Interviewed by Jagari Mukherjee Sahana Mukherjee is a Charles Wallace fellow at the University of Edinburgh in Creative Writing (2017). She is always trying to understand the language of silence. August Ache is her debut book of poems. 1. There is a sense of grief pervading the poems in August Ache. Rain/monsoon/water constitute sustained metaphor in…
Book Review: The Girl Aquarium by Jen Campbell
Jen Campbell’s full-length poetry collection is out from Bloodaxe Books, UK. It is titled The Girl Aquarium. The title poem gave me chills. It is about an aquarium full of girls who aren’t ‘normal’ and people visit them like one would visit a zoo. In The Girl Aquarium, Campbell challenges us to see the world differently…
Book Review: Fieldnotes On Ordinary Love by Keith S. Wilson
Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for advance review copy. Review by Jagari Mukherjee In Shakespeare’s problem play, Troilus and Cressida, the eponymous heroine remarks, “For to be wise, and love/ Exceeds man’s might; that dwells with gods above.” Keith Wilson’s Fieldnotes On Ordinary Love explores the interplay of affection in all its myriad aspects. The…
Book Review: Sight Lines by Arthur Sze
Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for advance review copy. Review by Linda Ashok In the white US and saffron India, there isn’t a sensible human being who isn’t aware of the violent shadow of discrimination. From here, if we paraglide to the most revered act of paying attention and then drill our focus a few…
Book Review: Soft Targets by Deborah Landau
Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for advance review copy. Deborah’s poems are poems born out of necessity, poems that beget an intuitive response from us, poems to whose familiarity we nod: the fear and anxiety of living in today’s world. Her poems explore in vivid, masterfully crafted lines what it is like to live in…
Book Interview: Two Full Moons by Vinita Agrawal
Interviewed by Jagari Mukherjee Vinita Agrawal’s recent book, “Two Full Moons” published by Bombaykala Books received a handsome reception by poets across the country and abroad. We quote Preeti Vangani who reviewed her book on Firstpost.com; “Like Hughes, for Agrawal, the moon oft-times becomes her dutiful muse but also morphs into a storekeeper of everything…
Book Review: Oceanic by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Before moving to California, I spent most of my life in the overcrowded, fast-paced, industrial city of Mumbai. While we lived not far from a small public garden, the closest I ever got to witnessing nature was by observing our pet goldfish in action. There was also one occasion in the fourth grade when we…
Book Interview: Patron Saint of Cauliflower by Elizabeth Cohen
Interviewed by Linda Ashok In the words of Jericho Brown, Elizabeth Cohen’s Patron Saint of Cauliflower is matter of fact and practical: “I am preparing for the end of the world.” Cohen takes the most ordinary of images and glories in them as signs for trouble and triumph throughout human existence. And she does this…
Who are you Brendan Constantine? Part II
This is perhaps one of the most exciting interviews of our time and we are happy to share this with you. Two poets, across time-zones, discuss opportunities of wider poetic representation of Asian poets in Asia with particular reference to poets from India, America’s select literary amnesia among others and ways to remedy the gap…
Who are you Brendan Constantine? Part I
This is perhaps one of the most exciting interviews of our time and we are happy to share this with you. Two poets, across time-zones, discuss opportunities of wider poetic representation of Asian poets in Asia with particular reference to poets from India, America’s select literary amnesia among others and ways to remedy the gap…