POETRY REVIEW: One Flew Over The Heart by Nitya Swaruba

Title: One Flew Over The Heart Book Cover One Flew Over The Heart by Nitya Swaruba

Author: Nitya Swaruba

About The Author

Nitya Swaruba is a lover of words. She began writing poetry from late 2014. This collection of more than three hundred poems is her first book. Hardly influenced or inspired, she discovered this passion over time. Her ability to observe and sense emotions feeds her ideas. Her inspiration comes from her self, those closest to her, and nature. She also draws from people’s experiences. She uses simple language and her style is far from conventional, which makes her poems unusually unique.
Nitya is a copy editor from Pondicherry, India. She loves watching TV and movies. Her favourite thing to do is to contemplate—the place where she finds the inspiration to write. She is also passionate about nature photography, which at times she collaborates with her poetry.

Book Blurb (from the back cover)

“Beauty in My Eyes” paints the dramatic irony of wanting to live in a world that destroys.
In “Our Stairway,” you will fall into a dream that feels like eternity, but is it?
“Boomeranged” brings back memories of a time and place irreplaceable.
And what does “Saw You,” the six-word poem, have to say?
Incredibly heartwarming poetry, thoughtful lines about the world, words on love worth engraving are what you will find between these covers. One Flew Over The Heart will also take you on other extraordinary journeys–about nature, the world, free-living, time and place, fantasy and dreams, and love–both dark and light. The spontaneous four-liners read at a glance will stay forever with you, and the rare hand-drawn sketches will etch the words in your heart.

The Review

One Flew Over The Heart is a collection of poetry that Nitya has written over a period of time. The collection, by its inherent nature, consists of poems written on a wide range of themes and subjects. There is something here for every mood and season in life and is the voice of the poet’s heart and soul.

The book begins with a very interesting dedication. The author’s note, titled “The Poetry” is a very compelling piece of writing that draws you into the book. It is an insight into the poet’s thoughts and feelings and I really enjoyed reading that.

The book itself has been divided into thirteen sections and is a labour of love for the poet, right from the cover design to the choice and placement of poetry in the book. The poems are a random collection of varying lengths, from the very short to the very long. There are many styles of poetry here and most of it is rhymed and neatly organised into paragraphs. The book also has some shaped poetry that is visually quite appealing. The sketches are well done and add to the beauty of the book.

The poems are very simple, and most of them are narrative in tone. They are a depiction of the thoughts and feelings of the writer, as they come. Some of the poems have layers of meanings hidden behind their simplicity. A few of my favourites are “it’s about time”, “the nude dream”, “wait…!”, “bloom from that gloom”, “always”.

Nature is a recurrent theme in the book, even apart from the section of nature poems. “For August” is a section that contains poems on the word of the day written over an entire month and has some excellent poems. I also enjoyed the section “for them” which is a short section of poetry inspired by various events and characters. For the lover of very short poetry, the section to go for first is “heartbeats”.

What I found worth improving is the general organisation of poems on the page. The poems sometimes seem to be randomly placed in the centre, side, two on the same page, in a double column… the order is a little puzzling and the reason and the vision of the poet here are not adequately transmitted to the reader.

The ending of the book is a fabulous and very apt poem called “my word”. It is something that leaves a beautiful imprint on the mind that lingers.

The complete experience of the book was very positive, beautiful in its simplicity and heartening. The poems tend to grow on the reader as one moves along, reading over the days, and I look forward to watching the growth of the poet and her poetry in her further offerings.