Saturday, December 06, 2008

Reading at the Sahitya Akademi, Delhi on the 8th

The Sahitya Akademi has its annual exhibition at this time of the year. Also, my book's going into reprint. There's a reading (though not just from my work) at The Sahitya Akademi on Monday, 8th at 5.30pm.

Those of you who are in Delhi, do come.

That's:

5.30 pm, Monday, 8th December 2008.
At Ravindra Bhavan, 35 Ferozeshah Road.

Tea at 5pm.

I've told some of you by email/FB that the reading's at 6.30. I was wrong. It's at 5.30, so do keep that in mind.

**

And here's a review of The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (ed. Jeet Thayil).

7 comments:

Banno said...

Do well. Have a good reading. Take care.

km said...

Since many of us will never know this, how does it feel to say "my book's going into reprint"? :)

Rahul Siddharthan said...

Unfortunately I'm rarely in Delhi. Have fun and I hope there's a follow-up in Chennai sometime.

In Radice's review, I found this sentence spot-on, even though I haven't read the book and have read very few of the poets mentioned:

Unlike the prose writers, Indian poets in English have by and large failed to capture what Kathleen Raine called "the tabla-beat of India". The careful iambics of Ezekiel or Vikram Seth don't carry it, because those are rhythms that did not originate in India and do not go easily with Indian speech. Confident free verse writers such as Kolatkar or Keki Daruwalla come closer, but much, much more could be done. Indian languages are an immeasurably rich rhythmic and metrical resource.

Indeed, Vikram Seth's poetry is brilliant but not particularly Indian. When I think of Indian-language poems or lyrics, they do seem to have a more complex meter than their western counterparts, just as Indian talam is much more complex than typical western 4/4 or 3/4 time signatures. It would be interesting to try and reproduce that complexity in English-language Indian verse, and I don't know if anyone has actually done so.

Space Bar said...

banno: thanks!

km: not sure. actually, what i really want to say is, how the heck did this happen, considering the books aren't even sold from regular bookstores?

rahul: thanks. and that's a point that needs a longer response. more later!

Anonymous said...

best wishes for the event!

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the reprint (as poet in same predicament, no standard distribution, etc, am very encouraged)!

Krishnan said...

Space Bar, I have been a regular to your blog and like it very much. You have been awarded. Please come and pick it up.