Shape of Emptiness

"Chumki Sharma is a poet of swift movement in the line and sharp edge to the image. Shape of Emptiness is a brave book of poems by a speaker facing aging and the loss of love. In poem after poem, Sharma throws herself back into life. Having read the Tao, she ends many poems with a stabilizing haiku, as in "Sleepless." ... Here you will find a voice you can trust and a music to live by." Roger Mitchell, author of Lemon Peeled the Moment Before: New and Selected Poems

"As an editor and poet, I was humbled by Chumki Sharma's collection of poems in Shape of Emptiness. Chumki draws you to a place inside her where reality no longer exists. Her poems take you away from the body and make you ponder, then draw you back into the poem. The poems are hypnotic, sometimes whimsical, with a sense of loneliness, yet celebration. There is a depth of loss capturing finality--a sweeping away of the old with the new forcing to replace itself with a "crunch," a trust and rebirth. Chumki touches on all emotions--heartbreak, regret, resignation, anxiousness, and yet each poem brings it all back, like a single red leaf, like a haiku." Mary-Jane Grandinetti, Editor of Shot Glass Journal and The Fib Review