POET IN RESIDENCE: TAMAR ZHGHENTI
INFATUATION
BY POET IN RESIDENCE, TAMAR ZHGHENTI: APRIL 2026
Maybe ten years ago now or more, Georgian student Tamar Zhghenti sent me a poem, her first poem written in English. When I read it, I instantly knew that she was a very fine poet. A poet. Not a student, but a poet. She has recently revised the initial poem, quite extensively, and I present it to you today … – Martina, April 2026
INFATUATION: APRIL 2026
Looking back,
I see a traveller in a desert,
crawling among the dunes.
The wind is howling:
“sleep, sleep.”
The traveller keeps on –
through heat, through miles of nothing,
a lifetime dragging on,
until someone walks towards them,
unhurried.
“Hello,” says the traveller.
“Hell? Oh – no.
Just a desert.
Better than that, if anything.
Cooler.”
And the stranger walks on.
The traveller stops.
All is plain.
The desert holds –
the same as every step before.
“Sleep, sleep.”
– God, take this thirst,
or give me a vision.
The wind goes on:
“sleep, sleep.”
And then I see –
the traveller,
knelt on the tip of a dune,
smiling into their cupped palms.
They lift a handful to their lips,
as if to drink –
but the sand slips through their fingers.
They lift it again,
And again.
For a moment,
the burning grains
become water –
they do,
they do.
POETRY
BY POET IN RESIDENCE, TAMAR ZHGHENTI: DECEMBER 2025
Tamar’s poem feels like stepping into a world where light has weight, where illumination is something you can swallow, hold, and finally release. The poem personifies poetry as a small sun: warm, volatile, transformative. I feel as if I can ingest it whole. It is a metaphor for the healing process that is uncomfortable, burning, and yet absolutely life-giving. The initial feeling is a sharp, prickling heat, like warm metal resting too long on the skin. The swallowing is both silky and dangerously hot, like tasting something bright and molten. Later, the ache is a deep, slow twist, and a heaviness becoming effervescence.
The poem has the tang of something sacred and slightly bitter, like pressing a tongue to a copper coin warmed by the sun. Then it softens into the familiar earthiness of corn, the sharp mustard-seed spice of emotion, the rich smoothness of a yolk. Nourishing, in the end.
Golds and yolk-yellows dominate the poem, shifting from the harsh, almost acidic glare of a swallowed sun to the soft, familiar hues of corn and mustard. The stomach feels lit from within; an internal sunrise. There’s also a faint, burnished orange from the fire that churns before becoming light again.
There’s nausea; gentle, luminous nausea as if too much light has been taken in and the body must adjust. But it is not sickness; it’s activation. When the light rises again, it feels like the warmth of a heart expanding through the chest.
The poem is a meditation on how poetry heals. A wound, a painful feeling begins with discomfort, the raw honesty that must be swallowed. It acknowledges that transformation often burns. It honours the internal process; the turning, the churning, the ache. Finally, it celebrates the return of light: the moment when expression becomes release. The act of swallowing a sun mirrors swallowing pain, tears, memories, and difficult truths. But the poem insists that if we have held sorrow, we can hold light too. The healing is not smooth or delicate; it is visceral, digestive, alchemical. Poetry becomes a fire that moves through the body and resurfaces as illumination rather than injury.
When the speaker says “Effervesce!” the poem shifts from internal struggle to radiant offering. The final sensation is that of rising. Tiny bubbles of light are bursting upward, turning heat into brilliance. … – Martina, December 2025
POETRY: DECEMBER 2025
A TIPSY TEACHER’S RANT: MARCH 2025
When I read the title of Tamar’s poem “Inside the Chest” my first thought was of a heart – maybe beating, maybe beaten, maybe broken, maybe bleeding. It evoked memories before had even read the first line. Read it as you wish … – Martina, October 2024
INSIDE THE CHEST: OCTOBER 2024
METROPOLITAN EPIPHANY: APRIL 2024
WAR HAS A WOMAN’S FACE BY POET IN RESIDENCE, TAMAR ZHGHENTI: NOVEMBER 2023
SUCCESSFUL WRITER’S TOUR OF GEORGIA: APRIL 2023
INTRODUCTION TO TAMAR ZHGHENTI: APRIL 2023
Tamar Zhghenti, the internationally recognized Georgian poet, has graciously accepted to be the Rainy Day Healing inaugural Poet in Residence.
Georgian-born and now residing and studying English Language and Literature in England, Tamar Zhghenti is a poet, medical graduate, and English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher. She is the co-founder of two former youth literary clubs in Georgia, a playwright for the Theatre Higia of the Tbilisi State Medical University, and a member of the international musical theatre project, “Keats the Musical.”
Tamar Zhghenti and I (Martina Nicolls) have presented papers at two international William Shakespeare conferences (one on medicine in Shakespeare’s plays and one on the bard’s depiction of ageing) and two international James Joyce conferences (one on the Paris residences of James Joyce and one on the influence of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in contemporary music). The conferences, in Tbilisi, were hosted by the Tbilisi State University and the Georgian American University.
Since 2022, her poems have been published in Georgian periodicals, with her poem “Soldier” selected for the Georgian-Ukrainian anthology Sow the Wheat, Ukraine published in the German language by Klak Verlage, Berlin, 2022. She won the title of Special Guest in the international spoken word poetry competition, “Antibabylon.” Together, we continue to work on the English translation of Alexandre Kazbegi’s iconic 1884 novel Khevisberi Gocha.
In April 2023, the English translation of her poem “War has a woman’s face” is published in the United Kingdom in the annual print book of the Leicester Literary Review. Also in April 2023, Intelekti Publishing in Tbilisi, Georgia, is releasing her debut poetry collection called Gulp down the sun.
With a rich background in medicine and the cultural arts, Tamar Zhghenti is perfect as Poet in Residence for Rainy Day Healing.
I proudly present two of her most recent poems, “Revelation” and “Solo” – both shortlisted in the 20-30 age category in the South Yorkshire Hive Young Writers’ Competition 2022/2023.
Revelation
You deserve to know this, and here is the truth:
It was born neither during a celebration in a crowded square,
Nor during execution on the scaffolds.
It wasn’t given birth by a lump in one’s throat
Nor by a blissful teardrop.
It wasn’t born while looking at the opened cage,
Nor when the dungeon door closed,
Hard to accept, but it wasn’t born in the face of inevitable death
Or in the wake of a miraculous cure.
Certainly not before or after the war.
The ultimate sacrifice is no parent to it,
And it is no child to a huge gain too.
It wasn’t born in high hills or by the ocean.
Climbing the peak has nothing to do with it,
Nor has hitting rock bottom.
Freedom as a desire was born
In your room, at your place,
When overwhelmed with chores,
You chose to sit down instead,
Looked out of the window and thought,
It was high time to set everything aside and recall
Why, as a little child,
You laughed in the wind and ran from bush to bush.
Solo
So fervently I yearn to perish
As if I were a bored immortal, sick of eternity.
In the meanwhile, the truth in the night sky is scattered:
“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”
Here it is! The first photo from the Webb space telescope –
A cozy glasshouse of unknown galaxies.
The light never captured before, the sight never-before-seen.
“Great, Kid. Don’t get cocky.”
What of it, though? Conquer it or be conquered by it, at the very most!
As if we ever cared for more than a conquest of new worlds.
Oh, how zealously we’d start the star wars!
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
There are days, when I feel pretty self-disgusted, you know?
I start to curse those naive outbursts when I wish to die
Be it before a deadline or after an unresponded call,
Or while breastfeeding my baby again and again at night;
Or for a cancelled flight, for an uncooked dinner…
“A thousand generations live in you now. But this is your fight.”
Goodness, gracious! I’ve been hungry for death as if it were a juicy dumpling –
If only I could bite and slurp it!
Oh, silly me! – Forgive me, forgive me – I start to howl –
What the hell did I ever want?
Let the sea swallow it all, let the fire consume it all,
Let it all be reduced to ashes after me!
O, what an ass am I! What a shame it is to cease to exist!
How do people allow themselves to die? Never and never!
“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for!”
What is it to become of the universe without me?
If I’m dead, how can they survive – The Great Bear, The Little Bear?
Do people honestly believe the stars don’t care about us?
Take a look at the telescope picture of the doomed star then –
Doesn’t it look like the ocean erupted through a volcano?
The colours of ash and fire surround the watery blue.
Doesn’t this picture remind you of the floating dots in your newborn’s eyes?
“Congratulations, you’re being rescued.”
Oh, come on! Please, spare me the teaching on
How vast the space is and how tiny human beings are!
The universe was made to let me be and to let you be –
That’s what the cosmos, the bright odyssey written on a dark palimpsest, was made for.
Yes. The universe continuously expands
Just to save the human being, this stubborn cosmic moth,
From burning its wings of earthly reason on celestial flames.
“You must unlearn what you have learned”…
So fervently I yearn to live forever,
As if I were a mortal being with inevitable doom ahead.
When in fact, there’s a photographed truth on a platter:
We are luminous creatures and not this primitive matter.
“May the force be with us!”
Tamar Zhghenti: Facebook
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