In a free-wheeling discussion with Manu Dash, the eminent poet K Satchidanandan says, “….A poet has to believe in the truth of poetry; what his/her imagination seizes in words is truth for him/her while someone may call it a beautiful lie, as would Plato who thought poetry was twice removed from reality.”
Read this and other conversations with notable poets Mamang Dai and CL Aboobacker
Reviewing “Arundhati Roy – Critical Perspectives,’ edited by Murari Prasad, Prof R S Sharma notes, “This compilation is critically valuable, immensely informative and up to date. [However] quite a few of the essays operate within the single parameter of postcolonialism ….”
The section also offers reviews of Rita Nath Keshari’s “The Postcolonial Encounter: India in the British Imagination” by R K Singh and Santosh Kumar’s “Helicon” by Maria Cristina Azcona.
In a moving story “That Kind of a Place,” woven around lives caught in the trauma of modern-day violence, M K Chand Raj laments through his character, “…All I wish is to take my child Ansari, yes my Yadu, and escape out of Al Arif - out of this hellhole. To a place where war will never touch us … That kind of a place!”
Read other compelling stories by Prayas Abhinav, Sundara Ramaswamy and Suseela Ravi in the section.
“I loved her in secret ways / And now our love is a secret whisper. /
I promised her the spring, / Her tears were the only parting gifts I received.”
Read the compelling lines of Nikesh Murali in “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” as a tribute to Pablo Neruda. And many more equally compelling poems in the section.
