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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Salt & Pepper
$20About the Book
Salt and Pepper, Sukrita’s selected poems, present an eloquent, word-induced
silence articulated with remarkable ease. In the centre of the
multisensory, reflective silence dwells memory that pesters and heals, and
shapes a deeper understanding of self and existence, taking one beyond the
mere unmasking of a past. What adds luminosity to Sukrita’s densely textured
poems is the layered and fluid exploration of life experience, without any sense
of closure or finality. — Shafey Kidwai—-
Words are not just words, there is a long journey of emotion, thought and
experience behind them with which Sukrita weaves the weft and the warp of her
poems in shades of Salt and Pepper.— Nirupama Dutt
Girija Sharma: Silence emerges in these poems as a powerful metaphor in the interplay of
images which are impressionistic, symbolic and existential all at once. All noise is cancelled
–what remain are words in the purest form building a symphony of silence.
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Madhavi Apte: Sukrita’s poems are on the one hand illusive and on the other potent like her
own modern, abstract paintings. Most poems combine the elements of a mystique, the erotic
and the emotional, personal and impersonal. The poems are grounded and yet ethereal.
Basudhara Roy : Many-layered, teasing in its apparent simplicity, and haunting in its
profundity…Animated by her painter’s consciousness, Sukrita’s images are terse, pictorial
and at the same time, both concrete and abstract.
The compression, precision, lightness and luminosity of these poems is undeniable. There is,
in them, a simplicity, intensity and finesse that characterizes classical Eastern forms like the
haiku and the tanka.—–
Shyista Khan: the poems reflect an unmediated subjectivity… The
poetic consciousness borders between self-effacement and self
assertion…. -
Variations on Silence
$16About the Book
Throughout Variations on Silence, Nadia Mifsud draws us into intimate scenes and gestures,
as if overhearing lovers mid-conversation. The central figure – almost mythic in scale – is
silence itself, which Mifsud imbues with weight, texture, physical presence. Silence shelters,
stirs, shakes, unwinds, “tastes / of red soil and conifer.” Miriam Calleja’s translation conveys
the ache and longing of that silence with a sensual clarity rare in English. A fabulous book.
– 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
the poems – of Nadia Mifsud : a listening rooted in love, which through love transforms and
reintegrates lovers into the cosmos, restoring the world to something deeply connected to
our humanity. Calleja’s admirable translation – herself a poet – captures this dynamic with
striking clarity and preserves it as the central energy of the work. The encounter between
these two poets ultimately offers us a book of poetry, not merely a book of poems – I repeat:
a cohesive and coherent work, held together by a vision both profound and vast. Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, Rilke’s Duino Elegies… The poetry found in this book is capable of
traversing time and resisting it, of crossing space to bind us – irrevocably – to this cosmos,
and in that bond, to reveal the secret of life.– Pietro Federico, Most of the Stars
Every verb in Nadia Mifsud's work shimmers, echoes, and rappels down the cliffside of a
stanza. Valences expand through repetition; "waves like jaws" locate the oceanic motion. One physically hears and feels the island of Malta in the tension between the isolation,
refrain, and the sea returning to shore, empty-handed. Miriam Calleja's attentive translation brings these affects and "sea-scented places" into English without forsaking the resonances and echoes of "cockleshells" past. Variations on Silence touches the hem where displacement circles the idea of place and results in lyric. The mode is modern; the echoes are ancient; the book is irresistible.– Alina Stefanescu, My Heresies
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The Magic Hand of Chance
$24ABOUT THE BOOK
Covering a range of subjects, mainly to do with poetry, its daily interventions, its work, this book adds to the selections of Adil Jussawalla’s prose that have appeared before: in Maps for a Mortal Moon, and in I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky. In his chapter on Jussawalla in a forthcoming book, Vidyan Ravinthiran says ‘[His} time-shifts don’t feel erratic because his prose only becomes inexact when to do so seems the only option – when it comes to resisting subliminal pressures. Every sentence is saturated with thought, changes are rung on prior phrases, in a manner inspired by real-world vexations but not without an element of self-relishing play.’
Poetrywala is happy to offer you more such prose.
‘To observe, to give witness, to hold in the memory the bereaved cow, the boy who has come to deliver the groceries, the poet in transit, the little boy who wet his pants laughing and who wept because a bird died, all these pass under the Jussawalla scanner, all these are transformed by the act of writing. Jussawalla’s fight against the Indian predilection for amnesia is relentless. He will not let you forget.’ – Jerry Pinto, from his Introduction in Maps for a Mortal Moon
‘Jussawalla’s curiosity is patently omnivorous and extends far into many disciplines and knowledges, drawing not least on Parsi, Hindu and Christian sources, science and social science, local politics or birdwatching. A continual subtheme throughout is the memory of Britain and Europe in the post-war years… considered not from an outsider’s point of view but with the deepest sympathy.’
– Vivek Narayanan, from his Introduction in I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky
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Where Is the Mouth of That Word?
$16About the Book
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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All that I Wanna Do (English)
$16About Book
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
Hemant Divate
August 28, 2004
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Stray Poems
$20About the Book
Abhay K. strikes such a cheerful, sensual and sunny note in so many of his individual poems…with a pure, ringing sound and rhythm all of his own.
—Gabriel Rosenstock, Poet, Ireland
Abhay K. is a trusted guide to modern poetry, to the journey in which we are seeking truth, peace and justice…feel the spirit of God coursing through his lines.
—Indran Amirthanayagam, Poet, USA
About the Book
Stray Poems takes you on a poetic ride across the world, to the moon and planets in our Solar System and to the far reaches of the Universe and then back to our glorious Earth! Bon Voyage!
