Yuyutsu Sharma’s latest collection, In God’s Messy Workplace (Nirala Publications, 2026), finds poetry in the chaos of everyday life. Set largely in pandemic-era Kathmandu, the poems move between solitude, memory, and quiet moments of wonder, later extending into the poet’s travels abroad. Sharma blends the personal with the universal, where nature, spirituality, and human struggle intersect with striking clarity. His verse is reflective yet grounded, embracing ambiguity rather than easy answers. This is a thoughtful, resonant collection that captures both the fragility and quiet beauty of living in uncertain times.
Set during the isolating months of the COVID-19 pandemic and concluding with travels in Ireland, the collection unfolds as a deeply personal yet universally resonant landscape. It moves fluidly between inner reflection and outward observation, grounding itself in lived experience while reaching toward metaphysical inquiry.
The title gestures toward the book’s central vision: a divine presence embedded within disorder, suggesting that certainty and uncertainty are inseparable. Many of the poems dwell in this tension, revealing that life’s harshest realities often contain unexpected tenderness, just as its gentlest moments carry hidden unease.
What distinguishes this collection is its emotional and philosophical depth. Sharma writes with a clarity that is both lyrical and unflinching, allowing complexity to emerge without forcing resolution. The poems accumulate force gradually, drawing the reader into a contemplative rhythm that feels at once intimate and expansive.
In “Rain,” for instance, the natural world becomes a site of emotional revelation, where the arrival of rainfall transforms a glade into an almost mythic encounter. The poem’s sensuous imagery and musical cadence exemplify Sharma’s ability to merge the physical and emotional into a single, resonant gesture.
Teaching through poetry
Throughout the collection, the human, natural, and spiritual realms are intricately interwoven. In “To Name a Being,” Sharma reflects on the ineffable presence of a force that permeates existence yet resists articulation. This engagement with the unseen is neither doctrinal nor didactic; rather, it is exploratory, marked by a quiet attentiveness to moments of revelation embedded in the ordinary.
Indeed, the sacred in Sharma’s work often arises through the mundane. In the titular poem, God’s Messy Workplace, seemingly insignificant details—the dusty treetops, the hush of morning, a tin-roofed kitchen—become portals to wonder. The effect is a subtle but powerful re-enchantment of everyday life, where the divine is not imposed but discovered.
The collection is also attentive to the socio-political realities of contemporary life. In “Donation,” Sharma captures the fragility of Kathmandu during the pandemic, rendering scarcity and survival with immediacy. His gaze is unflinching, yet never devoid of compassion. Similarly, in “The Migrant Metaphor,” he confronts vulnerability across human and animal worlds, offering an image of suffering that is both local and global in resonance.
Memory, solitude, and the fragile architecture of human relationships recur throughout the book. In “Alone in the Hills,” the poet reflects on time, family, and loss with a restraint that deepens emotional impact. Such poems reveal Sharma’s gift for articulating interior states without sentimentality.
At times, the poems resist easy interpretation. Their layered, associative structures invite multiple readings, recalling the openness of modernist and postmodernist poetics. Yet this ambiguity is not a weakness; rather, it is central to the collection’s aesthetic. Sharma embraces uncertainty, presenting life as a mosaic of incongruities rather than a narrative to be resolved.
The emotional arc of the collection mirrors the cadence of lived experience—alternating between introspection and intensity, stillness and surge. Each of the thirty-three poems carries a distinct tonal identity, yet together they form a cohesive and immersive whole.
Sharma’s achievement lies not only in the thematic range of the collection but also in its sustained integrity of voice. As the American poet Stanley Moss once observed, Sharma is a “United Nations of poetry”—a writer whose work transcends boundaries while remaining deeply rooted in place and experience.
In conclusion, In God’s Messy Workplace is a compelling and multifaceted collection that affirms poetry’s capacity to engage with life in all its complexity. It is a book that lingers—intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually—inviting readers to dwell within its ambiguities and discover, within them, a renewed sense of wonder.
In God’s Messy Workplace: New Poems
2026, Pages 110
Price Rs. 595
Nirala Publications, New Delhi, 2026
Bhuwan Thapaliya is a Kathmandu-based poet writing in English and an economist by profession, with four published poetry collections including Safa Tempo and the English translation of Hiranya Bhojpure’s novel Aang Sherpa.Contact: nepalipoet@yahoo.com
