Sutanuka Ghosh Roy reviews Angshuman Kar’s poetry collection, Wound is the Shelter (Published by Hawakal Publishers, 2023), and observes how the book has a lingering aftertaste.
- ISBN: 978-93-87883529 (Paperback)
- Page: 93
- Edition: (2023)
- Published by Hawakal Publishers New Delhi, Calcutta-India.
- Price: Rs 350.
Angshuman Kar is an academic, a Bengali poet, and a novelist. In Wound is the Shelter the poet has translated seventy-four of his poems written in Bengali to English. Self-translation is shrouded in ambiguity and authors who translate themselves are unhappy including Arun Kolatkar who translated his poems from Marathi into English. In the introduction to the book Kar writes, “While translating my poems, I only worry a little about my loyalty to the original. When I read my Bengali poems, I read them as a passive reader. When I read them as a translator, I become active”. The translated poems emanate the same passion and energy as his source text. In some poems, Kar’s consciousness as a self-translator does make the poems a little different and, in the process, makes the poems another original text.