These two chapbooks are in conversation with one another. You could start, end & re-enter the landscape of mothers, fathers, daughters between these poems as you’d like.
Preview of Cumulus; available for order
Cumulus with a custom digital poster: Dad-libs are the bookending poems of Cumulus, a summer 2026 chapbook, with artwork by Joseph Rajini Asir.
Praise for the chapbook:
ASHNA ALI, author of The Relativity of Living Well
“The politics of entitlement, gratitude, authority, obedience, and abandonment are raked over the coals of Gupta’s syntax as she remixes our expectations of language, fathers, and men more broadly. Together, these poems stitch a sensitive portrait of a particular kind of paternal psyche and the reluctant psyches of those of us who love them, miss them, and carry with us their love and their transgressions alike in assemblages of ourselves amidst our inherited and created cosmologies which, inevitably, contain all the fragrances and textures of their memory.”
TIMOTHY DAVID REY, author of Zip!
“The collection moves with rare intelligence and feeling, unearthing the speaker’s father’s presence and themes of home with both tenderness and precision. Gupta’s poems balance whimsy with (at times) mathematical rigor, allowing memory, grief, and curiosity to unfold in unexpected patterns. The result is a book that feels deeply personal yet formally daring, intimate in its subject matter and expansive in its imaginative reach. This is poetry that rewards attention: inventive, moving, and beautifully exacting.”
TALICHA J, author of Falling in Love with Picking Myself Up
“Cumulus is filled with visceral imagery, honest takes, and tender gut punches. Shivani’s work reminds me what it means to hold on to the feeling of a person rather than the details. And yet, the details are so vivid throughout! It’s a body of work that is reminiscent and wholly reverent.”
Preview of my mother is a mixed metaphor; available now for order
Praise for the chapbook:
SOPHIE HOWARTH, author of Everyday Wonder and co-founder of The School of Life
"Playful, moving and inventive poems that describe an ever-evolving love story between mother and daughter. Gupta is an astoundingly talented new poetic voice. Wholehearted and multifaceted, this is a glorious collection that celebrates the multitude of ways mother-daughter love can be expressed."
T. DE LOS REYES, author of And Yet Held
"In my mother is a mixed metaphor, Shivani Gupta refuses the tidy immigrant daughter narrative. Through turmeric-stained memories and long-distance voice notes, Gupta writes with startling specificity—moving between wit and wound—about loving her mother fiercely while choosing a life thousands of miles away. This is brown daughterhood as inquiry, a collection that insists we can be both like and unlike our mothers and still keep 'reaching, reaching, reaching.'"
ANUJA JAISWAL, mother, sister, niece, and writer
"This collection captures the essence of so many shared experiences between mothers and daughters, the roles we play and how women disappear in their roles. It is also about witnessing your mother being capable of an unbounded life. Most of all, this collection is exceptionally special to me because of who it’s about."
Press & Media:
💌 To have me as a book-club guest, featured reader, event collaborator, project partner, for interviews, reviews, signed copies, workshops or to tell me what you thought of the poems, please email me here 💌