Marilyn Noronha

Noronha’s métier is the simple uninflected poetic line, quiet, observant and humorous. A recurrent theme in her poems is the individual’s strategy for survival in a casually brutal world. The self is bruised and abraded along the way, but the poetry never lapses into self-pity. Instead, these poems look an inhospitable universe in the face, confronting adversity while retaining sanity and a stout sense of humour that is directed as much at the self as at the other. For this is not a poetry of naive good cheer. It is evident that the poet can see through the humbug and duplicity, cynicism and malice of those around her. Her humanity, one realises time and again, is hard-won.

It is easy to be misled by the nursery-rhyme cadence that often informs Noronha’s poems, yet there is nothing jejune about this verse, and the darker moments are rendered all the more disquieting by the deliberately adopted singsong tenor. The resources of children’s verse are cannily used, and often abruptly splintered to give you a glimpse into a hinterland of inner darkness. ‘Jambul Tree’ is, on one level, a poem of a quiet unsung tree in a churchyard that never bore fruit, but which offered sanctuary to birds and little boys. But as the poem swivels around in the last line, the reader recognises that it is about much more than it initially seemed.

The nursery-rhyme strategy is at its most overt in a poem that starts out as a wry appraisal of the self in the mirror: “Mirror, mirror on the shelf / tells ghoulish tales about myself . . . / Points out wrinkles near my eyes, / shows I’ve grown to twice my size . . .” Colleagues and acquaintances, self-righteously candid, are also mirrors that point out “that my front tooth’s chipped, I’ve a double chin, / my glossy mane’s now listless and thin”. You read with progressive unease about the boss who believes “removing a gall bladder’s routine . . .  and the same with the uterus”. And eventually the facile tripping rhythms uncover a voice of greater depth than anticipated.

My favourite Noronha poem is ‘My Fat Aunt’, which conjures a childhood world of nourishing warmth without ever turning sentimental. A hug from this fat aunt is not just an affirmation of love and belonging. It is about rescuing a childhood perception of life as joy, as discovery, as play, as festivity: “Cutlery sings and crockery dances . . . When we laugh together, / she and I, / everything feels perfect.”