Note: I met Aoife Mannix in 2007..the memories still linger though..of her robust  world-view, her radiant poetry.

After Aoife Mannix’s revolution changes the world, there will never be any wars because, “bullets will bounce where they come from, leaving no scars, just a trail of jelly beans.” Soldiers will only wear birthday suits. There will be free ice cream, refugees will party in the streets and then come home to, “balloons and streamers, with suitcases bursting with all they have lost.”

***
Mannix’s poetry is delicious like candied fruits, tempting as an unguarded clutch of jewels, urgent like a forest fire, pervasive as a dust storm, lush like a tropical forest and vivid as the lopsided moon which hangs in her skies upside down because it has had its lip busted! Her poetry has it all. A sense of touch, smell, colour, taste. And adventure. Her brilliance is made up of wildly exploratory similes where she goes rolling, laughing down a lover’s chest, strolling across the beaches of his stomach and then makes her home in the cave of his belly button and plans great treks across the wilderness of his heart. Born in Sweden of Irish parents, Mannix grew in Dublin, in New York, in Canada and she is often lost in translation because of her name which is hard to pronounce by anyone who is not Irish and because of an accent that did not fit in derisive American neighbourhoods.

***

Her poetry is a constant search for a “skin that fits me.’’ It is about a “traveling identity’’ that is at home everywhere but often feels locked out.  She now lives in London. Her poetry travels all over the world with her and has been a part of many anthologies, magazines and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, London Live, Resonance FM and the BBC World Service. She was at Bangalore’s theatre hub Ranga Shankara to read her works before an avid audience that drowned in the torrent of her energy as she stood alone on the vast stage talking about “sunshine so hot, you could drink it,’’ about being a “freak in sheep’s clothing’’ who found pink revolting and once set Barbie’s hair alight because all she wanted to be was a warrior spy!

***
That is what Mannix grew up to be. A warrior against every hypocrisy, cliche and fallacy known to us. A Repunzel who would cut her hair so that “I would not be disturbed in my tower!” And a spy who uncannily knows the inside of a human heart. But most of all a woman who is not afraid to be herself. Though there is a strong undercurrent of assertive freedom in her work, Mannix says it stems from her uniqueness as a human-being rather than from being a woman.
She says, “I was the first girl in my conservative, Catholic community to go to the University and I am a strong feminist but not a bitter one. Feminism can be fun and life most of all should be a celebration of yourself.’’

***
In her poetry, one sees a woman who is defiant phoenix, a woman who wears the shoes she wants and walks in them on paths she chooses, cocking a snook at the world that wants her to fit in. Says Mannix, “The idea of how a perfect woman should look and be is oppressive. Every woman is being pressured to look like a cliche. It is important to hold on to what your are inside. I try to convey to girls that they should celebrate being different but poetry is not MTV (and the message goes only as far and no further).” You ask her if revealing herself makes her feel naked before the audience. She smiles, “Poetry has to be about cutting through the small talk. We spend our lives locked in small space and it is nice to be open.’’

***
Her poetry she says, once came from teenage angst and now comes from personal experiences, travel and the inevitable connection between personal and political issues. But she has no desire to convert people to her ideas. She says, “I write about what I feel about the economic, social, cultural world I live in. Through my work, I make politics personal. My poetry is about finding my own voice and making sense of the world. I won’t rant at people and tell them what to think. Instead I will ask questions and share that ordinary life can be poetic. I want to encourage young people to associate poetry with self-ex-pression and to understand that poetry is written not just by poets who are dead!’’
About her vibrant recitations she says, “Poetry is somewhere between music and verse. It can be dramatized though I don’t write thinking about how I will perform it.’’
Her words, she says, communicate, “Who I am. Not perfect but proud.’’

Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7YucnhfXw–&ref=4fe1efd1-de20-4a30-8eb8-ef81a99cb01f