“In her outstanding debut collection, Eipe sings of joys and wounds felt deeply under the skin . . . Auguries of a Minor God is a startling gesture in the face of a threatening world, and one that feels, in Wallace Steven’s words, “like / a new / knowledge of reality”.”
“Heralding the arrival of an assured and compassionate new voice. One feels, reading Eipe’s collection . . . a shift in poetry, a cracking open of new possibilities.”
“Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is an ardent soul. Her work is youthful and wise, signalling a profound interest in destruction, stillness, healing, joy.”
“Dazzling, incantatory future poetry.”
“Auguries of a Minor God is a lethal collection, both seducing and shattering the reader . . . True to the promise of an augury, [each poem] considers what it means to love, or to have love take us away from ourselves.”
“Frighteningly good.”
“Split between an opening section that makes inspired use of the five arrows of Kama, the Hindu God of Love, and a stunningly realised long narrative poem that confronts issues of refuge and war, Auguries of a Minor God is a luminous work of lyrical craft.”
“This collection’s dizzying ferocity lies in the fact that it’s both playful and rule-bound. Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe’s work triumphs the experimental.”
“The poems in this stunning debut collection revolve around the ideas of migration, exile, home, belonging and love. The poems in the first half are immersive and evocative, exciting the senses with the ripe flesh of a papaya or the giddy blur of the memory of a first kiss. The second half is a narrative poem following a father and his young children forging a new life after having fled an unspecified Middle Eastern country as refugees. The tender, joyful details of everyday family life are held painfully close to the unspoken horror of their journey and the staggering void of their loss. I was utterly absorbed and deeply moved.”
Poetry Ireland Review #141 edited by Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe | December 2023
Hold Open the Door: The Ireland Chair of Poetry commemorative anthology edited by Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Mícheál McCann, Summer Meline, Marcella L.A. Prince, with advising editor Frank Ormsby (UCD Press | December 2020)
“Hold Open the Door is a fascinating exploration of the meaning of influence and originality. It takes us to the places poetry comes from, places where invisible voices whang and whizz through the air, the wild exchanges between readers, writers, collaborators across the arts. Through the intimacy of formal teaching, the obliquity of the chance encounter, the long-distance correspondence, a poet may find a voice. We encounter the learner’s gaze on the model, an exemplar that validates by merely existing; we hear the advice that is resisted until the right moment comes to follow it. The influence may be felt as homage, but it can emerge as a veering away from the model. And then there’s the closeness of pastiche. This book shows how various the answers can be, to a single, probing challenge: to show how a beginning poet responds to a model, a teacher, a friend.”
“John Montague said the ultimate function of the poet is to praise. It’s entirely fitting, then, that this book of praise for poets so profoundly and evocatively expresses the tenderness and surprise and complexity experienced by the apprentice in the good light of the master. To think the many cherished poets here are already in the imaginative gestures of the newest generation – and therefore in the generation beyond them – is a remarkable thought: the door held open opens not only into other rooms, but into the breath of
the century.”
“Hold Open the Door is a varied and diverse selection of writing that reflects on the always revelatory, sometimes inexplicable nature of being mentored, and marks an important coordinate on the rich cloth-bound map of Irish poetry to come.”