States of the Body Produced by Love

Nisha Ramayya

Book cover for States of the Body Produced by Love
Book cover for States of the Body Produced by Love

States of the Body Produced by Love

States of the Body Produced by Love

Nisha Ramayya

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Description

A modern mystical journey through love - a many-headed snake twisting through devotion, sacrifice and the dream of returning home.

In her visionary debut, Nisha Ramayya conjures an opalescent world by way of Tantric ritual and myth. Thousand-petalled lotuses bloom inside skulls, goddesses with dirty feet charm honeybees, strains of jazz standards bleed into anti-national anthems. States of the Body Produced By Love weaves essays, poetry and images together to offer fierce meditations on diasporic identity, language and resistance.

From grief to bliss, this book explores the many states of the body seized by love in an incantation that never leaves its hold.

Critical Reviews

"The poetic incantations bring these various states to life with pulsating vividness, brimming with descriptions exploring direction, scent, gender, politics, knowledge, and body parts. As well as creating this type of incantatory, fluid poetry, the collection acts as a prayer and an intensely personal account of engagement with cultural history. These 'states of the body produced by love' allow the poetry to traverse the Mahāvidyās and to access the vessels of knowledge within them." -Pratyusha, The White Review

"Fans of Maggie Nelson or Anne Carson may find themselves in familiar territory: there is the same impulse for wide-ranging references, the same desire to crack words open and poke around inside them. Ramayya's concerns, however, are broader than Nelson and Carson's sorrows in love: as the title suggests, States of the Body addresses ideas of the nation state, Hindu nationalism, British imperialism - and yes, love too." --Stephanie Sy-Quia, The Guardian

Publishing Information

Publisher: Spiral House Editions
Pub date: 2025-07-01
Length: 132 pages

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