Shreema Ningombam

This anthology of poems by Chaoba Phuritshabam, Shreema Ningombam and Soibam Haripriya titled 'Tattooed with Taboos' speaks of the specific angst of the times. The poets use the personal as a tool to document the changing frames of society and its practices. Thematically divided into three sections'Tattooed with Taboos', 'Angst for Homeland' and 'Love and Longingness' the anthology is an articulation of the desire to trespass spaces denied to women in the personal and the public. Accepted symbols of power are questioned through an exploration of the self. As the title of the anthology suggest there is a play on having to tread the tightrope between the regime of taboos and the equally opposing move towards deification. One of the first ways in which the attempt has been made is through detachment of morality from sexuality. The second section depicts the irony of the homelandthe flux of an inability place this land called home in a stable emotional paradigm. The last section takes up love as disembodied, standing alone connected neither to a person nor an object, nor to the memory of anything tangible. The anthology captures through the various themes a non-linear chronology of desires.