Baby Cerberus

by Natasha Ramoutar

Overview

The poems in Baby Cerberus are ethereal, soul-stirring and suffused with a playful intelligence.

Natasha Ramoutar's second collection traces joy and kinship across a multitude of lives and lived experiences. Shifting deftly from classical mythology and folklore to video games to speculative futures, each poem asks us to consider how we care for one another. As we move through sentient galleries, swashbuckling adventures and the doors of Atlantis, the collection reorients us in each section with a riddle, always inviting the reader to play along, tugging on the invisible threads between us all, trying to find what tethers us together and, in turn, what keeps us here. Joyous and multilayered, this is a book that's fast enough for the speed of information and powerful enough to stop you in your tracks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781998408023
Publisher:	Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd
Publication date:	10/01/2024
Pages:	86
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Natasha Ramoutar is a writer of Indo-Guyanese descent from Toronto. Her debut collection of poetry, Bittersweet, published in 2020 by Mawenzi House, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She was the editor of FEEL WAYS, an anthology of Scarborough literature. She is a senior editor with Augur Magazine and serves on the editorial board at Wolsak & Wynn.

What People are Saying About This

T. Liem

“I echo the speaker and say, 'I don't have any words to say thanks / All I can do is chitter and squeak.' The poetry of Baby Cerberus is a balm for those of us craving recognition and kinship. Ramoutar's poetics cultivate joy and curiosity against the kind of despair that tries to alienate us from each other and ourselves. These poems are magnetic. They collect us in all our plural and myriad forms, letting us find each other again and again: 'our harmonies turning our bodies / dizzy.'”

Cassidy McFadzean

“A beautiful and insightful collection of poems prodding the familial, the cosmic and the mythological with playful musicality, formal innovation and refreshing curiosity. From a city's palimpsest to riddles that 'scan / each masked grain of sand' and elegies that unpack pop culture nostalgia, Natasha Ramoutar delights and astounds at every turn. Baby Cerberus is a book to cherish, examining 'the urge / to keep something radiating and precious near.'”

Editorial Reviews

"Ramoutar's newest poetry collection does a perfect job of balancing light-heartedness and grief, of looking back towards the past and finding joy while also regretting what used to be."

Not Sarah Connor Writes - Sarah O'Connor

"Ramoutar presents a vision of revolutionary softness. These poems reel through space and myth, past and future, tracing kinship between people, animals, monsters and the universe itself."

Winnipeg Free Press - melanie brannagan frederiksen

"Ramoutar's striking and uncommon lyricism offers a new vision of eco-poetry that strives to re-kin-dle human interconnectedness with each other and with the more-than-human world. A collection to discover."

Green Linden Press - Beatrice Szymkowiak

Bittersweet is a collection by a poet clearly grounded in her writing community, and that shows in the careful, thoughtful, and evocative poetry throughout.”

Canadian Literature

“The gentle sting of Ramoutar's words are what make the truth in her poems resonate and save her true messages from being lost beneath the powerful waves of her expert wordsmithing and cutting humour.”

Canthius on Bittersweet

“Over and over again, Ramoutar contrasts a grounded home — whether in Guyana or Scarborough — with the cosmological. The shifts in language feel natural yet come as a surprise. There is no way of expecting where any of these poems will go.”

Quill & Quire on Bittersweet