New West-raised author shows imagination, skill in new book

The Anchor may be speaking with Renee Sarojini Saklikar over a Zoom call, but her presence is warm, welcoming, brilliant, and endearing—it reaches through the laptop screen.

This reporter would argue it’s a warm, welcoming, brilliant and endearing voice like Saklikar’s we need to listen to as we reflect on some challenging topics in our world. She’s doing that through her latest work, Bramah’s Quest. A follow-up to Bramah and the Beggar Boy, the book takes place in 2087 and Bramah—our protagonist—has returned to Earth.

Through this work, you could say the New West-raised author—who also happens to be an instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU)—is turning poetry on its head: blending inspiration from blank verse, the sonnet, ballads, and the madrigal to talk about climate change, among other themes.

“I’ve always been really interested in epic fantasy. It’s been a secret love, kind of like a hidden chocolate desire,” she tells The Anchor, adding that she’s usually a serious poet. “Hopefully I don’t take myself too seriously, but I write serious poetry.”

Saklikar is no stranger to tough topics: her past works includes the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. The former is a collection of poetry written with reference to the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. Listening to the Bees asks questions of our humanity, written through a science and ecology lens—put down on paper via verse.

When working with genres like fantasy or epic, Saklikar notes that these tend to be male-dominated forms of writing.

“Bramah…she’s a locksmith, she’s a time traveller. She’s on a quest to find both her people and her own identity in a world controlled by the evil consortium, a kind of high-tech mega empire.”

As Saklikar was having this conversation in front of the backdrop of some pivotal technological points in history—think the development of artificial intelligence, or the ongoing summer wildfire fight—we had to ask how much of her writing was formed by current events.

“In a lot of very specific ways,” she explains. “Current events have kind of caught up to my imagination. It’s a very interesting little, sort of freaky experience. I started writing this epic fantasy 10 years ago, and at the time I was doing a lot of research into this question: what would happen if climate change accelerated in intensity?”

And then there’s the poetry.

I had the opportunity to listen to Saklikar read some of her work for me and we took some time to chat about what she’d read and what I’d heard. Some of it painted a picture of an interrupted everyday slice-of-life, with people simply wanting to just walk around and experience the spaces they were in—but they can’t for an assortment of reasons. Her readings took me to a place that was almost Bradbury-esque, nearly pushing my imagination to a place of dystopia.

I explained that some of what I was experiencing felt beautiful, frustrating and hopeless. Saklikar said the latter was true but also not true.

“[In this book] I’ve put it in my own world, building for fantasy and you see everything we’re experiencing is ten times way worse, right? Militarized zones and libraries, but still people dealing with what we’re dealing with now.”

And while Saklikar says the exaggeration is a common technique by writers to underscore an important theme, the work wasn’t necessarily hopeless. Rather, there are shades of hope and empowerment that you can find in the characters and in their journeys.

Staying on the topic of empowerment, Saklikar understands how strange it can sometimes feel to put yourself out there through the art of writing, let alone poetry.

“My number one advice is to find your practice. Stay true to it, take some courses, reach out. I think as an introvert I was frightened about going out of my comfort zone and figuring out, ‘how am I going to do this?’

“Find a course that works for you. Come to KPU—I would love that, that means enrolling in an academic program—if that’s not for you, you can take continuing courses,” she says, also reminding folks to not overlook places like libraries which can some of the

One of the other ways Saklikar feels empowered is through working with other writers. She’s met up with some folks at local coffee shops, just to spend time writing.

“The more you write, the more you’re right.”

Saklikar will be launching the book on Wednesday, Aug. 30 at The Lido in Vancouver. All are welcome to attend this free event, but guests are asked to register ahead of time. 

The book was published by Harbour Publishing and can be purchased through them, as well as via various bookstores in Metro Vancouver.

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