This poet/author from Bengaluru is well known for her previous books like He is Honey, Salt and The Most Perfect Grammar. In her new book,  Offer Him All Things, Charred, Burned and Cindered, author Kala Krishnan Ramesh takes love as a focal theme.

It was while living on her parents’ farm that she started writing. Kala recalls, “I was on a six-month break between ICSE and PUC. I often got bored as the farm was miles away from anything. Therefore, I took a notebook and started writing poetry but it was awful stuff.” Writing was never part of the plan for this alumnus of Mount Carmel College. Kala adds, “I wrote and then realised that I was a writer. I can’t really say I  wanted to be a writer — I wanted to be a nurse, a mechanic, a mathematician and lots of other things.”

Talking about her new book, Offer Him All Things, Charred, Burned and Cindered she says, “In this book, I have written about different poems by women poets who are in love with Lord Murugan. I have tried a variety of formats drawn from vernacular poetic expressions. That was tough, and the sources were inspiring. I get lots of inspiration and energy from songs.”

The main theme of this entire book is love. “I like the idea of love. I like the danger and the comfort of it. I like the way it makes and breaks; the craft of love is very much like the craft of writing,” she adds. Of the number of gods worshipped throughout the country, Kala chose to write about Murugan. She says, “Murugan is interesting, and in Tamil, he’s the God of poetry and grammar, love and war. He’s a lot of opposites — I like that. It makes writing about him arduous.”

Many writers have different writing processes. For Kala, it involves a lot of trial and error, lots of rework, etc.

Kala feels the poetry culture in India has become really exciting. She says,  “Many of my students attend poetry events. competitions. It’s not lonely anymore for poets, especially for young poets, there is a welcoming community.”