My poems in Two Anthologies

 My poems published in two anthologies edited by Julie Miles 

My Three Poems published in Kurukshetra: Between War and Peace

 My three poems published in Kurukshetra: Between War and Peace, edited by by Prof. Dr. Roopali Sircar Gaur and Anita Joseph, 2025. Published by TDW Productions & Publishing /Pothi.com

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.in/Kurukshetra-Prof-Roopali-Sircar-Joseph/dp/9391828876#

 

 

Nibedita Sen in her Foreword writes:  

 

Here are the three poems:

 

 

 

My poem in Minuto de Poesia

 

Leaves of Silence: A Deep Dive into R K Singh's Introspective Collection

 Leaves of Silence: A Deep Dive into R K Singh's Introspective Collection  

A Review article by Pravat Kumar Padhy   Published on November14, 2025 in the webzine, Different Truths

https://www.differenttruths.com/leaves-of-silence-a-deep-dive-into-rk-singhs-introspective-collection/ 

 

My Ten Haiku in Muse India, Nov-Dec 2025

Muse India: Issue 124 ( Nov-Dec 2025)

 

            R K Singh

              

Photo credits: stockcake.com

 

TEN HAIKU


voice fragments
whisper through silence --
solitude


seeing earth in her
I merge my I --
unselfing selves


missing
her gentle touch --
sleep divorce


sacred map --
no sense of direction
lost again


from doing more
to being more --
love


small changes
shadow in darkness:
betrayal


distant hills:
behind the brow
rising sun


shared joys
making of memories:
dolphin leap


a little thought
in a moment
the day happens


a sewer rat
invades the backyard --
stinky darkness
 

https://museindia.com/Home/ViewContentData?arttype=poems&issid=124&menuid=11872 

 

The Cultural Reverence magazine publishes my poem

 Poem published in The Cultural Reverence magazine,  November 08, 2025

Ram Krishna Singh’s Leaves of Silence: Poems and Micropoems -- A review by Wani Nazir

 

Ram Krishna Singh’s Leaves of Silence: Poems and Micropoems

 

Reviewed by

Wani Nazir,

Sr. Lecturer of English,

Department of Education,

Jammu & Kashmir, India.

 

 

 

Leaves of Silence: Poems and Micropoems | Poetry | Ram Krishna Singh |

Authorspress, 2025, INR 295, pp. 97

ISBN: 978-93-6095-748-3

“I fracture the spine / of my diaries and lament / life unlived in years.”Dr. Ram Krishna Singh doesn't just provide you a route into a poetry with these words; he goes deeper, and for some of us, it's almost too much to take. You don't read his book "Leaves of Silence" for beauty or comfort; at least the parts you read. It is a book that will make your hands bleed. Every page makes you shudder and sit with the slow rot of your body, the doubts of prayer, the disappointments of recollection, and the country's deep-seated divisions based on caste, religion, and sectarianism. Singh has stripped poetry down to its most basic parts: no padding, no decoration, just silence and anguish.

 

The poems deal with what it means to meet another person or even to cross that gap. “I doubt I meet someone / my soul reaches out / to one another.” That feeling of doubt is so strong right now. We want to connect with others, but we also don't trust them. And then, of course, there is the beauty of chance: "I run into strangers / discover the destined / pairs becoming whole." The poet gives fate to chance encounters in these lines, because even people we don't know can fill up the gaps in our lives that we didn't know were there. There are hints of Rumi here, who saw the Beloved in every meeting. And Singh is considerably more reserved and unsure. His voice is rough, city-like, and a little doubtful. There is a connection, but it's always weak.

 

This book also has time as its antagonist. “Time degenerates / all dreams pious or vile / I am I forever / in chain for salvation,” the speaker in the lines says. Time's attack makes even the most noble or base dreams fade away. What is left is the ego, which is not even free but completely enslaved to its goal. They are not the chains of a body that wants to rise above itself; they are the chains of a soul that is trapped by its own desires. It reminds me more of Eliot's ghost culture sense, where history is a wasteland and even redemption appears like being trapped again.

 

That friction between body and spirit is what makes the poems come alive. “Aren’t I torn between / the mysterious inside / and fecundity dreams – / tempting moments and memories / run into mirror of silence.” Life has dreams and temptations, but they murder in silence. The mirror isn't reflecting a reflection; it's revealing silence. Dickinson wouldn't be startled by this contradiction: that nothing said can have a lot of significance. But Singh does not make it pretty. Its invisibility is more like an act of fatigue, the final thinning and erasure, when both memory and desire have become empty.

 

He may be cruel at times: “Nature’s default choice / in sensexual womb / both saint and beast cohabit.” Here, the body is both sacred and profane at all times. "Sensexual" is a strange phrase that blends sensuality, sexuality, and even the economics of markets, as if the womb itself were sacred and full of possibilities. This is the kind of picture that needs to be contradictory, not resolved. I mean that Singh is among a group of Indian poets of own age, like Jeet Thayil, who writes about bodies ravaged by drugs, or Arundhathi Subramaniam, who looks for God in the sweat and muck of the flesh. The womb is where opposites live together: saint and animal, innocence and hunger.

 

And this is paying attention to the body throughout history. “Take pride in the knife that cuts them to core / get cooked in debris of myths and history / for kites and vultures of caste and sect.”The knife cuts up identities and vultures fly over the fragmented pieces of caste and sect. Singh thinks that history doesn't set us free; it chews us up and turns myths into flesh that vultures may consume. Adil Jussawalla's strong poetry about India during its independence comes to mind. Back then, the idea of a nation led to carnage. Singh thinks that history is like a ravenous beast that never goes away; it's always there, ready to be fed.

 

This aggression also affects the private archive, which is the diary. “I fracture the spine / of my diaries and lament / life unlived in years.”When you start a diary, it's like being alone again. It is to understand not only what has been lost, but also what was never lived at all. It's not nostalgia that's the problem; it's regret, the weight of all the missed chances. The poet of unrealised identities, Pessoa's ghost is here.

 

But Singh's note isn't a hilarious mix of things; it's sorrowful. The crack stays the same. And then there is pain, real and unfiltered.“Roaring monsoon / in four days wet walls inside / smelly pillow / awake all night tearing pain / in legs and declivity / of mind and feeling in dark / unwrap my being.” The monsoon is not a place to fall in love. It goes through walls, eats pillows, and makes suffering worse until the mind wakes up to reality. But even there, Singh wants something metaphysical: "unwrap my being." Pain is more than torture; it takes away everything we have. What is shown is not a higher spirit, but a sore that is bleeding.

 

On top of that weight, little bits of compassion flutter. “Little birds / collect on the railing / seek no water or food / just talk how the day went / and fly back to their nests.” It's a plain scene that gives off a sense of normalcy. Birds talk and come back. People make things harder with sadness and myths, but they don't. They are the kind of peace that we can never keep. You can hear Bashō or Issa's lovely haiku about bugs and sparrows here.

 

Singh's haiku moments are a welcome reminder that quiet doesn't always mean sadness. Sometimes it's just rest. But the shadows come back. “Words shape no sense / and mind spins helplessness / in cold quietude / bones creak in aging cage / await final decay.” The body is the cage, but so are words. Words lose their meaning, and bones lose their strength. They both fall apart. It's impossible not to think of Sylvia Plath's bell jar or Sartre's cage of nausea. Singh sums up such philosophical feelings in a few phrases.

 

It is a painful truth, and sometimes the way it is said sounds almost shocking: “I suffer the nights of sunny days ahead / of anal witch dripping red with allergies / that’s why I’m a poet.”This is horrible and unflinching. The body leaks, and then it breaks down. But instead of hiding that fact, Singh makes it the reason for poetry itself. He is a poet not because of the humiliations of the body, but because of them. He reminds me of Ginsberg, Bukowski, and all the other artists who turned their pain into art. Singh's terrain is Indian, and his images use its textures.

 

Sexuality and identity come up in a way that is both disarming and simple: “I don’t know his gender preference / maybe straight gay or bisexual / he mingles with many / even seems funny / I don’t worry if he ends up / in misery with freezing / his eggs or preaching free-sex: / his blood is upon himself.”These words don't put you down. When they talk, they don't utilise poetry. The speech is unpleasant, even though the judgment is wrong. Singh isn't attempting to make the problem go away by wishing it away; he's being very upfront about it.

 

And still, stillness comes back in there too. “I survive in silence now / but for how long?” The question is devastating in its simplicity. Silence is survival, but it is also precarious. Or this: “Every day / pray to faceless God / repeat griefs / that hardly change truth / of restless legs.”God has no face, prayer is just a habit, and grief is just a process. People don't celebrate faith; they put up with it. It's the faith of someone who can't stop himself, even when doing that holy thing starts to feel like just going through the motions. “Caste and religion / in food dress and colour – / glowing fault line / sustain leaders and uphold / nation’s after-image.”The after-image is only the picture that is left in the eye after staring at something brilliant. In these views, the nation is just a shadow after the light of partition, politics, and sectarianism.

 

Singh looks at the wound and tells you what's wrong with it; he doesn't put balm on it. Fear lingers even at the brink of slumber. “Minutes before / the head hits the pillow / libidinal no: / existential terror.”These are the times we all know: when the body won't move, when the flood of disaster rises before nothing. Kierkegaard's terror, Heidegger's being-toward-death, and Sartre's sickness are all there, but in a few clear lines.

 

And the pieces—the haiku and tanka—that break up quiet into smaller pieces. “Two bulbuls / between hibiscus / weaving nest.” Continuity, survival. “Mazy passage / a hole in the stone – / secret exit.” Or “Snake-bite in dream / searching anti-venom – / Satan’s new hunt.”The unconscious mind isn't safe either. The money was eaten by the rain puddles. Puddles can also drown. Singh's haiku are more like Santōka's or Issa's than the attractive ones we usually see. They are heavy instead of pretty.

 

The tanka continues this: “Each morning / repeat the same prayers / fresh hibiscus / at the altar / fumes of years.” Repetition of rituals gets old. Or this: “Fifteen long years / on Facebook & Twitter: / the cult of fame / without fan following / a media orphan.” A painfully up-to-date tanka that shows how lonely life may be online. And this: "Wafts of breeze / brief walk in the lane / quietude: / first breath on earth with cries / last breath in noiseless peace.” It's a tanka that captures all of life in one breath—screams and silence, beginnings and ends.

 

So, what's great about Leaves of Silence is not just how true it is, but also how it pushes for silence as both a form of harm and a form of testimony. Silence is never empty; it is full, heavy, and full of things that can't be said. His poems talk to Eliot's ruins, Plath's wounds, and Dickinson's stillness, but they are also very much based on India's traditions: Kabir's crisp couplets that get to the heart of ritual, or the quiet, whispering stillness of the bhakti poets who yelled prayers into the wind when the gods became faceless.

 

Confessional is too easy again. It's not just acknowledging; what he does is bad and incriminating, and it doesn't make the reader feel better. His poetry hurts too. His quietness makes us aware of our own flaws. In the end, Leaves of Silence isn't a novel about grief; it's proof. Proof of pain, brokenness, prayer, breath, and death. Singh says, "I live in silence now." What's left in the quiet? That is not only his question; it is ours too.

 

Published in Creative Flight Journal, Vol.6, No.4m October 2025, pp.96-101

 

 https://www.creativeflight.in/2025/10/ram-krishna-singhs-leaves-of-silence.html