Chronic, by Preeti Talwai

Poetry, prose poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Chronic is a lyrical and intimate collection of prose poems and free verse exploring what it means to live in a body shaped by chronic illness, namely, ulcerative colitis. Unfolding as a series of vignettes from the author’s childhood to her own motherhood, the collection traces the disorienting experiences of an invisible, relapsing-remitting condition.

The poems move fluidly between the clinical and the quotidia —colonoscopy prep and childhood car rides, diagnostics and motherly advice—revealing how illness permeates every layer of individual, relational, and cultural identity. Through precise and sometimes startling imagery, Chronic bridges the cellular scale of the body with the vastness of the natural world, excavating the language of disease and care.

Written in accessible language, woven with wit and tenderness, Chronic invites readers to contemplate what it means to inhabit our imperfect bodies and to construct identity within uncertainty.

Preeti Talwai writes from the California Coast, where she is also a research leader in the technology industry. Trained as an architectural designer and researcher at U.C. Berkeley and Yale University, she has written on the built environment and humanism in technology, alongside poetry on the human body and chronic illness. Her poetry appears in various literary publications, and her fiction is held in the Rare Book Collection at U.C. Berkeley.