Sundress Publications Announces the Release of Jonaki Ray’s Lessons in Bending

Sundress Publications announces the release of Jonaki Ray’s Lessons in Bending, which offers a candid view into the sacrifices made by those seeking a brighter future and safer world as they break metaphorical and literal chains that bind them to oppressive living conditions.

In this remarkable collection, many stories are heard: the immigrant woman imprisoned in the United States, dreaming of an escape; the daughter, dreaming of her mother’s face nuzzling against her own; a man trying to cross a border, who is met with laughter by the police; the dead, whose lives were ended by the hands of the state. The intricacies of experimental forms and daring lineation give each poem its own voice, its own pulse. These poems are for anyone trying to find a home in a place that never wanted them, for those trapped without the possibility of escape yet still daring to imagine better futures, for those, under the weight of it all, who are learning how to bend, not break.

Abhay K., author of Monsoon, writes, “Jonaki Ray’s Lessons in Bending is a remarkable work of poetry that tells us what it means to be an immigrant and prisoner of color in the promised land. Her poems give voice to the unwanted, the outcasts—the refugees, survivors, prisoners—who barely exist at the edge of society. A haunting collection. An eye-opener.”

Jessica Kim, author of L(EYE)GHT, writes that this collection “grapples with intimacies of family and girlhood in a world with ‘shelters, / prisons, and half-way houses,’ ‘a road [that] divides two states within the same country,’ and ‘mass graves where thousands were buried.’ In this world, one must survive by reminding herself to breathe. Ray’s poems rebel against injustice and violence, prompting us to rescue ourselves through her words.”

Lessons in Bending is available to download for free on the Sundress website: www.sundresspublications.com/e-chaps

Jonaki Ray was educated in India (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur) and the United States (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). A scientist by education and training and a software engineer (briefly) in the past, she is now a poet, writer, and editor in New Delhi, India. Honours for her work include a Pushcart and Forward Prize for Best Single Poem nominations in 2018; the 2019 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award; and First Prize in the 2017 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Contest (ESL). She has also been shortlisted for multiple awards, including the 2021 Live Canon Chapbook Contest and the 2018 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Firefly Memories, is available from Copper Coin. She is on Twitter as @Jona_writes, on Instagram as jonaki_stories, and on the advisory board of the YouTube channel, Just Another Poet. You can read more about her at www.jonakiray.com.