My Nana ji used to cajole me into writing a poem while pointing out at a bird sitting on a tree saying, “Doesn’t this bird say something to me? You ought to write a poem on it.” And I would not disregard his words as his gesture would set me thinking and this draught of thought would lead to a poetic overflow, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility”.
This legacy is the real reason I ended up in having my first book an anthology of poetry in English, entitled ‘Pages of Life’. And it’s the same legacy that was identified in me as love for classical English poets, when Mr. Rajbir Deswal (a retired IPS officer), ‘the cop who loves to write’, when he reviewed my book for ‘The Tribune’. And was I happy at this identification being revealed in print! It’s still so overwhelming for me.
~Amritbir Kaur.