Changing, Unchanging: New and Selected Poems (1995-2023) represents almost three decades of poetry. It comprises a substantial body of new work, including dramatic verse. The poems are varied: some reflect the omnipresence of technology and a social fabric that mutes individuality; others view life through a Sufi lens. Many award-winning poems and old favourites enrich this collection. Stylistic experiments abound as Anju shares her innermost musings.
View from the Web, in my opinion, is an impressive collection. The language is delicately controlled. There are few good poets writing in English in India, and not many of them are women. I would call Anju Makhija one of them: she is adventurous in her material which is varied and willing to take risks. — Dom Moraes
Makhija has both the talent and will to dare. Some of her longer poems like ‘Eyes Shut, I Enter’ are a revelation, where the clutter of our lives jostles with the timeless and the fret of desire ends in the calm of acceptance. — Keki N Daruwalla
Anju’s dramatic verse is rich in verbal invention, humour and fantasy. ‘Meeting with Lord Yama’ provides a deeply allusive consideration of life after death. The lyrical cadence is unmistakable. — Gopal Lahiri
Anju Makhija’s Changing, Unchanging: New and Selected Poems, is an imagistic, hauntingly expressionistic, and a provocatively meditative polymeric oeuvre. An artistic and aesthetic achievement in contemporary Indian English poetry. — Ashwani Kumar
Makhija is above all, a seeker. We need more intrepid explorers like her who go deep into the mind, the core of the earth and return with the very Over Soul. We need poets who are unafraid to hold a mirror and speak of precarity in the age of mega-corporations, wars and sanctioned violence. — Sonya J Nair
ANJU MAKHIJA is a Sahitya Akademi award-winning poet, translator and playwright. She has an MA in Media from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. She is the author of several books including Seeking the Beloved, a co-translation of the 16th century Sufi poet, Shah Abdul Latif; Pickling Season; View from the Web; Mumbai Traps: Collected Plays. She has also co-edited a three-volume series of Indo-English drama and anthologies related to partition, women and children. Anju was on the English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi for five years and is the co-founder/curator of the Pondicherry-Auroville Poetry Festival.
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