Sophia Pandeya conceives of her poetry as an aerial root, carrying with it the depth and historicity that rootedness brings while being antenna-like in its awareness of the now, the ebb and flow of inner and outer ecologies.
Pandeya is constantly refining, choosing, juxtaposing and bending the raw metal of language to yield a nugget of surprise from the familiar. In particular she is obssessed with the etymologies of words, what meanings were acquired and shed in order to arrive in their present state, in the context of an Indo-European evolution of language. This is a deliberate ‘decolonization’ of English, in an effort to develop a parallel syncretic mysticism in the tradition of Kabir and Bulleh Shah.
Sophia Pandeya’s poetry has been published in The Adirondack Review, Lantern Journal, Askew Poetry Journal, Bank Heavy Press, Elohi Gadugi Journal, Cactus Heart, Spilled Ink, Convergence Journal, and Full of Crow. Links to her work can be found here.
