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Sabitha Satchi

Sabitha Satchi was born in Kerala, India, and educated in Kerala, Delhi, and London. She taught English in Delhi University for fifteen years.

Sabitha’s poems have been published in anthologies including Writing Love: An Anthology of Love Poetry (Rupa, 2010), Poetry with Prakriti (Prakriti Foundation, 2008), Singing in the Dark (Penguin Random House, 2021), Witness (Red River, 2021, forthcoming), Extinction Violin: The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets (Penguin, 2021, forthcoming), and in journals including The Little Magazine, Indian Literature, The Four Quarters, Muse India, Palm Leaf (U.K.), Poetry Potion (South Africa), Scroll.in, and guftugu.in. Her poems in Slovenian translation have appeared in Poetikon.
 
Sabitha is a member of the Afro-Asia project of South African and Indian poets and musicians, Insurrections Ensemble, with four albums and booklets published in South Africa since 2012. She has been invited to read her poetry in many festivals and venues.
 
Sabitha’s poems in Malayalam, as Sabitha T P, have been published in journals including Mathrubhumi, Malayalam, Bhashaposhini, Madhyamam, Kerala Kavita, Samakaleena Kavita, Anyonyam and Truecopy Think. She has published her essays on literature, art, and cultural theory in several anthologies and journals.
 
Sabitha has been the recipient of the Paul Mellon Fellowship (Yale Center for British Art, U.S.A.), Commonwealth Scholarship (U.K.), Sarai-CSDS Fellowship (Delhi, India), Charles Wallace Fellowship (British Council, India), and Vyloppilli Memorial Sreerekha Award for Poetry in Malayalam.
 
Writer and art curator, Sabitha is now based in New Delhi.

  • Hereafter

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    Hereafter is astonishing as a first volume, each poem adroitly handled with the freshness of youth and  the ability only maturity grants. It could stand out with the best  poetry on equal terms . I found each poem tightly structured, with not a word out of place. Only a gifted poet assured of her abilities would attempt to ‘tease  the contours of a poetic line… to coax it out of its taut shell.’  Stuck in my memory are the lines from an anti war poem:

    where every supper could be the last / where every candle is lit for the dead / where every prayer is a cry of the living / where every string is tuned to a requiem.

    -Keki N. Daruwalla

    Sophisticated, intelligent poetry for an international readership, marked by a flair for history and genuine compassion for sentient beings.  Sabitha is as much at home with the ordinary as she is with

    the bizarre:

    At two at night

       a bloated Lord Krishna

       floats up, dead

       in the Yamuna. 

    One is not likely to forget such lines in a hurry. What a debut! Where does she go from here? I’m already looking forward to her next book.

            -Gabriel Rosenstock

    $16