Book cover design

Tartan and Turmeric

An eclectic collection of poetry showing  the connections between India and Scotland. Sonnets, concrete poems and free verse that gives a flavour of life in India and the immigrant’s adaptation to a new country. Some of the poems in this collection have been featured in various magazines like ‘Gutter’ ‘Visual Verse’, ‘Steel Bellow(USA)’.

“I enjoyed this beautiful book of poems. Each and every one was a joy to read. Fragile was one of my favourites. There is nothing like a warm hug to fill your heart with warmth. I loved Mute, I could almost feel the pain as it drifted away. I loved the short trip to Varanasi, imagining the silks,perfumes. Buddha was in my thoughts, as was a beloved poet Kabir. So many of the poems gave me many happy thoughts, and so much to think about. I must say the poem that really touched my heart was Values. So beautiful. It was really poetic to have Future on the opposite page. It really balances out . Hope for the child of the future, when so much Beauty has been lost.” Sylvia Saunders Canada
 
“I really enjoyed reading this outstanding poetry collection and learnt a lot from it about Indian culture, history, philosophy, religion and life in general. Its portrayal of different cultures within India and Scotland is fascinating and unique in my experience and the title poem perfectly illustrates that…. These poems display a wisdom and maturity about life which is very rare. I highly recommend this book.”  Norman Bissell. Director of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics.
Available for purchase on Amazon.

Leela Soma

Leela Soma was born in Madras, India and now lives in Glasgow. Her poems and short stories have been published in a number of anthologies and publications, including the National newspaper The Scotsman, The Grind, New Voices and Gutter magazine. She won the Margaret Thomson Davis Trophy for her novelTwice Born (2008.) Her second novel Bombay Baby was published by Dahlia Publishing Limited in 2011. Boxed In, a short story collection e-book was published by The Pot Hole Press in 2013. She was commissioned along with 21 other writers and artists to write a story for Glasgow Women’s Library anthology 21 Revolutions for its 21st birthday in 2013. One of her stories is in the anthology, launched on August 7th 2015, “Butterfly Rammy”, a commissioned short story for the Edinburgh Fringe show 2015. Her story “Pavilion” was published in the anthology Joe Stepped off the Train (4/4/2016), raising money for the charity War Child. She is working on her third novel a crime fiction set in Glasgow’s West End.

Her first self-published pamphlet was From Madras to Milngavie. Some of her poems have been in Gutter magazine, New Voices, The Grind, The Poetry Shed and Visual Verse. Her poems will be published in the magazine Steel Bellows, in USA, in the late Summer /Fall of 2016. She is working on a poetry collection with a working title Tartan and Turmeric. She has served on the committee for the Milngavie Books and Arts Festivals and on the Scottish Writer’s Centre Committee.

Her work reflects her dual heritage of India and Scotland.

Visit her author page on Amazon for her books: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leela-Soma/e/B00412LLCE