About the Book
The essays and transcripts of Dilip Chitre brought together here are valuable in themselves as they offer a commentary on the Indian sense of tradition and the contemporary attitudes to literature. Every piece is of interest in itself. But, their greater worth lies in that they articulate the perspective of one of our most admirable poets on many issues that mattered to him. Taken together, they provide a basis for fathoming his poetry and should help us in making a more nuanced sense of it. Chitre was a fascinating poet, but it is not possible to say that his poetry was easily accessible to most of his readers. Like W. B. Yeats, he weaves in his poems experiences that arise in a given moment (such as the felling of a tree in his father’s house) together with many layers of timeless human quests and anxieties. He brings together silence and euphoria in an imagistic mix that is difficult to name with any precision. It is hence that this
volume of his comments, essays, lectures and other texts should be of importance for the lovers of Dilip Chitre’s literary works.
– Ganesh N Devy
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Here is a poet who captivates us, enchants us into spaces that “have two doors and no exit”.
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Jennifer Robertson’s poems invite us to a world of “intimate strangeness” where poetry is “nuts and waywardness” and poets are “hoodlums” who leave behind “delinquencies” as their legacy. Although thickly silted with references to literature, painting and cinema, this is not a world of glibness or slick cultural sophistication. A throbbing vein of disquiet runs through Folie à Deux reminding us of relationships that could lean towards “darkness and magic”; lives lived in “intermission” with fragments spilling over “in the dark, under the seat”; and a self that yearns to drown into “a sunken civilisation”. This is a poetry of crafted surfaces and unexpected trenches, beeping microwaves and buried cities – allusive and “alluvial” all at once. Folie à Deux is a strong, self-assured début.
– Arundhathi Subramaniam, author of Wild Women
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Unmappable Moves
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Reading Unmappable Moves, I had the strangest sensation of time expanding and closing in. These are taut, enigmatic poems—lightning flashes with bright, insistent heartbeats.—TISHANI DOSHILethal tales of sex and death that left me pining for more of Sampurna Chattarji’s mysterious lyric inventions.—JEET THAYIL -
All That I Wanna Do (Marathi)
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Dear Sanjeev,
I read your poem yesterday ( last evening). Globalisation, and the consequent private Americanisation, corporatisation, computers, mobiles, mall culture and the decline of humanity
in every aspect of life is your concern, and mine too. That you and I have felt that comes with this new kind of life, and the regret that we feel because we cannot deter this decline or escape from it, the sarcastic presentation of the never-ending story of our contemporary miseries appear in your in the poem one after another; and interestingly (your) style neither accepts any poetic form nor it is written in any poetic language, and just as you were exhausted while carving a new definition of poetry, I was exhausted while reading your poem – this is what precisely I want to tell you by writing this exhausting second sentence. What you have expressed in this poem is the philosophy of this new way of life. Of course, I think it's significant that while presenting this philosophy afresh, you haven’t pretended that you are a philosopher!
Yours
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Nivdak AbhidhaNantar
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अभिधा सुरू असताना ग्लोबलायझेशझेनची प्रक्रिया सुरू झाली होती. आमच्या काही कविता आणि याच दरम्यान स्वतःला आलेलं जगण्याचं नवं भान, ग्लोबलायझेशझेनमुळेमुळे बदललेला भोवताल आणि या सर्वांमुळे उमजलेले लिहिण्याचंही नवीन भान ह्या ‘अभिधा’मधून आम्ही दिलेल्या किंवा आम्ही मिळविलेल्या काही गोष्टी.
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Feeling happy to see great documentation of our work in Marathi from the late nineteen nineties. Abhidhanantar was a major movement in Marathi that self-consciously highlighted the transformation of our society and culture due to the processes of the post-1989 phase of hyper globalisation that has created the world as we understand today. Our generation was at
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This outstanding collection of personal essays, sharp analysis, unusual photographs, and poetic reflections focuses on Greece and its people as they found themselves in the eye of a storm that continues to shake Europe and the world. Ranging widely from economics and politics to social and environmental issues, and from cultural and diasporic interactions to literature and the arts, the essays and other materials have been put together in ways that attract, inform, and challenge the reader no matter where she or he may reside. Presenting a roster of distinguished contributors, the editors offer a variety of perspectives, points of information, and allusions, which substantially add to ongoing debates on how individuals and groups may proceed in challenging circumstances. Greece: A Modern Odyssey is being published by Mumbai-based Paperwall Media & Publishing, in memory of the late Hatto Fischer, the German poet and philosopher who lived in Greece and brought this volume together with his wife Anna Arvanitaki.
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Throughout Variations on Silence, Nadia Mifsud draws us into intimate scenes and gestures,
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– John Wall Barger, The Elephant of SilenceAs Dante said, love is what moves the sun and the other stars – but it is also what flows
through all things, binding them together. This is what breathes in the silences – namely, in
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Every verb in Nadia Mifsud's work shimmers, echoes, and rappels down the cliffside of a
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Where Is the Mouth of That Word?
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I breathed. I looked up. I saw her standing in the line of fire, “simply standing/on the last line of
this page”, asking, as she looked me in the eye, “Where are you reading from?”And that, dear readers, who are about to encounter Maryam’s poems for the first time, is the
question.
You can Google her, you can hear her speak 1 , you can explore her intersecting engagements as an essayist, translator, and academic.
But first, you can find her here, as I did, in a selection of her poems – from early to later, from the spoken word to the “vocal infection of the page”, from rant to reflection, plea to command.
You could, in obeyance, “Turn the page, and leave!”
You could be sentenced
to an expired word:
(Silence)You could hear the tanin (echo) of Sepehri’s hich (nothingness) reverberating at the same frequency with which you see Dali’s ‘The Echo of the Void’ hovering in your line of vision.
You could, and you will.
For now, all that matters is knowing (asking!) where you read from.
And as for the title we eventually chose – where is the mouth of that word?
Wherever there is one – fearless enough to speak it.– Sampurna Chattarji
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Three Stories – Jibanananda Das
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Reading Jibanananda Das’s stories is like entering straight into the middle-class Bengali mind with its desire, ambition, morbidity and despair. Through the narratives around three men whose melancholy defines the structure of these three stories, the writer re-examines the concepts of success and failure, desire and fulfillment, love and weariness, ennui and death. While the insights are those of a poet, these stories marked by Jibanananda’s deep involvement with Bengali landscape, cuisine and culture, transcend his lyrical impulse to become proper, if technically innovative, short stories with the touch of a master of the genre. Chandak Chattarji’s English versions have been able to capture the provincial setting and style of the original narratives keeping intact their nuanced psychological implications and larger insights into the human condition.’ – K. Satchidanandan ‘It has been a privilege to discover Das the writer of fiction through Chandak Chattarji’s elegant and sensitive translation of three of the master’s short stories, ‘Chhaya Nat’ (‘Shadow Play’), ‘Gram o Shohorer Galpo’ (‘Tale of City and Village’), and ‘Bilash’ (which retains its original title here).’ – Ranjit Hoskote