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Writing in 1989, scholar Werner Sollors caused a bit of a stir when he challenged the concept of ethnicity as a hermetic, immutable category. Sollors describes ethnic groups as existing within history and as highly unstable and pliable entities which are constantly interacting and redefining themselves.\u00a0\u00a0 Indeed, he adds, in today\u2019s global context it is difficult to characterize a writer as belonging exclusively to one ethnic group.[1]<\/a> For Sollors, ethnicity is not essence but rather as a dynamic historical process though which we define and redefine our identification with one or more groups.<\/p>\n For this reason, it would be wrong for critics to pigeonhole Jessica Mookherjee as \u2018ethnic\u2019 writer. She is much more than that, and her poetry is elegant and evocative. Her background is Bengali, and she grew up in Wales; she now lives in the Southeast. Swell<\/em>, a pamphlet of 15 poems published in 2016, is her debut.\u00a0\u00a0 In it, she skillfully and sensitively evokes the rich cultural and personal strands that run through her life.<\/p>\n Several of the poems focus on the complexities of family. The title poem, \u2018Swell,\u2019 evokes a pregnant woman, \u2018drum-tight and \u2018about to burst,\u2019 with a husband who \u2018made a fuss of her for a change.\u2019 Another poem, \u2018Snapshot,\u2019 begins with the lines<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is photographic evidence<\/p>\n of when she shifted her gaze,<\/p>\n the exact time her eyes went out of focus.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n and goes on to describe pictures of the poet as<\/p>\n \u2026growing bigger<\/p>\n in pigtails, often alone.<\/p>\n A snap of a girl with her hand on her mother\u2019s<\/p>\n shoulder, like a Victorian husband.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With elegance and understated economy of expression, Mookherjee paints in remarkably few words a haunting picture of her mother\u2019s vulnerability and her own isolation.<\/p>\n Another poem, \u2018Glass Sisters,\u2019 describes pottery images in a glass cabinet. The first person plural perspective is deftly deployed; the \u2018we\u2019 may be that of the objects<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We were all cabinet curios,<\/p>\n waking occasionally , trapped behind glass<\/p>\n under small locks, tiny keys.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n or of child who identifies with them:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gingerly, with a smell of fresh rose water<\/p>\n <\/p>\n she would take us out, sit us on the sofa,<\/p>\n while she played with a typewriter,<\/p>\n practicing her name. No one but us<\/p>\n saw her hair unbraided,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n cascades of shining black.<\/p>\n Her fingers spelling yours sincerely<\/em><\/p>\n Clicking on the white Olympus\u2014<\/p>\n I could get a job, learn to drive, drink wine<\/em><\/p>\n she muttered, glancing at her dolls.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The child exchanges a glance of complicity with Kuan-Yin:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I looked sideways at Kuan-Yin<\/p>\n behind her pane; she smiled at me<\/p>\n and listened to the world\u2019s sorrows.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In \u2018Red,\u2019 Mookherjee gives us a subtle cascade of images: red curtains in her mother\u2019s house \u2018\u2026like blood dripping down the windows\u2019; a red tikka on her mother\u2019s forehead \u2018looked like someone had shot her\u2019; red lipstick \u2018inappropriate for a girl of six\u2019; a red silk skirt that made a lover smile; that same lover\u2019s face \u2018\u2026too red, too much sun, too much\/beer, too much butter; an unflattering red shirt that \u2018doesn\u2019t flatter.\u2019 The poem ends with two lines evoking the visceral barrenness of the failing relationship: \u2018there\u2019s blood in the bathroom again\/this month.\u2019<\/p>\n The final poem in the pamphlet, \u2018The Changing,\u2019 is marvelously surreal. It describes a woman transformed into a fish:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At night she dives into wet corridors<\/p>\n Seeps from blankets,<\/p>\n Slathers across carpet, lost in the heft;<\/p>\n She\u2019s flatfish slapping down stairs<\/p>\n Leaving trails of silver moon-strike.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In night that tastes of felt, she gulps air<\/p>\n Chokes on magnolia walls. Her eyes bulge<\/p>\n And sight blurs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The poem ends with a stunning vision of liberation:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2026she reconstitutes in ripples<\/p>\n and, at last, she is night swimming,<\/p>\n free of her fins<\/p>\n in the swell of stars, arms stretched in a<\/p>\n yearning dance of encore.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The deft enjambment that runs through the poem, and the marvelous vividness of the verbs (\u2018dives,\u2019 \u2018slathers\u2019, \u2018gulps\u2019, \u2018chokes,\u2019 \u2018bulge,\u2019 \u2018blurs\u2019) create a vision of almost unbearable intensity.<\/p>\n The apparent surface simplicity and elegance of Jessica Mookherjee\u2019s carefully crafted poems conceal a hidden depth charge of emotion and sensibility. The reader is left wanting to read many more, and her forthcoming collection is eagerly anticipated.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n