Sonal Singh On Sonal's Table
Poems from the Kitchen is a slim, pocket-sized anthology that carries the weight of generations within its modest pages. Featuring 16 poems by different poets and a striking foreword by Monalisa Joshi, the book is a quiet yet powerful tribute to the culinary arts and to the women who practise them daily, lovingly, and often invisibly.
These poems celebrate the kitchen not merely as a physical space but as an emotional landscape where care, memory, sacrifice, and creativity simmer side by side. The verses are steeped in aromas and flavours, but what truly binds them is the presence of an unmeasured yet essential ingredient – love. This is love expressed through kneaded dough, slow-cooked gravies, shared meals, and the instinctive generosity of feeding others without ever calling it ‘work’.
Women’s labour in the kitchen is rarely applauded, credited, or even noticed. These poems gently but firmly reclaim that space, recognising the cook as an artist and the act of cooking as an expression of both skill and devotion. There is no grand rhetoric here. Only honest, evocative reflections that linger long after the final page.
The foreword by Monalisa Joshi sets the tone beautifully, framing the anthology as both homage and reminder that everyday acts of nourishment deserve respect and recognition.
Poems from the Kitchen is a small book with a generous heart, one that will resonate with anyone who has ever been loved through food.
