In these her late poems, the volcano that is Eunice de Souza is still erupting. As in her early work too, what she here ‘upchucks’ is lava, molten lines that burn and glow and leave a permanent mark. The tone, as before, is casual, bantering, close to the spoken idiom that is uniquely hers. When terrible things happen the tone changes, quickens, then relaxes again. Life is bemusing, ludicrous; death even more so. In the work of no other poet I can think of do you find such brevity and grandeur, swiftness of utterance and the unbearable weight of grief, unbearable because de Souza is so dry-eyed. ‘The crone’s still capable/of spite’ she writes in one poem, the old necklace-of-skulls self-irony intact, except that in her case ‘spite’ also means ‘wisdom’. It is easy to forget that the crone is deeply moral as well, and like any moral being she too feels that she’s lived ‘In the wrong season.’ There is plenty in these spare but unsparing poems to remind us of the classical virtues we associate with Bhartrhari, for instance, or a Latin epigrammatist like Martial. These are poems to live by. In time, they will come to be seen as classics of our literature, as many of her earlier poems already are. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
About the author
Eunice de Souza (1940) is the author of several books of poems. Her groundbreaking debut Fix was published in 1979 followed by Women in Dutch Painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990), A Necklace of Skulls (2009). Her poems are spare, unsettling, ironic, lyrical, referencing a landscape striated with relationships to city, lovers, pets and poetry itself. If Fix established her as a poet with an original and remarkable voice, learn from the Almond Leaf settles that reputation with a volume of poems more distilled, extracted, potent and ultimately utterly wise. Over the last forty years Eunice de Souza has distinguished herself as an inspirational teacher, influencing generations of undergraduates at St Xavier's College, Mumbai; as a scholar of illuminating research into poetry written in English in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and poetry written by women; as an anthologist of several important collections of poetry the latest These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry (2012) with Melanie Silgardo. She has also written two works of fiction Dangerlok (2001) and Dev and Simran (2003) as well as several books for children. She lives in Mumbai.
About the author
Eunice de Souza (1940) is the author of several books of poems. Her groundbreaking debut Fix was published in 1979 followed by Women in Dutch Painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990), A Necklace of Skulls (2009). Her poems are spare, unsettling, ironic, lyrical, referencing a landscape striated with relationships to city, lovers, pets and poetry itself. If Fix established her as a poet with an original and remarkable voice, learn from the Almond Leaf settles that reputation with a volume of poems more distilled, extracted, potent and ultimately utterly wise. Over the last forty years Eunice de Souza has distinguished herself as an inspirational teacher, influencing generations of undergraduates at St Xavier's College, Mumbai; as a scholar of illuminating research into poetry written in English in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and poetry written by women; as an anthologist of several important collections of poetry the latest These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry (2012) with Melanie Silgardo. She has also written two works of fiction Dangerlok (2001) and Dev and Simran (2003) as well as several books for children. She lives in Mumbai.
Zingonia Zingone (1971) is a graduate in Economics, a poet, a novelist and a translator who writes in Spanish, Italian, French and English. Her poetry books are published in Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Italy, France and India. Her most recent titles are: Los naufragios del desierto (Vaso Roto, 2013) and las tentaciones de la Luz (anamá, 2018). In English, she has two books published in India: Acrobat of Oblivion (Poetrywala, 2011) and Light, the Temptation (Poetrywala, 2016). Her translation works include Virus Alert by Marathi poet Hemant Divate (Alarma de Virus – Ediciones Espiral, 2012), award-winning Voces / Voci by Nicaraguan poet Claribel Alegría (Samuele Editore, 2016), and, by the same author, Amore senza fine (Edizioni Fili d’Aquilone, 2018).
She is editor of a monthly Poetry Review at MINERVA magazine.
Published Poetry Books:
Máscara del delirio (Perro Azul, 2006; Lietocolle, 2008)
Mandakranta Sen was born in Kolkata, West Bengal. Her first collection of poetry- HRIDAY ABADDHYA MEYE (MY HEART IS AN UNRULY GIRL) brought her the Ananda Puraskar in 1998. Since then she has written twenty collections of poetry, eight novels, one collection of novelettes, two collections of short stories and one collection of essays. She has won several awards including the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Young Writers' Award (2004), which she returned in 2015 as a protest against the growing intolerance in the country. Her poems have been translated into several other Indian languages, and internationally into the German, French and Polish. Currently, along with her husband, Mandakranta Sen edits Brishtydin- a literary journal in Bengali.
Siddhartha Menon has published three collections of poetry, Woodpecker (Sahitya Akademi 2010), Writing Again (Folio 2012) and The Owl and the Laughing Buddha (Poetrywala 2016). Equipped with a masters degree in English Literature from Delhi University, in 1991 he returned to his alma mater Rishi Valley School as a teacher, and since then either at Rishi Valley or at other schools run by the Krishnamurti Foundation India he has taught English, History and Mathematics, been a House Parent (i.e. looked after students living in a hostel), produced plays, shared his love of music, hiked and trekked, coached students in long distance running and undertaken administrative responsibilities. He is currently exploring ideas for narratives in verse.
K. Satchidanandan, perhaps the most widely translated of contemporary Indian poets, has 23 collections of his poetry in 19 languages including English, Irish, Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Italian besides all-important Indian languages. His collected poems in three volumes – about 1400 pages- came out in 2006 and his collected translations from world poetry were published in four volumes – about 1700 pages- in 2012-14. His books of English translations, While I Write: New and Selected Poems (Harper-Collins India) came out in 2011 and Misplaced Objects and Other Poems (Sahitya Akademi, Delhi) in 2014. His New and Selected Poems in English translation, a large volume of about 600 pages, The Missing Rib, is due to appear very soon from Poetrywala, Bombay. Satchidanandan was a Professor of English in Kerala and later moved to Delhi to edit Indian Literature , the organ of the Sahitya Akademi ( The National Academy of Literature in India) and served as its Chief Executive for a decade. Later he was a Language Policy Adviser to the Govt of India, the Director and Professor of Translation Studies at the Indira Gandhi National Open University and the editor of the SAARC journal Beyond Borders and of the South Asian Library of Literature, a book series. All through he has also been a cultural activist working for peace, environment and human and minority rights. His poetry stands against all forms of violence. Satchidanandan writes poetry in Malayalam, and prose in Malayalam and English and has more than 20 collections of poetry besides several books of travel, plays and criticism and translations of poetry from around the world and five books originally written in English on Indian literature. This is besides the 20 -odd books in three languages that he has edited. He has represented India in several Literary Festivals and Book Fairs across the world including those in Delhi, Jaipur, Bombay, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Lahore, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Dubai, Damascus, Berlin, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Wales, New York, Washington, Hay, Paris, Frankfurt, Bonn, Leipzig, Beijing, Shanghai, Rotterdam, Medellin, Havana, Lima, Sarajevo, Vilenica, Madrid, Soria, Segovia, Avila and Moscow. Satchidanandan is a Fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and has won 32 literary awards and Fellowships including Sahitya Akademi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award five times, (for poetry, drama, travelogue, translation, criticism), Gangadhar Meher National Award (Orissa) , Kusumagraj National Award ( Maharashtra), NTR National Award ( Andhra Pradesh), Kuvempu National Award ( Karnataka), Kamala Surayya Award ( Dubai),Oman Cultural Centre Award ( Muscat),Kala Award for Total Literary Contribution ( London), K. K. Birla Fellowship for Comparative Literature, Sreekant Verma Fellowship for Translation and the Senior Fellowship from the Govt of India besides Knighthood of the Order of Merit from the Government of Italy and India-Poland Friendship Medal from the Government of Poland. He was on the Ladbroke list of Nobel probables in 2011. A film on him, SummerRain was released in 2007.At present he is a National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India.
Rati Saxena – Poet/ Translator/ Editor (Kritya) / Director Poetry festivals -Kritya and Vedic scholar. She has 5 collections of poetry in Hindi and two in English (Translated by poet) and one each into Malayalam, Italian, Estonian, and Vietnamese translated by other poets. Her poems have been translated into other international languages like Chinese, Albanian, Spanish, Uzbek, Indonesian, Spanish, German etc. She has a travelogue in Hindi “Cheenti ke par”, a Memoir in English “Everything is past tense “, and a criticism on the work of famous Malayalam Poet Balamaniyamma’s work. Her study on the Atharvaveda has been published as “The Seeds of the Mind- a fresh approach to the study of Atharvaveda” under the fellowship of the Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts. She has translated about 12 Malayalam works, both prose and poetry, into Hindi and two poetry books of Norwegian poets, one each from Welsh, Vietnamese. She has a number of articles published regarding Indology in a number of journals. She has been invited for poetry reading in more than 22 prestigious poetry festivals around the world, among some are very popular e.g. The Struga Poetry Evening (Macedonia) (2010) the prestigious poetry festival in Medellin -Colombia (2011 and 2014), 10th Edition of “Ritratti di Poesia” Feb 2016 and China’s Moon Festival and Shanghai book fair. She is the only Indian participant in some imp poetry festivals like Iran’s Fair Poetry Festival, Iran (2014), International Istanbul Poetry Festival (IIPF) Turkey (2014), 4th international Eskisehir Poetry Festival Turkey (2014). And a Special poetry reading in A Caruna, Spain (2015), Poetry reading at Foundation Vicente Risco, at Allariz (Spain). She has also been invited to some American Universities like Mary Mount University in Los Angeles and University of Seattle (USA) to talk on Vedic poetry and recite her own poetry. She is one of founder member, and member of coordinate committee Of the World Poetry Movement. Her poem was poem been chosen in popular book of china “110 modern poems of the world”) 2015, ” Her poem was also part of space mission by Jaxa, Japan, along with 24 other poems. In 2002. She was also artist in Former Artist-in-residence at Ebenboeckhaus Munich and Artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Villa Waldberta. Her Awards- Fellowship by Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts in 2004-5, Sahitya Akademi Award for Translation 2000, Sate Bank of Travancore Award for poetry 2001, Naji Naaman’s Literary Prizes (International) for 2016.
