Blue Like My Beloved

Some people praise me, some talk trash. I just sing about god. My road is the road where the saints walk, and I’m taking it. —MirabaiThe sixteenth-century poet and saint Mirabai has long been an iconic figure in India. Tagore famously named his daughter after her and praised her as a figure of female liberation; Gandhi referenced her in speeches on nonviolence and anti-colonialism–her songs were sung in his ashrams. Today her poems continue to be sung by Bollywood singers, folk musicians and ordinary people. In Blue Like My Beloved, the poet-translator and scholar Chloe Martinez–who spent decades studying, absorbing and translating Mirabai’s work–has compiled a selection of Mirabai’s poetry that includes her greatest hits alongside lesser-known poems. The collection spans the range of Mirabai’s moods and themes in a vibrant poetry of intimacy and visionary perception that burns with a lasting brilliance akin to that of Rumi or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.