Wednesday 28 June 2017

RIJUREKH CHAKRAVARTY - Featured Poet

LETHE 

Memories are blank!
Dreams crisscross to be fulfilled with perplexity.
Infinity doesn’t care to put a mark on the pages.
When the craft of language, learned, is wasted,
Such nights come back
Amidst the sound of the crickets,
In the imagery of a palpable moon,
In the passionate urge for art,  
And the birds, I see, switch nests
Carrying dreams on their wings -
The dreams that would be wiped out
By the first rays of daylight.
That’s the rule of Lethe,
You know, Dorian,
Don’t you?
And if someday,
In a gloom as profound as sin,
I fail to recall even the oblivion,
Tell me, Achilles,
Should I be grateful to you?
Should I?

Translation: Dipankar Mukhopadhyay

TO BE PUBLISHED SHORTLY IN THE PEN INDIA JOURNAL

Bio

Born and brought up in Kolkata, Rijurekh Chakravarty started his writing career with Bengali poems in his college days. His first poem was published in the DESH magazine when he has 19. His first book of poem got published in the year 1992. Till now he has six books of poems under his belt. He has been awarded with as many as five literary prizes and honours. He has also penned three novels in Bengali, one of which, published during the Kolkata International Book Fair this year, is a crime thriller. Another novel by him, written 22 years back, is going to be published in book form in August this year.

Monday 19 June 2017

GOUTAM GARY DATTA - Featured Poet

The Serpent Crawls Down

The serpent crawls down ninety pyramid steps
as the equinox light pierces
through the temple window to kiss its head.
East, south, north darken
as its vertebrae creep on hot west stones
while a thousand cheering voices
resonate Mayan walls in Chichen Itza.
What are they celebrating?
Is it the lost?
Or the tourism through the dug outs & the remnants?
Where have the Mayans gone? Who could tell?
As we walk pass the stoned pyramid, hollow ball field,
hanging hoops, listening to colorful stories from guides
to the next resort, tequila bars, swimming pools.
We break bread; bathe in the bright Mayan sun of Cancun,
talk, complain about foods, and put on sun tan lotion.
We forget, we sleep, dream the ruins
as the serpent crawls across the scorching fields.

First published in Rattapallax Magazine, NYC.

Bio:
Goutam Datta is the author of five books of poems; He writes in both English and Bengali . He is the co-editor of African American poetry Anthology Ami Amar Mritur Por Sadhinota Chai Na (I Do Not Want My Freedom When I Am Dead ) with Sunil Gangopadhyay. His works are included in "A Mingling of Waters", an anthology of Bengali and American authors and Rattapallax magazine. Goutam won Jassimuddin Poetry Award(India) in 2005 for Borofay Holood Fool. Sudhindranath Award in 2008, Vashangar Award in 2017. At present, Goutam is working on a webzine Uralpool to create a continuous literary exchange between India & the USA.


Wednesday 14 June 2017

KUSHAL PODDAR - Featured Poet

Houses Without Rooms

Tonight the wife 
living on a handcart 
outside your house
will writhe under
her drunken husband
and will swear-

Never more!

and will love him ever more,
and their daughter will know-
tomorrow she will have
a new doll her father 
can never afford.

Tonight I strolled

all the way to your house.
It remains painted white.
Back on my bed I ride
a handcart of sleep
with you and our Cain and Abel.
I promise I shall buy
a toy earth for each of them,
if you let me fix the heaven again.

Bio:
Kushal Poddar is presently living at Kolkata and writing poetry. He authored chapbook ‘The Circus Came To My Island’ (Spare Change Press), full length books “A Place For Your Ghost Animals” (Ripple Effect Publishing) and Knowing The Neighborhood  (Black Rune Press, Australia), Scratches Within (Amazon), "Kleptomaniac's Book of Unoriginal Poems" (BRP, Australia).

Monday 5 June 2017

SHARMILA RAY - Featured Poet

Valentine’s Day


So much for Valentine’s day
and for all the red roses and red cakes, bunnies and cards…
Laden with fragrance, fluttering glances and anonymous agonies,
love rides on the wind, draped in a shawl of cobweb –clouds, descending
on the city, interweaving with coffee, almond biscotti and stale air conditioning.

In a dimly lit suburb she dreams, making her way through midnight diaries
extending her today to tomorrow and syncing her yesterday with the present.

In malls lovers loll in beer, burger and hallucinating smoke, each a small god
 holding love tight in an hour-glass.

On the fifth floor of a housing complex under a shaded lamp, a scholar writes
a discourse on love beginning with in other words…

Precisely at that moment love snatches a line of Emily Bronte to anoint-
Cold in the earth- and the deep snow piled above thee

Between daybreak and end of the day
Love slides immaculately into many sheaths.
Perhaps, love is trivia
perhaps, love is lost in the labyrinth of language.


Bio:

Sharmila Ray is a poet and non-fiction essayist, anthologized and featured in India and abroad. Her poems, short stories and non fictional essays have appeared in various national and international magazines and journals. She teaches in City College, Kolkata under Calcutta University where she is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of History. She was on the English Board of Sahitya Akademi. She was the editor of The Journal (Poetry Society India) and looked after a column Moving Hand Writes, Times Of India, Kolkata. She writes in English and has authored eight books of poetry; Earth Me And You (Granthalaya, Kolkata 1996), A Day With Rini (Poetry And Art 1998), Down Salt Water (Poets Foundation, Kolkata 1999), Living Other Lives (Minerva Press, New Delhi, Mumbai, London 2004), It’s Fantasy, It’s Reality (Punaschya, Kolkata 2010), With Salt And Brine (Yeti Publishers, Calicut 2013), Windows (Blank Rune Press, Australia 2016), Scrawls And Scribbles (Hawakal Publishers, Kolkata, 2016). She conducted poetry workshops organized by British Council, Poetry Society of India, Sahitya Akademi. She had been invited to International Struga Poetry Evenings, in Macedonia where she represented India and International poets meet in Kerala to share stage with Ben Okri. She was the only poet writing in English from West Bengal to participate in VAK –the first poetry biennial held in New Delhi. She has been reading her poems in various parts of the country. Her poems have been translated into Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Manipuri, Slovene, Hebrew and Spanish.  Currently she is working on a manuscript of non-fictional essays.