Mirabai (ca.1498–1546) is one of the most celebrated premodern poets of India. She lived in sixteenth-century Rajasthan and dedicated her life to Krishna. She wrote poems of love, surrender, and devotion in Braj Bhasha, a premodern dialect of Hindi. Mirabai is widely known throughout India today, where she is depicted in films, comic books, artwork, novels, and plays.
Translated from Braj Bhasha by Chloe Martinez
Some people praise me, some talk trash. I just sing about god.
My road is the road where the saints walk, and I’m taking it.
—Mirabai
The sixteenth-century poet and saint Mirabai has long been an iconic figure in India. Tagore famously named his daughter after her and praised her as a figure of female liberation; Gandhi referenced her in speeches on nonviolence and anti-colonialism—her songs were sung in his ashrams. Today her poems continue to be sung by Bollywood singers, folk musicians, and ordinary people. In Blue Like My Beloved, the poet-translator and scholar Chloe Martinez—who spent decades studying, absorbing, and translating Mirabai’s work—has compiled a selection of Mirabai’s poetry that includes her greatest hits alongside lesser-known poems. The collection spans the range of Mirabai’s moods and themes in a vibrant poetry of intimacy and visionary perception that burns with a lasting brilliance akin to that of Rumi or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
