These Were My Homes: Collected Poems brings together Vijay Nambisan’s two lifetime poetry collections and poems that had not previously been seen. The posthumous volume offers a broader view of a poet whose work can be tender, witty and sharply observant, but also uneven. It invites a reassessment of his reputation without pretending that every poem succeeds.
What the collection brings together
Published by Speaking Tiger, These Were My Homes: Collected Poems gathers the poems from Gemini, Nambisan’s shared 1992 debut volume with Jeet Thayil, and First Infinities (2015), along with newer poems that had not previously been seen, according to Urvashi Bahuguna’s 2019 review in Scroll.in. Speaking Tiger describes the book as containing 111 poems; that is the publisher’s figure, rather than an independently verified count. The collection also places the poems in the context of a writer whose work included Bihar Is In The Eye of The Beholder (2001) and the essay collection Language As An Ethic (2005), dates and descriptions cited by Bahuguna.
The book’s breadth matters because it lets readers encounter more than a small selection of Nambisan’s poetry. It is an occasion to revisit his work and consider its range—not a definitive verdict on his literary standing.
Family memory and the meanings of ordinary moments
Bahuguna’s examples show Nambisan finding emotional weight in everyday scenes. In “The Attic,” a child sent to sort through stored objects discovers that they hold a life’s worth of memory. In “Ducks,” a child’s imaginative interpretation of a sound is preserved rather than dismissed. Both poems, as the reviewer reads them, treat childhood perception and family history with tenderness.
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“Grown Up” turns to adult intimacy. The poem places the parents’ close bedtime routine beside the poet’s exchange of good-nights with his wife. The parallel makes affection visible through a small, familiar ritual rather than an abstract declaration. Across these poems, the reviewer finds a precise attention to relationships and the feelings carried by ordinary habits.
Humour, mortality and a deliberately mixed assessment
The later poems, Bahuguna notes, also make room for humour, even as they look toward mortality and family. That combination complicates any simple account of Nambisan as either solemn or light: wit and vulnerability can coexist in the same body of work.
Rank #2
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The review is not unqualified praise. Bahuguna finds that some sound-driven experiments do not pay off, that certain endings are less successful, and that difficult sentences can obscure a poem rather than deepen it. She contrasts those moments with concise, revealing work such as “Ilyushin” and “Meeting a Translator.” These are one critic’s judgements, not a consensus about the collection.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why the book invites a reconsideration
A broader collection can change how readers understand a poet by letting them see recurring concerns, shifts in tone and weaker as well as stronger work. In Bahuguna’s account, Nambisan’s poems move among memory, intimacy, humour and mortality, while their unevenness remains part of the encounter. These Were My Homes therefore offers a useful chance to revisit his poetry with greater nuance: not to replace one fixed reputation with another, but to make room for a fuller reading.
Rank #3
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Speaking Tiger’s publisher page identifies the collection and reproduces Jeet Thayil’s endorsement, “This book is a treasure and a cathedral.” The same page quotes Rukmini Bhaya Nair’s introduction describing the poems as “intelligent, self-aware meditations on mortality and human folly.” Both are attributed descriptions, not independent critical consensus.
A separate review by Anjana Basu in Modern Literature, dated 7 December 2018, discusses the music and cadence of Nambisan’s writing and the tension between those qualities and his reputation for economical language. Basu listed a price of INR 499 at the time; that is a historical figure, not a current price.
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Best Value
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Rank #4
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