- Feb 2
- 2 min read
About the Work: Kandala Singh
In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Kandala Singh's work in SER Vol. 43.1.
“Four Seasons, Chicago”
This ekphrastic piece emerged while bumbling around downtown Chicago in November 2022, when the sense of living between two worlds was still fresh. I had recently moved from India to the US— in that state of transition, my senses were heightened as I eagerly took in this new world, and longed for home simultaneously. I stumbled upon a mosaic—the colors and textures reminded me of the myriad patchwork and weaves I had seen on my travels around India as a researcher & documenter working on gender issues. As I sat and freewrote on a bench, recording the images that called to me, tons of pigeons & people flocked to the artwork—it soon became apparent that I was looking at an important landmark of the city. The pigeons, the cold, the Chicago river & its flow, the mosaic, filtered through my homesickness emerged in a jumble of images on the page.
The patchwork principle has always fascinated my ADHD brain—how we all forage different experiences; how bits of textile, color & contrasting experiences can build a poem, a work of art, a home. It was not until later, when I walked around the mosaic, that I saw Chagall’s signature at the bottom, confirming that Four Seasons was a gift made specially for the city of Chicago. I am grateful I got the chance to experience it unmediated—without the expectations that I might have attached to seeing a work of art, or writing a poem.
KANDALA SINGH is a writer from New Delhi; currently at the MFA program in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Pittsburgh. Her poems appear in Rattle, Eclectica, Hindustan Times,and Frontier Poetry, among other places. She is the recipient of a Dietrich Fellowship from the University of Pittsburgh, a Maat Scholarship from the Community of Writers Conference, and a Katherine Bakeless Contributor Award in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. You can find her at: https://www.kandalasingh.com.