Central Time

This is a contemporary poetry collection that navigates time, memory, and the ways art illuminates our sense of belonging across borders. Its central purpose is to fuse personal memory with art history, inviting readers who love lyric poetry and thoughtful reflection. The intended reader is an adult audience drawn to art-inspired literature, with an emotional tone that is contemplative, intimate, and quietly hopeful. The poems unfold in a mix of elliptical, conversational, and narrative modes, weaving in references to poets such as Ovid and Ghalib and to painters and sculptors whose work speaks across centuries. Sensory, tactile imagery—the roughness of stone, the dance of light, the tastes of salt and cinnamon—coexists with artefacts of memory and art, creating a rich, immersive experience. Written over a span from 2006 to 2014, the collection gathers a hundred poems that probe war, genocide, terror, forced migration, and the precariousness of belonging. Readers encounter moments of encounter— a defiant squirrel in Anuradhapura, an enigmatic Berlin museum collection, or a man discovering a mass grave near Kabul—anchoring abstract themes in tangible, real-world scenes. The voice remains intimate and curious, balancing artful abstraction with concrete detail to illuminate how memory persists in the face of upheaval. - a hundred-poem sequence exploring time, memory, and the evane