‘Volcano’: Eunice de Souza’s poems invite deeper reflections despite their seemingly light surfaces

The first poem in Volcano, Eunice de Souza’s collected poems, “Catholic Mother”, which appeared in her debut collection, Fix, lands like a quiet but devastating punch. Its brevity doesn’t dilute its force. Instead, de Souza uses silence and subtlety to deliver a critique more potent than rhetoric. In “Marriages Are Made”, she lays out a cynical checklist for what constitutes a “marriageable” woman, and the loaded title does not escape notice. “Feeding the Poor at Christmas” and “Sweet Sixteen” are fine examples of how she wields humour as both shield and sword. I recall reading “Sweet Sixteen” a few years ago and marvelling at how de Souza turned adolescent innocence on its head, skewering societal expectations with piercing wit. Her endings, often abrupt, are like trapdoors – pulling the reader into deeper reflections beneath seemingly light surfaces.

Fierce satire

In “Idyll,” barely 17 lines long, de Souza writes, “When Goa was Goa / my grandfather says / the bandits came / over the mountains / to our village / only to splash / in cool springs / and visit Our Lady’s Chapel.” This poem was published at a time when Goa was still a Union Territory. In his Introduction, Vidyan Ravinthiran writes that de Souza doesn’t...

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