‘Little holy god-scrap’: Tallahassee native, former LCS teacher publishes debut book

Little God wants poems. Little God wants company. Little God wants.

This is how Avni Vyas introduces her debut book of poems, so named, “Little God.” She’s a former Leon County Schools teacher, Tallahassee Community College adjunct professor and is a Tallahassee native. She now works as a writing instructor at New College in Sarasota.

In her debut, out Oct. 26 from Burrow Press, Vyas takes grief to task. The book centers on a miscarriage and loss, cultural and personal relationships.

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With a sharp wit and with “teeth everywhere,” reading Vyas’ book is like trekking through any Florida neighborhood — only a few steps away from the wilds. To slow herself down, Vyas, who is left-hand dominant, also wrote with her right hand and turned in a handwritten manuscript to Burrow Press.

Vyas received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in education from the University of Florida (that “other school” in Gainesville), and later a master’s of fine arts and a Ph.D. from Florida State University. Her first publication was at 10 years old, a Letter to the Editor headlined “A birthday wish for a clean planet” published by the Democrat in 1992.

A character appears, the eponym for the book’s title, and this small deity aggravates the narrator onward through hard, fragile emotions as she decides whether she wants to heal, and how to even begin.

During a preview event for the book, Vyas read from one poem:

“Today that little holy god-scrap trampled my bras and chewed apart my underwear in a prayer-sanctioned assemblé, a numbskulled namaskara, tatta adavu bharatnatyam from before.

“In tatters, I chased him, my body useless, a soft bell with no clapper and he was delighted.”

The little god of Vyas’ creation is callous and deviant, but concealed beneath is the hard complication of resilience — a word all too familiar this year. The character reminds Vyas of a young Krishna, who, as a child, was praised for his mischievousness.

“Grief was a complicated thing when I was writing this book… I found out I was pregnant, then 11 weeks later, I lost the pregnancy…My dad’s health had been in limbo, and so my family was going through this rocky, touch-and-go period,” Vyas said in an interview prior to the book’s release. “Part of the grief was not knowing how to grieve for myself in these larger moments.”

Then, the pandemic.

“Little God is funny. Part of the speaker’s beef is this kind of existential grief. But then there’s these smaller ones that show up,” Vyas said. “There’s a past relationship that echoes throughout the book, based in real life. There’s times when Little God shows up and the speaker didn’t know Little God was there.”

The small, fierce god of acceptance

“When I think a lot about hurricane season in terms of Little God, when everyone is getting ready… if Little God were in the room, Little God would be like ‘bring it on, what did you expect?’” Vyas said.

The book also contains illustrations throughout, uncommon for poetry books that often rely on the structure of the poems themselves to be a sort of visual art.

Illustrator Mimi Cirbusova, also a Florida native, contributed drawings of ibises and other state fauna to the pages, along with an illustration of a smirking child on the cover.

Is that Little God? Perhaps — but the photograph is of Vyas as a child.

“We had such different visualizations of who Little God was,” Vyas said. For Cirbusova, the little god often is a white ibis.

“Little God doesn’t really offer comfort in a traditional way, but Little God has needs and definitely does not like to be ignored. So, there’s a type of natural world wisdom there,” Vyas added.

To live is to grieve; acceptance is the struggle.

“I thought that the process of writing it would help me understand, but really it was understanding that grief is all around me and it’s not a bad thing. It also deepens our capacity for love, makes our resiliency more capacious,” Vyas said.

The main question Vyas asks in her book, and Little God bears witness: Who do we have to become in order to hold it all?

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee native Avni Vyas, former LCS teacher, publishes debut book