Curriculum Vitae
Professional Experience
Associate Professor / NassauCommunity College, Garden City,
Coordinator, Creative New York. 9/95-2005
Writing (Courses taught: Creative Writing, Freshman Composition,
Literature electives, and women’s studies)
Lecturer IndiaStudiesCenter, SUNY, Stony Brook, ’96-‘99
WritingCenter NassauCommunity College,
Instructor Garden City, New York, 9/90-95
Assistant Professor FriendsWorldCollege,
Huntington, New York, 9/87-90
Adjunct Instructor Polytechnic Institute of
New York, Farmingdale,
New York, 1986, 1987
Graduate Teaching GeorgeWashingtonUniversity, 9/1982-5/1985
Assistant
Education
Ph.D., English, George Washington Univ., 1988
M.Phil., English, George Washington Univ., 1985
Diploma in Journalism, Bhavan’s School of Journalism, 1981
M.A., English, BombayUniversity, 1981
B.A., English, SophiaCollege, Bombay, 1979
Publications
Poetry
Ariel, Calyx, Kavya Bharathi, Atlanta Review, The Prairie Schooner, The Princeton Review, Paterson Literary Review, GW Review, The Long Island Quarterly, Xanadu, Encompass, Writing the Lines of our Hands, Behind the Fence, The Light of City and Sky, The Kerf, Sightings, Literary Review, Nassau Review, South Asian Review, Poem Alley, and A Chorus for Peace
Book
Thirtha, Yuganta Press, 2002
Journal Publications:
“Poetry and Prayer,” Conversations, Sophia, Spring 2003
“Changing Concepts of Activism in Women’s Studies,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol.27, Fall 1999
“Language, Exile, and Discovery, Language Crossings, ed. Karen Ogulnick,Fall 1999
“The Shifting of Privilege,” SEED Anthology, Spring 1999
“Women’s Studies in a Global Context: Bibliography,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25, Fall 1997
Commentary on Patricia Hill Collins’ “Race, Class, and Gender,”Open For Discussion, Fall 1997
“Mukherjee as Autobiographer,” Bharati Mukherjee: Selected Criticism, NY: Greenwood Press, 1992.
Workshops
The Sophia Center, Darien High School, Arrowhead Elementary, Bay Shore High School, Copiague High School, Carey High School and Nassau Community College
Readings
Sponsors: South Country Library; Emma Clark Library; South Asian Literary Association; Performance Poets; Nassau Community College; Polish Embassy, New York; Stony Brook: Images and Women / Women’s Voices; Poets and Writers; National Women’s Studies Association; Paterson Poetry Prize readings; Community College Humanities Association; Ear Inn; Asian-American Writers Workshop; Poetry in Action, Poets Out Loud ; and Unitarian Church (Setauket and Stamford); Moment One: International Poetry 2005, Jewish Community Center, Plainview
Conference Presentations
“Journeys Across Borders: A Multimedia Performance,” American Art Therapy Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 2005
“’Don’t you Speak English?’ Linguistic Oppression and Sexism,” NWSA Conference, Milwaukee, June 2004
NWSA Writers Series, June 2004
“The Supple Tongue: Indian-American Writing,” Associated Writing Program Conference, Baltimore, February 2003.
Presentation based on my essay “Language, Exile, and Discovery,” published in Language Crossings, C.W. Post Campus, April 30, 2002
“Poetry and Prayer,” SophiaCenter, Huntington, NY, October 18, 2002
“Reconstructing the Erotic in Indian-American Women’s Writing: Divakaruni and Kamani,” 31st Annual South Asia Conference, University of Wisconsin at Madison, October 10, 2002
“Women’s Studies Students Learn from Global Grassroots Organizing”, NWSA conference, Boston, June 2000
“Pens Wombs and other Milestones,” NWSA Writers Series, NWSA, Boston, June 2000
“Multicultural texts, with a focus on South Asian writing as a way of opening up the Multicultural Canon,” Workshop, DarienHigh SchoolOctober 14, 2000
“Old and New Sutras,” Poetry reading, SALA, Washington, D.C.December 28, 2000.
“Celebrating Our Sexuality,” a poetry reading organized by me for Facing Our Selves: Men, Women and Sexuality, November 14, 2000
Poetry reading, NCC Women’s Center, April 23, 2002
“Politics of Reproduction in India,” C.W.PostCollege, March 1999.
“Holocaust and Female Feticide,” 29th Annual Scholar’s Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, March 1999
“Home and the World: Assia Djebar,” Crossroads, CCHA, November 1998
“Songs of the Road: Asia to America,” Poetry reading, Crossroads, CCHA, November 1998
“Poetic Arguments,” NCC Active Learning Conference, April 1998
“The Environmental Imagination in A.K. Ramanujam and Robert Bly,” Popular Culture, CCHA, November 1996
“Teaching in WST class about Violence against Women,” Conference on Violence Against Women, SUNY, New Paltz, October 1996
“Among Women: Women and Artists Constructing Relationships,” NWSA, June 1996
“Reproductive Health Policies: India, China, and Quebec,” Feminism: Linking Global and Local Perspectives, SUNY, New Paltz, October 1995
“What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” SUNY, New Paltz, October 1995
“Expanding the Borders in Women’s Studies,” Surviving the Borderlands, SUNY Plattsburg, April 1995.
Professional Activities
Coordinator, Creative Writing Project, Nassau Community College, 2004-Present
Faculty Advisor, Women’s Center, NassauCommunity College
Organizer, Faculty and Student poetry readings and colloquia.
Membership in Organizations and Committees
Associated Writing Program
National Women’s Studies Association
South Asia Conference
Community College Humanities Association
South Asian Literary Association
SuffolkCounty Poet Laureate Committee, 2003
Honors
SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2005
Distinguished Faculty Award, NassauCommunity College, April 2003
Hedgebrook writers’ residency, Langley, Washington, August 2002
Norcroft writers’ residency, Lutsen, Minnesota, August 2003
Finalist, Allen Ginsberg poetry prize, June 1999
Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, Fall 1998
Rhyme With Me
You have to look away
from Baghdad blushing
from sudden soft blooms
of whispered bombs
to campaign for metaphors
and hypnotize with rhyme,
as mothers in subterranean
spaces open up a page from Rumi
to soothe a child with visions of sunset,
of a man on a donkey sailing on the sand
to his beloved, the moon for company.
And the silence of her words
will fill his wracked bones,
spiting atomic shudders,
as black Baghdad, painted by oil
and blood, a mural in rooms,
cafes, slums, ports and resorts,
drives your hunger for a Faiz,
an Akhmatova, a Darwish, to quell
the smoke billowing within,
opaque, velvet, unrelenting,
so emotion un-fleshed
is bearable, a crude comrade,
when you look away.
Disembodied Thought
“Pranava svarupa vakra thundam”-- Thygaraja
The embodiment of aum is the destroyer of obstacles
1
Whatever emerges from the mind
is rooted in matter
So if thought is rooted in matter
how can thought be imagined
lopped of desire and memory?
Can a thought of AUM arise and wrap
itself around the sound
and stay within the vibration
without straying outside itself?
Then the body would fall away,
leaving only the vibration
that produced the original flesh.
Is that what you meant, Thyagaraja,
by vakra-thundam—
the body as the obstacle
that must be cut off to
release thought as spirit?
2
I am intoxicated by the beauty of the body—
its curves, its glistening in the dark,
its moonlit grace as it emerges at dawn,
the speed and lightness of it,
the heaviness of it before it is lit with joy,
its mysteries, surprises, dejavus,
lulling the spirit and lifting it,
rocking, or beckoning it.
Why would I wish to quit this joy palace
even if sorrow darkens it with sudden
blackouts?
Is that ultimate vibration untouched
by the body more pleasurable than
this scent wrested from matter?
3
Love’s a fine place on this escarpment,
tiny, held by spirit.
When the body inches toward decay,
there is nothing to say we lived
but that love happened—
a success of spirit tasting matter
but retaining itself.
Unlike fame, wealth, power,
love does not say “I want”
but is itself, essential,
until thought finds it
and gets drunk.
Diminuendo
I had imagined the drama of my parents’ separation:
suitcases stuffed with mother’s saris, my dresses,
tattered Tamil magazines, silverware, and photos
lined up at the door; mother had sent the maid
to fetch the taxi. Soon we were on a train, speeding
to grandma’s. At every episode, I changed the ending,
In each story mother had the last word,
while father sulked behind a locked door.
The future belonged in parental litanies, not
in my vocabulary inked with my heart’s hell.
I didn’t know loss weighed like a gold coin
in the bottom of your chest. Nor had I seen
the battleground smeared with women’s stories.
I lived in the dramatic moment, where vengeance
triumphed. Heroes and victims had definable faces.
Each time I pressed her to smash the invisible walls,
the treatises on femaleness became palpable in the air
we breathed—the letters rose up sternly, subduing
our bold eyes with their dazzle. One banner read kadamai,
duty, another read nanri, gratitude.