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Jhilam Chattaraj writes of the challenges and rewards of teaching, writing, loving and connecting across distances in a universe of apps and absent ringtones. Wry, affectionate, delicately-modulated and determined to 'sing sunward, ' these poems in praise of food, love, longing and literature map the recurrent and ancient human need to "tap the air / for the sweet wound of knowledge." - ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM Noise Cancellation - with its urgent and sometimes visceral evocations - is written largely using a well-tended couplet form. The parallel lines here allude to and offer contrapuntal dualities of our current fraught times - the pair and play of yin-yang lyrics reflecting the presence of...
Here are some broken lines, soaked and fermented in a city. Call them what you will-a scrapheap of reverie, monologue, dialogue, remnant, remainder. They nip at the mythic crow of Calcutta: its ancient mariner, the chronicler of its many lives. These 'fragments' are markers of time past and present, in a city that the writer touches and watches incessantly. She leaves it always to come back; its tales turn, but do not die. Close ones die, intimacies die and are reborn, homes die and are resurrected, or are found again elsewhere for a moment-or a lifetime. The crow, and the word, leave traces of this corporeal, fabular city on a hot and humid sky-ravaged, insouciantly tender, resilient. Calcutta, Crow and other fragments is Brinda Bose's debut chapbook. Bose grew up in Calcutta. She studied literature at Presidency College in the city, and then at Oxford and Boston universities. She currently teaches at the Centre for English Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She has written on literature and cinema, gender/sexualities, modernisms and the humanities; she reads a lot of poetry and would call this intrepid exercise its very distant, disinherited cousin.
With his master strokes, Sengupta offers an all-pervasive analysis of the microcosm, his seemingly nonchalant style being the most powerful weapon to demolish our long-cherished views about human life: the claustrophobic existence in the City of Joy as depicted in “The Bengali Phenomenon”; the suffering of Christ in the time of crucifixion as written in “Expressions”; and the appalling lightlessness when shadows grow longer as portrayed in “Illumination.” Sengupta extends the metaphor of the book’s title in some of the poems, emphasizing the essential loneliness of our existence when we speak to ourselves in prose or verse...we are compelled to realize how lonely we are yet how rich in poetry, and [Solitary Stillness] is a preparation of the voyage to meet the “infinite” with a poetic brush. —World Literature Today
As the pandemic shutdown looms over us, we are reminded of those things we took for granted: for instance, hibiscus flowers, the sea, the moon, or an elderly couple at home who are still in love. Hibiscus: poems that heal and empower seeks to convey the resonating touch of the flower itself. According to Ayurveda, the flower has many medicinal uses that include but are not limited to lowering blood pressure and preventing stroke. The anthology derives its healing power from reaching across continents. It was conceived in India by acclaimed poet, editor, and translator Kiriti Sengupta. Hibiscus houses 104 poets—luminaries like Keki N. Daruwalla, Mamang Dai, Sudeep Sen, Bina Sarkar Ellias, S...
These poems open up a dialogic space at the intersection of the time and the timeless. As Eliot writes: "Only through time time is conquered." Jena's second collection of poems, A Letterbox Across Time, meditates on the mystery of existence and inaugurates directions to an unnameable elsewhere, which eludes discursive intellect. Jena, in his distinctive style and use of imagery, creates portraits that deepen the unsaid. One must undergo these truths to understand them in time as eternity.
Coming from a place of visceral experiences, Trigger Warning is an exercise in human catharsis. Meghna's debut is built on the tensions of duality-of love and resistance through poems that resemble Plath-like confessions and throw light on mental health issues like depression, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and CPTSD. The book explores the diminishing of identity that gets erased through abusive relationships. Through its contents, the poet comments upon the exploratory journey of understanding oneself-of unraveling the chaos within. At the same time, it also touches upon sensitive topics like childhood abuse and violence revolving around relationships. This book is an un...
English rendering of Abanindranath Tagore's Khirer Putul.
Shreya Basu is a kind of politician India has hardly ever witnessed and that too from a political party which has been suffering from an existential crisis for last few years. With an impeccable beauty and excellent oratory skill, Shreya Basu
The collection, titled For the Hope of Spring: hybrid poems, published by Hawakal Publishers, Kolkata, India, is Shamayita Sen's first collection of poems. Like all memories, it smells of old life, chipped wallpaper and burnt wood. The poems have been neatly compartmentalized into: On Dissent; Grief and Other People; Love, Healing, etc., each section adhering to a particular dominant emotion and theme. The collection speaks of daily life, longings and idle musings on human existence, the lives we come across everyday, their personal sorrows and political sufferings. Some poems are inspired by real life experiences and Shamayita says she shall be ever appreciative of her friends and colleague...
Sanjeev writes beautifully concise poetry; he has an exceptional talent for framing observations that are both wise and insightful, and he does so sparingly, as though words are too precious to waste... truly, the poetry is a delight. - Dr. Alan Corkish (writer, editor, and reviewer) Hesitancies is Sanjeev Sethi's fifth book of poems. He is in fine form: he broadens his gaze, looks deeper at himself and his settings. The timbre of a lived life follows his poetic trail. To read him is to recap a glimpse of the hand one is dealt with. His poems throb with edged sequences flirting with the savories of nuance playing footsie with the palette of possibilities. His inflection is irenic. Sethi sutu...