Review

“because there are always two endings
to a story,
I felt I learned to lose you
long before I learned to love you.”

Poetry has always been my go-to genre. I love reading poetry books that blend words with pictures—something I absolutely adore and Buku Sarkar does this beautifully in My Dead Flowers, a collection that feels as delicate and haunting as its title suggests.

My Dead Flowers is a deeply moving collection of poetry paired with evocative images that linger long after you’ve turned the last page. This book is not just a compilation of poems, it’s an emotional journey. Buku explores themes of love, loss, healing, longing, and the quiet beauty hidden in the unnoticed moments of everyday life. Her poems don’t just tell stories; they create moods. There’s a gentle rhythm in the way emotions rise and fall throughout the collection, making it feel like you’re moving through waves of memory and reflection.

The poems also move across cities and spaces, turning urban life into a backdrop for memory and emotion. As both a poet and photographer, Buku Sarkar brings a visual sensibility to her writing, where the poems feel like captured moments rather than complete narratives. There’s also a sense of movement in her work, as emotions shift and evolve like memories in motion. At times, the fragmented nature of certain poems may feel open-ended, but this only adds to the book’s raw, unfinished beauty.

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Each poem carries a certain stillness, a moment to sit with, one that makes you pause and truly feel what’s being said. Buku’s writing style is magical, raw, intense, and deeply reflective, yet effortlessly relatable. She gently pulls you into a space of introspection. It’s the kind of poetry that finds you at the right moment and stays with you long after, inviting you to slow down.

Some of the pieces that stayed with me the most are Love Again, Grief is a Mother, On Beauty, The Patient, Life Letter, Magic Mirror, You Sleep to Dream, Travel and Toys, How to See Me, and A Prayer to End. Each of these carries a quiet depth , resonating differently depending on where you are emotionally and offering something new every time you revisit them.

What makes My Dead Flowers even more special are the photographs woven into the pages. They add another layer of emotion, in a way that feels more fluid and natural, almost like flipping through fragments of memories- both lived and imagined. In all, My Dead Flowers is a book that encourages you to slow down, sit with your emotions, and appreciate the beauty in things we often overlook. It’s not just meant to be read, it’s meant to be felt.

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