Indian Poetry Collection – 3 Book Set

About the Books

1. How Silkworms Break Their Eggs: Selected Poems by Mridul Dasgupta

A representative anthology of poems by one of Bengal’s most revered poets, Mridul Dasgupta, translated from the Bengali into English by Anindita Mukherjee

“This stunning collection introduces English speakers to Mridul Dasgupta, a major contemporary Bengali poet of tremendous lyric range and power, in dynamic translations that evoke each hummingbird-like shift of mood, feeling, tempo and diction.”

– Joy Ladin, author of Once out of Nature and Family: Poems

2. Of Scars And Moonlight – Selected Poems by Chaitali Chattopadhyay

“Will you not marry ?
After sunset, a grey line
lies across the horizon.
Many have seen it,
yet I could never find”

Living up to the phrase “less is more” for its brevity, a typical Chaitali Chattopadhyay poem with its striking imageries and evocative metaphors sets the readers on a transformative journey most unobtrusively. The poems have the sure intent of impacting upon places in our minds where we need to reclaim our space as women, or more broadly speaking as individuals in a society ridden with inequality. The translations in this volume most faithfully retain the throb and fervour of the original poems.

3. The Opposite Banks and other Poems by Ramchandra Pramani

In The Opposite Bank and Other Poems by poet Ramchandra Pramanik, the translated poems are primarily selections from his two volumes of poetry Ushri Pare Ratir and Madhuram. Sreejata Paul’s skilled translations of Pramanik’s nuanced poetry, opens up new vistas of poetic expression, that adroitly combines sense and sensibility, wit and irony, philosophical and caustic reflections about the world and the self trapped within the unpredictable world of indeterminism. Pramanik’s poems are often brief, like master strokes of a paint brush that recount stories of the past as well as inscribe the present. His three ‘Tiger’ poems and the three-part ‘Poetry of Contemplation’ along with ‘Missed Call’, ‘Daydream’ and ‘Metamorphosis’ among many others, span a wide trajectory, from the empirical to the ontological, with noticeable poetic elan. The following lines prove the skills of both poet Ramchandra Pramanik and his translator Sreejata Paul–

Are laughter and joy sisters?

What a juxtaposition! Perhaps co-wives? Daggers drawn!