ungendered. & blood like yours,
like mine, doesn’t stay profitable long. & i’m too young

to be telling your story, & privileged, & the rain keeps falling
like the sky’s own mountain, your youths

hiding under their cot, your husband accused of sheltering you—.
Jaam Bai, there is only more terror. gone, now, those youthful

days the men would stop by your house, ask for rice, for roots.
even then, the killing had begun. no one here, at last, stays young.