Serena Alagappan

2 weeks ago | pw.org | Serena Alagappan

The person behind the viral Instagram account @poetryisnotaluxury, which has garnered more than 845,000 followers, says they started the page in 2016 “almost by accident.” When their father got sick that winter, the curator, who prefers to remain anonymous, began collecting poems in screenshots, taking pictures of pages in books that particularly moved them, and posting the poems on Instagram.

May 29, 2024 | thejuggernaut.com | Serena Alagappan

For the Indian American poet, one language was never enough. Yet, her words never fail us. Just before she turned 5, Meena Alexander left India for the first time. “That first ocean crossing obsesses me. I think of it as a figuration of death. Losing sense, being blotted out, thrown irretrievably across a border,” Alexander wrote in her 2003 memoir Fault Lines. Alexander was devastated to leave and sat “mute, wordless” on the ship. She resented her mother for taking her away.