Hope you and your family have been keeping safe? Poetry and visual art have always worked well together in enhancing the reader’s experience, helping to develop engagement and understanding. Illustrations can help bridge the gaps and provide contexts for a reader.

So this week in our segment NP Recommends, our editors have picked the best-illustrated poetry books published by our Indie Authors. You can use our Read Instantly platform to begin reading these books online even as your physical copy makes its way to your doorstep. Here is a list of books you cannot miss.

A Simple World, A Simple Rule

Amitha Singh

Amitha’s debut book titled, “A SIMPLE WORLD, A SIMPLE RULE” celebrates life, emotions and the journey of the human spirit. With tales of happiness, angst, philosophies of life, social issues and more, this collection of poems will get you thinking, introspecting and enjoying words a little bit more than you did before. While this is Amitha’s first work published in print form, she has been writing and sharing her works, including short stories and poetry, since 2006 on her blog, amithasingh.blogspot.com

Click here to read.

When Love Lived Alone

Jessica Singh

Love does live alone; it chooses itself – always. While it is often dismissed as a weakness, it is so powerfully pervasive that it trumps all else. We feel love but what does love feel? This book is about love that is felt and also about the love that is its own being. It is a compilation of prose poems and is meant for lovers of poetry, art, and aesthetics. It is written from the perspective of a woman who chooses to be vulnerable; yet in control. Each prose poem is complemented with an illustration – an evocation of myriad emotions encircled in literature inspired kaleidoscopic creations. Click here to read.

Those That Remain

S. Nath

Those That Remain is a short and sweet collection of poetry that deals with university life and its various intricacies. Live through the journey from freshman year to graduation as each chapter takes you on a wild ride. Get ready to fall in love and chase after stars in this book that recollects all the moments that college was about. A coming of age tale that is sure to leave you feeling all fuzzy by the end of it. And oh, be sure to drink lots of coffee. Click here to read.

Talking Nights

Girish Bhake

Talking Nights is all about the unexpressed emotions we hide deep in our hearts, which we seldom express. This book will be a cathartic experience for readers, providing quick relief and renaissance for suppressed feelings. Talking Nights is a symbol of our inner consciousness, which witnesses all our emotions but is unable to express these feelings in reality, as it restrains and suppresses our inside feelings due to the practicality of life. At night, when everyone sleeps, our inner consciousness becomes the bridge between our feelings and our mind. We let our emotions find newer and higher directions, thereby getting healed and composed to face this life positively and in harmony with a bright smile. At night, due to the essence of silence and inner awakening, our emotions find a way to express these scuffled feelings. It deeply and silently converses with us, so the book is titled Talking Nights.

Click here to read.

Shadows and Prisms

Percy Rahman

We all have a dark side to ourselves and so many of us strive to see the light. In this materialistic world and despite the paradoxes that confront us, we strive to actualize our dreams driven by our ambition and passion. As a fall-out of this, we find an ardent need to bring a sense of stability in our lives – be it through religion, meditation, sacrifice, non-attachments, asceticism, renouncements, penance, deprivations or something else.  Shadows are a metaphor for the ‘ego’ and Prisms for the ‘spirit’. On this long and arduous path, there are some that succeed in becoming Prisms – a state of being where the spirit is manifested. Between the extremes of Shadows and Prisms is the spectrum of life, the whole of mankind’s journey from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment…
Click here to read.

We hope you enjoyed the list! Catch you next Monday to explore more books!