Molossus is an 'online broadside of intelligent world conversation' created by David Shook, one of Jenny Lewis's gifted students on the Oxford University Creative Writing Master of Studies. David invited Jenny to be the UK contributor. Below are samples of her first two articles: a review of Aria, Sudeep Sen's book of poetry translations, and an interview with the distinguished poet K. Satchidanandan. A more recent contribution is a poem from Delhi (read more about Jenny's residency in New Delhi).
The Transcending of Tongues
It isn't often that poetry makes you gasp; the last time, for me, was many years ago on first reading Sylvia Plath's poem Edge in which the moon is shown "Staring from her hood of bone. // Her blacks crackle and drag." The poems of Mandakranta Sen also induce a sharp intake of breath. To quote K. Satchidanandan (Molossus, July 2009) Mandakranta Sen is one of the brave women poets who "are fighting patriarchy and evolving their own mode of writing often organised around the female body and self". Her poems can be found in translation in Sudeep Sen's marvellous new book of translations, Aria, which has just won the A.K. Ramanujan Prize.
Sudeep's highly praised books include Postmarked India, Prayer Flag and Distracted Geographies. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages and his writings have appeared in leading international and national journals and been widely broadcast. In Aria he offers a synthesis of his abilities as a poet and translator to bring to the wider public an anthology of work by 17 South Asian poets (ranging from Rabindranath Tagore and Gulzar to lesser known and newer voices) and 10 writers from other parts of the world. The translated languages range from Hindi, Bengali and Urdu to Korean, Hebrew, Icelandic, Persian, Macedonian, Polish and Spanish.
Aria: Poetry Translations by Sudeep Sen. (Yeti Books, Calicut & Mulfran Press, Cardiff) Rs.399 & £11.99
The Mad Are Not Mad like Us
K. Satchidanandan (Satchi) is a poet of national and international repute writing in Malayalam. He was Professor of English at Christ College, University of Calicut, Kerala, editor of Indian Literature, the journal of the Sahitya Akademi (The National Academy of Letters) and later its Chief Executive.
He has 21 collections of poetry in Malayalam, 16 collections of world poetry in translation and 23 collections of critical essays and interviews besides three collections of essays in English and several works in Malayalam, English and Hindi. I heard him read at the Delhi International Literary Festival in December 2008 and in April 2009 at Kellogg College, Oxford and was astonished by the luminosity, depth and humanity of his poetry.
Satchi took time out from his busy week to talk to me about Indian poetry, translation and the kind of verse that is spoken by parrots. Read the interview - and a sample of his poetry - here.
Photograph of Sudeep Sen © Sara Bowman; cartoon © Geoff Gossett.