Sameer Gudhate Presents the Book Review of The River Woman and Other Poems by Renu Roy

I read The River Woman and Other Poems slowly, the way one reads something that does not want to be rushed. A few poems at night. One in the quiet between two tasks. Sometimes just a single page, because the lines had a way of lingering — like the aftersound of water moving past stones long after the river itself has slipped out of view.

Renu Roy’s poetry does not announce itself loudly. It arrives softly, almost tentatively, and then stays. This is a collection that lives in pauses — in the moments where thought loosens its grip and feeling takes over. As I moved through the book, I felt less like a reader evaluating poems and more like a listener being trusted with something intimate.

Roy comes to poetry after a long, storied life in theatre, film, and cultural work, and that lived experience quietly informs these pages. There is no urgency to prove literary muscle. The confidence is unforced. The poems seem to know that they have earned the right to speak simply, and that restraint becomes one of their greatest strengths. The prose — if one can use that word for verse — is fluid, attentive, and deeply aware of rhythm. You sense a mind trained in performance, in timing, in knowing when silence can say more than elaboration.

The collection is expansive in its emotional range, yet carefully structured. Divided into four parts — life, love, nature, and soul — it traces an inner geography rather than a linear narrative. These poems are not trying to tell a story in the conventional sense; instead, they map states of being. A morning ritual. A remembered loss. A fragment of nature observed with unexpected tenderness. Each poem feels like a small act of reflection, and together they form a larger meditation on time and transformation.

What stayed with me most was the way Roy handles emotion. There is grief here, certainly, but it is never performative. Love appears not as grand declaration but as quiet persistence. Loss does not demand sympathy; it simply exists, like weather. Even when the themes turn inward — toward mortality, memory, or the soul — the poems resist heaviness. They remain breathable. This balance gives the work its impact. You feel things deeply, but you are never crushed under their weight.

Nature, in particular, is not treated as backdrop or metaphor alone. It feels inhabited. Rivers, light, moonlit spaces, and ordinary rituals carry an inner charge, as though the external world is constantly in conversation with the self. One begins to sense that the river woman of the title is not a figure to be decoded, but a presence — something that flows through the poems rather than standing at their center. That fluidity becomes a quiet philosophy of the book: life moves, emotions shift, nothing stays fixed for long.

Stylistically, Roy’s pacing is deliberate. Some poems feel like a single held breath; others unfold gradually, line by line, allowing meaning to surface rather than be delivered. There is an ease to the language that belies careful craft. Words are chosen not to impress but to settle. At times, I wished a poem would linger a little longer, explore an image more fully — but that restraint also feels intentional. The poems stop exactly where they need to, leaving the reader to complete the thought.

If there is a gentle challenge in this book, it is that it asks for attentiveness. These are not poems to skim or quote out of context for instant gratification. Their power lies in accumulation. Read in the right mood — quiet, reflective, unhurried — they reward rereading. The themes return, echoing differently each time, much like memory itself.

This is a book for readers who enjoy literary work that values mood over message, atmosphere over argument. It would suit those who turn to poetry not for answers, but for companionship — for that rare feeling of being understood without being explained. I can imagine returning to it in different phases of life and finding new resonances waiting patiently.

By the time I reached the final pages, I felt as though I had walked alongside something living. Not a river rushing toward a destination, but one that circles, pauses, deepens, and reflects. The River Woman and Other Poems does not insist on being remembered. And perhaps that is why it is.

If you are willing to read with openness — to let poetry work on you quietly — this is a collection worth sitting with. Let it flow at its own pace. It knows where it is going.

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