They Gather Around Me, the Animals

by Kunjana Parashar

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published June 20, 2025

Reviews

[Kishan Gusani · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a life. I'm ashamed. This is a book of poems by a dear friend that came out last year (which is a long time and not a long time) and I feel utterly stupid now that I kept from starting to read this collection, that I dreaded it thinking the animals and the myriad living beings would weigh too heavy on me, (dampening my enjoyment of the poems,) since I'm not very invested in them in my day to day, and guiltily not very informed on their names and ways of existence, but they were just perfect, absolutely perfect, and I'm if anything a little more intelligible and informed on axolotls and caimans and lantana camaras and all the colourful creatures of the poems, and I'm very grateful for it (not that that was the point, I'm well aware, it is really a very happy happenstance.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the poems, their livingness and livelihood, their wisdom of the living world and the inner world, their cadence in being one big ecosystem of a poetry collection. I'm very happy the animals gathered around Kunjana, and around me as I read this collection. A book that has really enlivened, brightened my library after this first reading, and I will keep coming back to for its magic and sorcery and adeptness and alchemy, and life, so much life.

This is a book that keeps the door not completely open or shut, just blissfully half ajar (I like that, how it feels so novel, a little in the distance, and yet so familiar this way, comforting), and its a big door, its a fitting door for a first collection. Wonder what next will gather around Kunjana, and what I will share in her future obsessions.

If poetry hasn't yet made you feel even the littlest of joy, or as Poe says 'ripped apart your soul' as it were, I vouch something in these poems will. I personally don't feel that way much about much poetry I read (which is not a problem of reading enough, or maybe it is, idk), craving just that extra bit of umami in my poems. Lot of umami here. Try. If poetry is medicine, we have found our doctor. And we are all being nursed and healed by her poetry in an unfathomable measure. And I'm gonna keep waxing lyrical till the cows come home. Try and stop me.

[Nikita Deshpande · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure, I know the poet/author of the book… but Kunjana’s knowledge of both animals and poetry is highly enviable, which is why I went into this collection expecting a bunch of intimidating poems that I might maybe not “get”.

Instead, I found a delicious jam jar of poems that is, on the whole, accessible and beautiful without compromising on complexity. There is an intimacy with animals, reptiles, birds and creatures of all aspect here that warms your bones. And is honestly… deeply contagious.

The poems I loved most and will keep coming back to include: Frogs of Bhiwandi
Acoustic enrichment
Poem with no birds in it
Prayer
Garden
The Creature
Offering
On Not Cleaning The Bathroom
26
The Boar
The toad
Petition

Halfway through this “review” I realized I might as well list 90% of the poems in the index as favourites. Long way of saying, I adooooore this collection and will definitely stay with me for many rereads.

[Jayant Kashyap · Rating 4 out of 5]

On reading Parashar’s They Gather Around Me, the Animals it becomes obvious why it won this very reputed prize—the fact that its poems are very much in sync with each-other and, together, they feel like a story or a sequence continuing page after page.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 4 out of 5]

To progress through this debut collection is to feel like being surrounded by more and more animals. By the end, you yourself are deep within Parasher's zoo. A dazzling menagerie of unique beasts. A strong collection with some truly masterful prose poems hissing and squawking within.

[Ashish Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

***review coming soon***

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

They Gather Around Me, the Animals is a poetry collection by Kunjana Parashar which was selected by Diane Seuss as the winner of the 2024 Barbara Stevens Poetry Book Award. It is both ethereal and grounding at the same time. Parashar does this well by imagining an absence of a natural element in her poems such as “Poem with No Birds in It” and “Poem with No Birdsong in It”. This leaves the reader with a haunting realisation. Her poems make you slow down and notice the wonder that surrounds you in the nature that surrounds you.