Chidora and the poetry of sadness

Poet uses lockdown period to craft touching poems….

WHILE most authors prefer to serve their best delicacies during the main course, Tanaka Chidora, author of Because Sadness is Beautiful? reveals his curiously rebellious nature by hastily lighting a forest fire under poetic practice. Using his exceptional knack for intuitive observation, he drops a colossal cluster bomb on the entrée page of his debut poetry collection, which sets the tone for the rest of the book.

He muses: “…there is a country whose main preoccupation is to allocate sadness to its people.” This opening salvo detonates inside the mind instantly, obliterating any pre-conceived notions that this book will gather dust on shelves, and fondly reminds me of why I fell in love with Chidora’s finesse with the written word. I first came across Chidora’s hypnotic writing style on the esteemed corridors of the Gould of Consciousness, a gathering place for those with poetic marrow in their bones. And there I found him lamenting the passing of his grandmother in a sombre piece aptly titled, An Old Woman Dying.

I considered this desolate piece an outpouring of a myriad of emotions many writers would hesitate to address in the public domain. To his credit, Chidora employs the same meta-personal approach to emphatic writing in his book, Because Sadness is Beautiful? also notable for a most-intriguing title that forces the reader to ponder: how can sadness be beautiful? The literary offering is reflective of a poet who writes for himself first and the reader second, and this is evident by the pervasive manner in which he bludgeons blunt words into the reader’s mind without needing to ask for permission or favour. He artfully uses the book as a vehicle to pay homage to other