Rajiv Mohabir’s fifth poetry collection, Seabeast, offers a post-human exploration of dislocation, trauma, the poet’s role in memory recovery, and the reconciliatory process of re-membering and uniting disparate worlds. This work goes against “a Western Rational episteme / which also held brown folks / as less-than-sub-human.” Mohabir contends that the binaries pervasive in daily life perpetuate cruelty, and he challenges distinctions between land and marine life, as well as social constructs of national, familial, and intimate belonging. A central theme in this collection is the fallibility of knowledge systems—those that shape our understanding of the “known world” and those that inform our inner selves, complicated by personal histories. Building on his earlier work, Whale Aria, Mohabir re-envisions his relationship with the environment, attempting, within the limitations of language, to conceive of a humanity in harmony with its surroundings and the multitude of life forms. For the purposes of this discussion—and though Mohabir might disavow the term—Seabeast stands as an explicitly engaged text in “Caribbean ecopoetics.” It draws from Barbadian poet, scholar, and philosopher Kamau Brathwaite’s assertion, “The unity is submarine.” This book unifies marine and human life with the psychological consciousness of Indian descendants as they navigate the currents of history.
Mohabir’s collection uniquely titles its poems with specific sea animal names, primarily whales, accompanied by their italicised scientific names, subordinated below the all-caps poem title. Rather than rejecting the lingua franca of colonial science, Mohabir demonstrates how this knowledge system underpins our contemporary understanding of life and environments. This intentional organization ironically transforms the Table of Contents into a visual “matrix” or typology of whales. It suggests the poet’s engagement with the very forms he critiques, yet instead of abandoning them, he reorients these structures with his sensibilities and skills to achieve his vision.
The collection begins with “Abulocetus Natans,” a poem whose title references “the walking whale,” a creature emblematic of the deep strata found in Pakistan’s Kuldana Formation. Mohabir immediately establishes a motif of fragmentation, writing, “Kuldana Formation fragments in matrix.” These fragments serve as fossilised remnants of a past era, paralleling the burdensome, and even traumatic, undertaking of postcolonial communities globally who grapple with the fragmented and incomplete colonial archives of their histories and public memory. Considering the whale’s evolutionary journey and earlier forms capable of inhabiting both land and sea, Mohabir confronts the dismembering nature of this history. The poem thus becomes a meditation on the painful transitions and adaptations of non-human life, offering insights into the human yearning for a sense of wholeness and a former self. He then directly addresses the colonial practice of misrepresentation, stating, “we were misnamed,” thereby critiquing the valorization of scientific naming, typologies, and matrices applied to all life and places. This critique is interwoven with the equally challenging experience of familial dismemberment, as seen in lines such as “terror in American streets” and the poignant “My mother calls / at least my brother.”
Mohabir’s central argument throughout the collection hinges on a deep practice of resilience. This practice crafts an inner imperative for peace and simultaneously indicts the systemic violence of “foreign knowledge” and displacement. He asserts, “we burn to remake / what foreignness obscured.” This “burning” operates on multiple levels: it represents the physical, mental and spiritual toll exacted from postcolonial peoples as they strive for self-determined visions and actions to reclaim their humanity. Yet, this “burning” also signifies an act of subversion, a spiritual cleansing that upturns the oppressive conditions of the present. From these ashes, a more dignified and liberating world can be refashioned, one that transcends the destructive influence of “foreignness” on our histories and senses.
Mohabir’s whale classification serves not merely as a literary device to confront macro political structures, but also to grapple with the intimate architecture of everyday life, like love and intimacy. In “Bryde’s Whale,” he explores the protean nature of love and intimate relationships. What remains in the wake of a past love? Whether navigating the formation of a union or enduring its dissolution, our self-identities are inevitably dislodged. The poem parallels this personal upheaval with the uncertainty of scientific classification, questioning the accuracy with which whales are categorised and named:
we do not know
like who will be renamed
when more information emerges
from the depths
into anchovy shoals or
when two men marry and diverge?
This stanza underscores the fluidity of all relationships and, by extension, the mutable sense of one’s self. The poem simultaneously offers a glimpse of the evolving dynamics of a queer love. Yet, in the Caribbean, the possibility of recognizing queer unions and intimacies is severely constrained by institutional and public homophobias. Legal instruments and social norms consistently deny them equal recognition, exposing harsh disparities and inequalities that exist within these societies.
Mohabir’s collection is remarkable for its engagement with scale, navigating the vastness of the postcolonial world. The poetry seamlessly integrates diverse geographies, including India, Pakistan, Argentina, and the Hawaiian archipelago. These places inform the multilingualism throughout the collection, though it is predominantly written in standardized English. Additionally, Mohabir sustains an engagement with Christian theological discourse through his recitations of prayer and praise songs. These devotions and submissions raise a question: do they haunt the poet, or do they offer an avenue for transcendence? He refrains from articulating a definitive “resolve” in the collection; instead, the writing journeys through hopes, heartbreaks, separation, and longing. It is in the shared understanding of these emotions that both the poet and the reader find a measure of reprieve.
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