Sonia Mukherji was born in Kolkata and recently moved to London after living in New York for ten years. She graduated from the Kundiman fellowship program and her poetry has been published and translated in the U.S. and internationally in literary journals including Stylus, Shampoo Poetry, Urhalphool, Kolkata’s The Little Magazine, Prothom Alo, The Dhaka Tribune, Bhorer Kagoj and the J’aipur Journal. She was a finalist for the Amy Awards and the AALR a lettre initiative. She was given an international poetry feature in Kolkata, which was held at the cultural institute Nandan, hosted by the Bengali poet Subodh Sarkar, reviewed by the literary journal Bhashanagar, and televised.
Bhupen Hazarika was posthumously awarded the highest civilian honour in India this year, the Bharat Ratna. He was a man who dreamt, felt and sang international solidarity. An award for international solidarity was named after him in 2011 and was given out this year to Singapore film-maker, Eric Khoo.
Bhupen Hazarika was born in Assam, India, on 8th September 1926. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades. His lyrics have crossed the borders of time and place and celebrate humanitarian concerns of mankind. Today we commemorate his 93rd birth anniversary with a recording of a Bengali rendition of his song, Aami ek Jajabar (I am a wanderer), by the maestro himself and a translation into English of the lyrics so that it can reach out to everyone with its large-heartedness and compassion…
Bhupen Hazarika’s rendition of Aami ek Jajabar (I am a wanderer)
I am a wanderer
(Translated by Mitali Chakravarty, edited by Nabina Das)
Richard Rose is a British writer, university professor and researcher who has been working regularly with teachers and children in India for the past nineteen years. His work has appeared in academic journals, magazines and books in several countries. His play, written with James Vollmar, Letters to Lucia, which celebrates the life of James Joyce’s daughter, Lucia Anna Joyce, received its first performance by Triskellion Irish Theatre in 2018.
31 st August,2019, is the birth centenary of avant-garde writer and poet, Amrita Pritam. Not only were her life and works a rebellion in time and place but some of them flowed with love flavoured by her unusual personality.
One such poem by Amrita Pritam, ‘I will meet you yet again’, has been translated by Dr Uma Trilok, an authority on the avant-garde centenarian and herself a powerful writer and poet. The poem has been recited by no less a person than the legendary Gulzar in original Punjabi . Born Sampooran Singh Kalra, Gulzar is one of the foremost personalities to dominate Bollywood , an Academy Award winning Indian film director, lyricist and poet. In 2007, the maestro brought out an album, Amrita Pritam, recited by Gulzar.
Recitation of ‘Main Tenu Fir Milaan Gi’ by Gulzar in Punjabi
I will meet you, yet again
(by Amrita Pritam, translated by Dr Uma Trilok)
I will meet you
Yet again
How, where
I do not know
Uma Trilok in conversation with Mitali Chakravarty
Dr Uma Trilok
Dr Uma Trilok is a small vivacious woman, well-dressed and polite… almost more like a retired college professor. She could be a heroine of one of the novels she writes. But as one reads her poetry in both Hindi, Hindustani, Punjabi and English, one is left wondering what goes on behind that serene, calm exterior.
With her writing, Uma draws word pictures which vividly converse with herself as well as the world outside. Through them she asks questions which enquire and eventually appear on her canvas as expressions of love, anguish, loss, hope, smiles and unions. Acclaimed and awarded, she has the rare art of balancing joy with pain which subtly leaves the reader with a profound sense of hope, courage and enterprise. “Her moving and touchy narrative brings out the deeply spiritual aspect of her writing,” writes India Today.
Besides being an acclaimed bilingual poet, her short stories and novels have been staged as plays. “She presents her lines with a unique facility of phrase and depth of feeling. In the play of her words, myriad moods of anguish and ecstasy come to the fore vividly,” writes the Journal of Poetry Society of India.
Uma Trilok has written award winning books including her much acclaimed debut novel, Amrita Imroz: A Love Story. In all, she has penned 16 books. Here, in this exclusive, she talks of how she started writing and what she sees as her future.
Mitali: When did you start writing? Can you tell us what put you on the path of writing? What was your inspiration? Do you have any book, music or art that inspires you?
Uma: At the age of 32, I was the heading a college for women in Mahashri Dayanand University. While sitting in a quiet environment, when students were taking their exams, a poem arrived, and I put it on a paper…That was the beginning.
Prior to that, I taught at Delhi University. Trained in Indian classical Music and Kathak dance, I sang at the All India Radio and gave dance performances at places like Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi. I had to conceal this part of myself from the conservative management of the women’s college. My journey as a poet started as a result of this trammel, way back in the 1970s. My creativity needed to flow somehow in some direction. I picked up the pen, a safe medium.
Nabina Das’s poems appear in Poetry Foundation, Prairie Schooner, Indian Literature (National Academy of Letters), Caravan, Sangam House poetry, The Indian Quarterly, Economic and Political Weekly, Dhaka Tribune, The Yellow Nib Anthology (Queens University, Belfast), and Six Seasons Review, among several others. Her third poetry collection and fifth book Sanskarnama (Red River, 2017, India) has been mentioned as one of the best poetry books of 2018 (OPEN Magazine). Nabina is a 2017 Sahapedia-UNESCO fellow, a 2012 Charles Wallace creative writing alumna (Stirling University, Scotland), and a 2016 Commonwealth Writers feature correspondent. Born and brought up in Guwahati, Assam, India, Nabina’s other poetry collections are Into the Migrant City (Writers Workshop, 2013, India), and Blue Vessel (Les Editions du Zaporogue, 2012, Denmark). Her first novel is Footprints in the Bajra (Cedar Books, 2010, India) , and her short fiction volume is titled The House of Twining Roses: Stories of the Mapped and the Unmapped (LiFi Publications, 2014, India). A 2012 Sangam House, a 2011 NYS Summer Writers Institute, and a 2007 Wesleyan Writers Conference creative writing alumna, Nabina is the co-editor of 40 under 40, an anthology of post-globalisation poetry (Poetrywala, 2016, India).
Wole Soyinka was the first Nigerian author, poet, playwright and essayist to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He has taught in number of universities, including Cornell, Oxford, Harvard and Yale.
Soyinka had been living in America for twenty years before President Trump came to power. He was a scholar-in-residence at New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs when he tore up his green card.He said: “I had a horror of what is to come with Trump… I threw away the card and I have relocated, and I’m back to where I have always been.” He returned to Africa.
Reena Prasad’s poems have been published in The Copperfield Review, First Literary Review-East, Angle Journal, Poetry Quarterly, York Literary Review, Lakeview International Journal, Duane’s Poe Tree, Mad Swirl etc. She is also the Destiny Poets UK’s Poet of the year for 2014 and one of the editors of The Significant Anthology released in July 2015. She was adjudged second in the ‘World Union Of Poet’s’ poetry competition, 2016 and won an award for poetry in the 2016 As ‘You Like It International Poetry Contest’, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare. She won the Reuel International Prize for poetry, 2018.
