Rituals - Softcover

Sengupta, Kiriti

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9387883523 ISBN 13: 9789387883529

Publisher: Hawakal Publishers, 2019

Synopsis

Rituals is a remarkable collection of poems by renowned poet, translator, editor and critic Kiriti Sengupta. This latest book explores the panoply of human experience and elucidates the meanings and rhythms of a mature poetic life. “Customs are like meditation,” writes Sengupta as he weaves religious liturgy and the opera of gods as the quotidian backdrop of a married life and experiences with his son. Not just interested in the matter of appearances as a poet, he delves into questions of what makes an Indian and how Hindu goddesses can strengthen willpower and remove the ‘venom’ from life. The mythological and the quotidian blend and inform one another, the goddess appears in iterations of the wife, the daughter, the mother. These poems also talk about Monsoon and Muri as snacks that overlap with dialogues of intellect and Sanskrit. Themes such as nakedness and nudity are explored from the point of view of youth and maturity. Striking imagery marks the passing of time on everyday objects where the speaker can now stop and observe the beauty of human traces on life, “My tired eyes uncover the kohl of night.” The speaker is not only interested in contemplating the beauty of everyday moments but also faces his reader with the violence of the modern world, in the poem “The Untold Saga” the violence of a mythological world mirrors the violence on women practiced often in the 21st century, offering a powerful statement on the untimely death of Nirbhaya in 2012. These poems are also meditations on our place in the world as humans, the vastness of the Earth compared to our frail bodies with the invitation to reconnect to the natural world.

About this title

About the Author:

Kiriti Sengupta, who has been awarded the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize (2018) for his contribution to literature, is a poet, editor, translator, and publisher from Calcutta. He has published nine books of poetry and prose, including Solitary Stillness, Reflections on Salvation, The Earthen Flute, A Freshman's Welcome, Healing Waters Floating Lamps, The Reverse Tree, My Dazzling Bards, My Glass of Wine, The Reciting Pens, and The Unheard I; two books of translation, Desirous Water by Sumita Nandy, Poem Continuous-Reincarnated Expressions by Bibhas Roy Chowdhury; and he is the co-editor of five anthologies, Scaling Heights, Jora Sanko-The Joined Bridge, Epitaphs, Sankarak, and Selfhood. Sengupta's poems have been published/accepted for publication at The Common, The Florida Review Online (Aquifer), Headway Quarterly, Moria Online, The Mark Literary Review, Mad Swirl, among other places. More at www.kiritisengupta.com

Review:

“[These] poems inhabit a space between poetry and aphorism in the way he compresses thoughts and pitches them in a tiny enclosed space. It is the job of a poet to defamiliarize the ordinary. In Rituals, Sengupta does an intriguing job of distilling wisdom from the dross of our daily life, a necessary condition for the possibility of poetry and living.” —  Cafe Dissensus 

“Sengupta’s poems occasionally dwell on the seamy side of our existence and thus impel readers to identify the agony hidden under the veiled rapture of human life.” — World Literature Today

“It is this condensation of thought that is the hallmark of Sengupta’s poems.” — The Statesman

“Sengupta tries to draw the readers inside the miniature world of philosophy he creates.” — The New Indian Express

About this edition

• Publisher: Hawakal Publishers
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 9387883523
• ISBN 13: 9789387883529
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 102
• Illustrator: Das Partha Pratim