The poems in Sanjeev Sethi’s new collection explore feelings and troubling emotions and question relationships via complex reasoning and apparently cryptic language. Words, their enchanting sounds and ambiguous meanings, are the means to investigate who we are and our position in this world and can be used to make sense of what is around us. Sethi proposes a rethinking of being human and of our existence in this world using intentionally uncommon words and syntax. New possibilities are therefore envisaged that suggest different visions. Existential implications haunt the lines, proposing a wisdom of sorts: although it is provisional, it is always thought-provoking.

Sartre’s concept of nothingness seems to be a reference point. In relationships we are tested and may fall into nothingness in an experience in which ‘existence precedes essence’, as Sartre claims. It is a process of growth and openness to the Other that jeopardises our self, but despite…