Notes from a Shipwreck

by Jessica Mookherjee

Notes from a Shipwreck, the third collection of poetry by Jessica Mookherjee, is a richly detailed and illuminating voyage of dislocation and longing. By turns evocative, unsettling, and full of ‘small acts of magic’, Mookherjee simultaneously finds the past, present, and future in the tempestuous, lyrical tides that flow through her poems.

Here, seafaring lore and shanties interweave with wreckage and survival, drawn by strong currents of history – where migration, colonialism, pandemics and climate change shape the course we are on. The sea is a territory of grief and transformation, alluring and dangerous, where safe harbours and landfall are not always certain. Mookherjee’s enchanting, salt-sharp poetry encompasses the many journeys embarked on – whether seeking refuge, escape, or into exile – and consider not only the deep blue sea and its myriad mythologies, but to understand ‘what makes a land and person,’ – the keen human instinct to seek belonging.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published August 18, 2022

Reviews

[Maria Jastrzebska · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are fabulous poems – in two senses,they are wonderful and at the same time fabular. As a poet of Bengali heritage who grew up by the Welsh coast Jessica Mookherjee understands that journeys – voyages in particular – can be treacherous, downright dangerous at times, while simultaneously taking us to new places and revealing treasures beyond our imagination. This is a book which widens and deepens our notion of the world. In it there are treasures to find as well as moments between women and men full of the fragility of human communication, conversations or the absence of them with family, with God (even one ‘covered in glitter’) and a sense of holding on when we feel adrift. There are harpies and banshees, wreckers and survivors. There is the way we trap ourselves ‘no need for locks’ and the way we are trapped by a society which others anyone who defies expectations and conventions. There is the struggle to become visible, yearning to be ‘spotted on the horizon’ and there is the opposite pull of needing to or being forced to hide. Somehow creativity and song win through in a collection that’s a joy to read and go back to.