From lips and warmed cheeks to silk and falling leaves, the subjects of Z.R. Ghani’s poems radiate with redness. Sometimes a cloak, often a shining symbol, Ghani’s reds are sacred and dazzling: pomegranates ripening to jewels and perfectly-placed bindis shining like suns.
But something darker lurks beneath the ruby depths. A city is held hostage by a heatwave, a flame is lit in a dark room, a ballerina twists inside a jewellery box.
As though developing photographs, Ghani shines a deep light over her poems as a tool to slowly make the unseen visible, the unsaid audible. This is a debut book rich with desire, shame, grief, faith, love, and at the forefront of it all: the colour red.