Poet Kirun Kapur discusses her new collection of poetry, "Women in the Waiting Room," with Kyla Hanington of the Prince George's County Human Relations Commission. "Women in the Waiting Room" explores the twin forces of silence and speech. It sketches a room full of women—friends and strangers, humans and goddesses—retuning from the far edges of experience to find a voice.
This fierce, haunting collection asks: in the face of violence or illness, when body and self reach their limit, how can we find a way to speak? Myth tangles with memory, ghazals rub shoulders with inventive fragmentary forms, forging a shape for what feels impossible to say. By way of call and response, echo and reverberation, the many voices of this book create a defiant chorus. In Women in the Waiting Room, Kapur has fashioned poems that speak to our era, rising from pain, moving through silence and into song. "Women in the Waiting Room" was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.