Book Review: I’m Your Poet by Nilim Kumar

Poet and Critic Gopal Lahiri reviews Nilim Kumar’s poetry collection I’m your poet (Published by Red River 2022), translated from the Assamese by Dibyajyoti Sarma.

• ISBN: 978-81-950900-6-8
• Publisher: Red River, New Delhi-110091
• Price: Rs 399/-

Poetry is a life-cherishing force and it requires a vision, a faith, a design, and an orderliness. But it is the language, refined and inventive, that lies beneath your thoughts and delivers the results. There can be no better example than Nilim Kumar, an eminent Assamese poet. There is a deep plaintiveness in the way he writes his poems, in his lyrics of faith and faithlessness. 

It is true that translation is a process of disseminating cultures. In his engaging book titled ‘I’m Your Poet- Selected Poems,’ Dibyajyoti Sarma brings those intrinsic nuances of Nilim Kumar’s Assamese poems into the English language and makes them his own form. His choice of words is not only shaped by the language but also by the traditions of Assamese Culture and Ethos.