Book of the Week: seasoned with salt by Ravi Kiran

A river can disappear without leaving the landscape empty. Its bed remains, its map remains, perhaps even its memory remains. In Ravi Kiran’s seasoned with salt, absence and presence repeatedly occupy the same frame. The poems look closely at water, flowers, birds, insects, footprints and ordinary human encounters, finding in each a moment that can hold more than its small size suggests.

Kiran, who lives in Hyderabad, India, is an Electronics Engineer and a working professional. His haiku have appeared in journals including The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku and Frogpond. He is also the editor of Leaf and web editor of haikuKATHA. His first chapbook, empty wallet, appeared in 2025.

The title poem establishes the collection with an image of environmental loss:

seasoned with salt
what was once
a river (p. 3)

The visual design places the poem beside an image of salt spilling from a bottle. The metaphor is immediate but not forced. A river has become salt, and the title turns that transformation into something we might encounter at a dinner table. The familiar becomes troubling.

Kiran is equally attentive to the marks we leave behind and those that nature erases:

new beginning
the waves wash away
my footprints (p. 13)

The first line might suggest permanence, yet the next two lines undo that expectation. The sea does not preserve the speaker’s arrival. A new beginning can also mean letting go of evidence that we were ever there.

There is considerable pleasure in the poet’s attention to small creatures. Consider:

echoing inside
its empty shell
cicada’s song (p. 34)

The shell is empty, but it is not silent. The cicada’s song continues as an echo within an object that once housed another life. The poem holds transformation without explaining it.

Another beautifully constructed image turns the world upside down:

my world
in a dew drop
upside down (p. 20)

The dew drop becomes both lens and miniature universe. The final phrase alters the preceding image, reminding us that perception is always dependent on position.

Kiran’s wit comes through in poems such as:

country fair
the ants finish
an ice cream (p. 37)

The tiny workers inherit the remains of a human indulgence. There is humour here, but also a reminder that nothing we consume belongs entirely to us. The ants have their own version of the feast.

The foreword by Brad Bennett describes Kiran’s haiku as simple yet emotionally resonant, comparing them to porridge seasoned with salt. That image is particularly apt. The poems do not depend upon elaborate effects. Their strength comes from proportion, observation and the small adjustment that makes an ordinary moment memorable.

As you read seasoned with salt, try choosing one poem and looking at its accompanying image before reading the words again. Does the image change your understanding of the haiku, or does the poem make you see the image differently?

You can read the entire chapbook in the THF Digital Library.

The THF Digital Library can now also be easily found through the carousel on the home page, making it simpler to discover books, journals, and other treasures in the archive.

Do you have a full- or chapbook-length book published in 2021 or earlier that you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details. Book of the Week selections are made by THF Digital Librarian Vidya Premkumar and are featured with permission.