Where Memory, Moonlight and Mortality Flow Together
Award-winning theatre personality, filmmaker, and writer Renu Roy returns to the literary stage with her mesmerizing new collection, The River Woman and Other Poems—a lyrical exploration of life, love, nature, and time. The poems flow between the real and the surreal, weaving moonlight, memory, and mortality into a tapestry of thought and feeling. With an experimental edge and a deep emotional current, Roy’s voice is both timeless and immediate—“a moving record of the unsaid,” as author Amit Chaudhuri observes.
The collection captures the quiet urgency of existence, the ache of loss, the pull of love, the whisper of nature—through imagery that lingers like a haunting refrain. Padma Bhushan Usha Uthup calls the book “poignant with emotion and imagery that truly touches a chord,” while Shashi Tharoor praises Roy’s verses as “evocative, resonant and compelling”.
With her characteristic sensitivity and poetic precision, Roy transforms the familiar into something transcendent. “Her poems,” notes Prof. Malashri Lal, “are an exquisite rendering of the possibilities of craft… flowing with an easy confidence as they touch deeply the reader’s sensibilities.” Each poem offers a moment of discovery; a shift of light, a turn of thought, an unforeseen shimmer that makes the ordinary extraordinary.
In The River Woman and Other Poems, grief and hope often intertwine, much like the rivers and reflections Roy so deftly conjures. As PR whiz and author Rita Bhimani writes, her poetry lets readers “delve into a wellspring of emotion on life, love, soul and nature… a handful of fireflies to grasp and light up our minds.”
In her poetry, Roy channels the same creative intensity that has defined her work on stage and screen. The River Woman and Other Poems is her fourth collection—an evocative, thought-provoking volume that connects the tangible with the spiritual, the personal with the universal. “Roy moulds words,” says Pavan Varma, “to sharply capture a fleeting or lasting emotion, leaving the reader contemplatively caressing the lines again and again.”
As the title suggests, The River Woman and Other Poems is both movement and stillness; an intimate conversation between the poet and the elements, the self and the world. It is, in every sense, a river one wishes to return to.
Coming soon on Readomania!
About the Poet:
A student of English literature, and an eminent personality in the arena of the fine, performing and visual arts, Renu Roy was the Founder-Director of Kolkata's long-standing, reputed cultural organisation Spandan. She enjoyed an illustrious career that spanned more than four decades.
She has been closely associated with the stage and theatre from her early days and is a reputed actor, producer, scriptwriter and director. Having established her own theatre group, she has staged more than fifty successful plays over the years.
Spandan Films, which undertook the production of feature films, was a joint film initiative with Aparna Sen and the late Rituparno Ghosh.
Renu was honoured with several esteemed awards including the Bharat Nirman, Women Achievers Award, The Kalakar Award, Aparajita Award, the Loreto House Alumni Award, for her accomplishments and distinguished contribution to the cultural field.
A major milestone was the prestigious National Film Festival Award , 'The Golden Lotus' for 'Best Film' 1994, which she received for her widely-acclaimed feature film Unishe April, from the then President of India, the late Shri Shankar Dayal Sharma.
She has written innumerable articles on a variety of subjects and was a regular contributor to the Telegraph's fortnightly column ‘An Eye On Kolkata’.
She broke the glass ceiling and made history when she was elected as the first-ever woman President of The Saturday Club, Kolkata, a national record for colonial clubs in India.
Her passion for poetry has culminated in her fourth volume of verse The River Woman and Other Poems.
She is presently working on her next book which is in the genre of philosophical non-fiction.
Renu lives with her husband in Delhi and travels extensively with him.
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