Poetry review – TIGRESS WITH WINGS: Sue Wallace-Shaddad is impressed by Rupinder Kaur Waraich’s vivid poems on growing up in India and Indian culture
Tigress with Wings
Rupinder Kaur Waraich
Seren Books
ISBN 9 781781 727881
65pp £10.99
In her collection Tigress with Wings, Rupinder Kaur Waraich offers open personal insights into Indian cultural heritage, girlhood and womanhood in the UK and family relationships. The arts are called upon throughout the collection, whether music, dance, literature or painting. Organised in four parts (‘Origin’, ‘The Other Side’, ‘Wings’, ‘Tigress’), the reader is taken through the journey of a girl growing up, negotiating her body and emotions. The poems sing with the language and rhythms of her Panjabi family background. There is a helpful glossary at the end.
The collection opens with a response to a work by Panjabi artist Amrita Sher-Gil: “Ghazal: Birthworts”. This artist features in several poems later on. Colour suffuses this poem and others in this first section: ‘Getting dressed in peach, mint, finally vermilion, cogitating better.’ In “This Bride”, the bride is described as ‘wearing a red lengha with golden gota patti’. Earrings are highlighted in “Travelling Jumkhe” as well as the kathak tradition of dance: ‘Mama’s hazel-green eyes glint,/ when she wears her favourite golden jumkhas’. The poem ends on a deeper layer: ‘she sings herself/ into disguise using different layers of raags’.
In “Trace”, ‘Mum’s lips shine cranberry wine’ and the poet weaves in art, dancing, a dream and doves to conjure up the passing of time and transition:
I am losing parts of Dad from my face.
I am becoming Mum, just taller
This sense of transition is built upon in the poem ‘I’m Turning into Mum or/ Mum is Turning into Me’. The reader is given glimpses of the mother’s life: coming to the UK, going back to India to get married, working with patients, giving up the writing of poetry. The poem ends:
Isn’t every mother’s dream that her daughter doesn’t become her?
But isn’t every daughter, more or less, just her mother’s reflection?
Other poems in the ‘Origin’ section reflect aspects of childhood. “Amrit” is a very moving poem about a brother: ‘he has a sweetness like no other’. In “Good Girls”, girls bunk off school to go to ‘McDs’ to share a ‘Mcflurry’, There is a first mention of fascination with artist Frida Kahlo who features prominently in several later poems. “Ode to my Jawani” tells of ‘kheer’ (a favourite childhood dish), swinging hips to music and thinking ‘I couldn’t wait to be old enough to wear a saree’. The first section ends with a very effective two-line poem, “A short tale”,
My Mum lives upstairs, my Dad downstairs.
I am the stairs between them.
In “Pause” in the second section, ‘The Other Side’, there is recognition, however, that youth is fleeting: ‘Jawani, the moment you realise it, it’s already gone’. “My Girlhood Was Mine First” cleverly shifts between childhood — age three ‘sitting in a bathtub, with my rubber ducks’ or age ‘five and half years old’, having hair plaited — and the complexities of being a grown woman with a love life. Times have changed: ‘I am the first woman in my entire lineage not betrothed young’. The poem “Letter to Amrita Pritam” (‘Panjab’s poetess’) starts with a desire for ‘Mum to sing me a lori till I sleep/ and wake up as a child’. The narrator goes on to muse ‘What is real love, Amrita? Is love ever wrong?’
Rupinder Kaur Waraich often delves into the poetic literature of the Panjab. In “Swimming” she relates the tale ‘about two lovers, Sohni and Mahiwal’ who ‘drowned in love calling each other jaan’ (beloved); this becomes a metaphor for the end of a relationship:
He sang meri jaan, he lied, called me his jaan.
When he left, I learnt how to swim. Sang myself
jaan, meri jaan
In the third section, ‘Wings’, the poet uses food as an extended metaphor in “The Other Side of My Body”. She starts with nostalgia for childhood, ‘getting a 99 flake’. The reader is advised ‘Mum said girls are like sabzis’ (Panjabi vegetable dishes), but
[…] Sometimes my body
wants carrot cake, chocolate chip cookies, sometimes
pitted dates filled with peanut butter.
Musing about men, she adds ‘Sometimes they want you for dinner’.
The poem “Three Minutes” describes thoughts and feelings on taking a pregnancy test: ‘I am at the end of girlhood, sitting on the toilet’, ending ‘there is only one line. A narrow escape, for now.’
“Which body”, laid out in a block of squares, seems to offer different versions of the girl’s self. The narrator might be looking at reflections in a mirror. The poet also offers analysis in “Broken Ghazal: Seven Stages of (Maybe) Love” with comments under seven headings followed by a yes/no/nil response. Sadly, the poem ends on a negative note:
[…] Roop wonders
what is love after it dies? Was it ever love?
no
“The Past Ghost Watches” takes the form of snapshots of different stages of growing up, using an ampersand as anaphora. This poem ends on a positive note:
& I see her now a proper woman
grown. Whoever she wants to be,
she will have wings, love, flight.
The poet likes to use both ghazal and ‘broken ghazal’ forms. A particularly lovely example of the former can be found in “Ghazal: Blue Thoughts”, a response to another Amrita Sher-Gil painting, Self Portrait in Blue Saree. The writing is very lyrical: ‘The blue sea slips into darkness with the silver pink moon hanging’ and ‘I want to hold onto the soaring silk’.
With a major Frida Kahlo exhibition currently on show at the Tate Modern, it is a good time to be sharing poems inspired by Kahlo’s work. “Amputator”, a fierce poem, quotes words by Kahlo in the epigraph and is written in the voice of Kahlo.
In the collection’s final section, ‘Tigress’, the poem “No Blasphemy” responds to the Kahlo’s painting Two Nudes in a Forest. In “Amrita Sher-Gil and Frida Kahlo Split a Blunt”, the poet imagines a rich conversation between the two creatives, musing on their lifetimes of art, love and pain. The final stanza concludes:
[…]
The body is a site for birthing art. We should just become
Two Nudes in a Forest before we become The Wounded Deer.
The prose poem, “Unfinished fragments”, also mentions Kahlo but brings together a wide range of themes from the whole collection, from ‘red bridal lehenga/’ to ‘all seven stages of/ love’. It reads as an outpouring of emotion and memory as well as a medley of cultural experience. “Breaking the Root”, with its lists of synonyms to describe a woman and the various roles women play, is also striking. The final poem ‘Epilogue’ brings resolution to the collection and its themes as the girl ‘becomes a tigress/ with wings’ and her parents watch her, ‘waving goodbye’.
Aug 19 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Rupinder Kaur Waraich
Poetry review – TIGRESS WITH WINGS: Sue Wallace-Shaddad is impressed by Rupinder Kaur Waraich’s vivid poems on growing up in India and Indian culture
Tigress with Wings
Rupinder Kaur Waraich
Seren Books
ISBN 9 781781 727881
65pp £10.99
In her collection Tigress with Wings, Rupinder Kaur Waraich offers open personal insights into Indian cultural heritage, girlhood and womanhood in the UK and family relationships. The arts are called upon throughout the collection, whether music, dance, literature or painting. Organised in four parts (‘Origin’, ‘The Other Side’, ‘Wings’, ‘Tigress’), the reader is taken through the journey of a girl growing up, negotiating her body and emotions. The poems sing with the language and rhythms of her Panjabi family background. There is a helpful glossary at the end.
The collection opens with a response to a work by Panjabi artist Amrita Sher-Gil: “Ghazal: Birthworts”. This artist features in several poems later on. Colour suffuses this poem and others in this first section: ‘Getting dressed in peach, mint, finally vermilion, cogitating better.’ In “This Bride”, the bride is described as ‘wearing a red lengha with golden gota patti’. Earrings are highlighted in “Travelling Jumkhe” as well as the kathak tradition of dance: ‘Mama’s hazel-green eyes glint,/ when she wears her favourite golden jumkhas’. The poem ends on a deeper layer: ‘she sings herself/ into disguise using different layers of raags’.
In “Trace”, ‘Mum’s lips shine cranberry wine’ and the poet weaves in art, dancing, a dream and doves to conjure up the passing of time and transition:
I am losing parts of Dad from my face.
I am becoming Mum, just taller
This sense of transition is built upon in the poem ‘I’m Turning into Mum or/ Mum is Turning into Me’. The reader is given glimpses of the mother’s life: coming to the UK, going back to India to get married, working with patients, giving up the writing of poetry. The poem ends:
Isn’t every mother’s dream that her daughter doesn’t become her?
But isn’t every daughter, more or less, just her mother’s reflection?
Other poems in the ‘Origin’ section reflect aspects of childhood. “Amrit” is a very moving poem about a brother: ‘he has a sweetness like no other’. In “Good Girls”, girls bunk off school to go to ‘McDs’ to share a ‘Mcflurry’, There is a first mention of fascination with artist Frida Kahlo who features prominently in several later poems. “Ode to my Jawani” tells of ‘kheer’ (a favourite childhood dish), swinging hips to music and thinking ‘I couldn’t wait to be old enough to wear a saree’. The first section ends with a very effective two-line poem, “A short tale”,
My Mum lives upstairs, my Dad downstairs.
I am the stairs between them.
In “Pause” in the second section, ‘The Other Side’, there is recognition, however, that youth is fleeting: ‘Jawani, the moment you realise it, it’s already gone’. “My Girlhood Was Mine First” cleverly shifts between childhood — age three ‘sitting in a bathtub, with my rubber ducks’ or age ‘five and half years old’, having hair plaited — and the complexities of being a grown woman with a love life. Times have changed: ‘I am the first woman in my entire lineage not betrothed young’. The poem “Letter to Amrita Pritam” (‘Panjab’s poetess’) starts with a desire for ‘Mum to sing me a lori till I sleep/ and wake up as a child’. The narrator goes on to muse ‘What is real love, Amrita? Is love ever wrong?’
Rupinder Kaur Waraich often delves into the poetic literature of the Panjab. In “Swimming” she relates the tale ‘about two lovers, Sohni and Mahiwal’ who ‘drowned in love calling each other jaan’ (beloved); this becomes a metaphor for the end of a relationship:
He sang meri jaan, he lied, called me his jaan.
When he left, I learnt how to swim. Sang myself
jaan, meri jaan
In the third section, ‘Wings’, the poet uses food as an extended metaphor in “The Other Side of My Body”. She starts with nostalgia for childhood, ‘getting a 99 flake’. The reader is advised ‘Mum said girls are like sabzis’ (Panjabi vegetable dishes), but
[…] Sometimes my body
wants carrot cake, chocolate chip cookies, sometimes
pitted dates filled with peanut butter.
Musing about men, she adds ‘Sometimes they want you for dinner’.
The poem “Three Minutes” describes thoughts and feelings on taking a pregnancy test: ‘I am at the end of girlhood, sitting on the toilet’, ending ‘there is only one line. A narrow escape, for now.’
“Which body”, laid out in a block of squares, seems to offer different versions of the girl’s self. The narrator might be looking at reflections in a mirror. The poet also offers analysis in “Broken Ghazal: Seven Stages of (Maybe) Love” with comments under seven headings followed by a yes/no/nil response. Sadly, the poem ends on a negative note:
[…] Roop wonders
what is love after it dies? Was it ever love?
no
“The Past Ghost Watches” takes the form of snapshots of different stages of growing up, using an ampersand as anaphora. This poem ends on a positive note:
& I see her now a proper woman
grown. Whoever she wants to be,
she will have wings, love, flight.
The poet likes to use both ghazal and ‘broken ghazal’ forms. A particularly lovely example of the former can be found in “Ghazal: Blue Thoughts”, a response to another Amrita Sher-Gil painting, Self Portrait in Blue Saree. The writing is very lyrical: ‘The blue sea slips into darkness with the silver pink moon hanging’ and ‘I want to hold onto the soaring silk’.
With a major Frida Kahlo exhibition currently on show at the Tate Modern, it is a good time to be sharing poems inspired by Kahlo’s work. “Amputator”, a fierce poem, quotes words by Kahlo in the epigraph and is written in the voice of Kahlo.
In the collection’s final section, ‘Tigress’, the poem “No Blasphemy” responds to the Kahlo’s painting Two Nudes in a Forest. In “Amrita Sher-Gil and Frida Kahlo Split a Blunt”, the poet imagines a rich conversation between the two creatives, musing on their lifetimes of art, love and pain. The final stanza concludes:
[…]
The body is a site for birthing art. We should just become
Two Nudes in a Forest before we become The Wounded Deer.
The prose poem, “Unfinished fragments”, also mentions Kahlo but brings together a wide range of themes from the whole collection, from ‘red bridal lehenga/’ to ‘all seven stages of/ love’. It reads as an outpouring of emotion and memory as well as a medley of cultural experience. “Breaking the Root”, with its lists of synonyms to describe a woman and the various roles women play, is also striking. The final poem ‘Epilogue’ brings resolution to the collection and its themes as the girl ‘becomes a tigress/ with wings’ and her parents watch her, ‘waving goodbye’.