‘States of the Body Produced by Love‘ is a modern mystical journey through love – a many-headed snake twisting through devotion, sacrifice and the dream of returning home.
In her visionary debut, Nisha Ramayya conjures an opalescent world by way of Tantric ritual and myth. Thousand-petalled lotuses bloom inside skulls, goddesses with dirty feet charm honeybees, strains of jazz standards bleed into anti-national anthems. ‘States of the Body Produced By Love‘ weaves essays, poetry and images together to offer fierce meditations on diasporic identity, language and resistance.
Following readings from their work, Nisha Ramayya and Sarah Shin will explore the many states of the body seized by love, from grief to bliss, and the relationship of love and mysticism. What is mysticism? What is the relationship between love, divinity and abjection? How does poetry open a portal into sacred time, altered states of consciousness and mystical experience?
Nisha Ramayya grew up in Glasgow, and is now based in London. She is a poet and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Queen Mary University of London. Her pamphlets include Notes on Sanskrit, Correspondences, and In Me the Juncture, as well as Threads, co-authored with Sandeep Parmar and Bhanu Kapil. States of the Body Produced by Love is her first full-length book.
Sarah Shin is a publisher and curator. She is a co-founder and director of Silver Press and Ignota Books and the founder of New Suns, a curation and storytelling project.