Poetry Books
Five Long Poems
Hummingbird Chapbook Series edited by Ashwani Kumar.
A Red River & Indian Novels Collective initiative.
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“In today’s broken world the long poem a statement of belief in the reader.
That she will bridge its sway of ideas, imaginations and ellipse to make it her own.
To the poet the long poem is a dare. That it will create a tapestry of tone and registers. Simultaneously, it is a springboard for experimentation and a hommage to bardic traditions.”
– Priya Sarukkai Chabria
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This series of chapbooks is inspired by Wangari Maathai, Kenyan activist and Noble Prize for Peace awardee. ‘Hummingbirds are distinguished by their dazzling colours, diminutive size, and speedy flight; the only birds that can fly backwards, upside down, sideways and hover in mid-air,’ writes Ashwani Kumar . He extends the humming bird metaphor to this poetry series by emphasising that they are an endangered species, yet sighting them can signal that challenging times are over, and healing can commence.
Sing of Life - Revisioning Tagore's Gitanjali
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Contemplative and courageous, this is a reimagining of Tagore and his work for a new generation of readers.
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'The Daring Act of Rewriting Tagore. 'Sing of Life' reinterprets a classic through an innovative poetic apparatus… Chabria …rejects the Achalayatan of petrified veneration and sets sail in the Sonar Tori (Golden Boat) of poetry.'
— The Daring Act of Rewriting Tagore,
Uttaran Das Gupta, The Wire.in
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'How Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Gitanjali’ got a new rendition in the hands of a modern poet'
'The poems of Priya Sarukkai Chabria are passionate, sensuous and intelligent, full of energy and enterprise. They hold their dramatic shapes with grace and establish her as a poet to read and return to time and again.'
— George Szirtes
Poet, translator, memoirist, T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize winner, Man Booker International winner as translator
‘Her work is absolutely extraordinary. She has an amazing ability to handle historical and mythic material in ways that make them completely new.’
— Dennis Nurkse
Poet, Literature Awardee from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Fellowship.
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'I believe a great poem is one that often serves as a draft or raft for someone else’s poem. Or that is how it should be: A spark or a shift in another’s consciousness.’
— Priya, on Sing of Life
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In this inspired linguistic experiment, Priya seeks to capture that spark and give it new life by chiselling Tagore’s prose-poetry into intense poems that invite us to re-engage with the Gitanjali.
Calling Over Water
The Rules of Radiance:“…(Calling Over Water spans themes that move from the intimate and vulnerable, through questions of the nature of creative expression, into a thoughtful wandering poetic travelogue.) For the acclaimed Indian poet, novelist and translator it is a deeply personal journey.”
— Joseph Schreiber
Roughghosts
“Elaborate references, experiments with form, and dauntless exploration of emotions”
— Uttaran Das Gupta
The Wire
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Reviews:
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Launch:
Youtube
Not Springtime Yet
This new collection of verse by one of India’s most talented poets is exceptional for its haunting lyrical quality as well as for its engagement with mythic and historical forms from the Indian subcontinent, a territory most poets writing in English do not venture into.
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“This collection…presents disturbing ideas and elusive answers…Chabria delicately combines the erudite and the erotic…”( We are returning home to life, she says. It is what she records best.’ )
— Jane Bhandari
Poet, writer, critic Biblio
Dialogue and Other Poems
“Sarukkai Chabria...swoops and dives between space and time…her poems speak for themselves, to the reader and to each other, deliberately and clearly.”
— Arshia Sattar
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‘…a poet who has shifted contemporary Indian English poetry to a different gear altogether…'
— Sunday Herald Articulations
“a highly competent writer aware of form, of poetic conventions in many different language traditions, with a feeling for cadence, lineation, image, compression and sound. She ranges through an impressive variety of themes and manners...Chabria is a pleasure to read.”
— Bruce King
Critic The Little Magazine
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Excerpt:
INVOCATION: SPIRIT OF WATER
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Select Anthologies
Kairos, No News 90 Poets Reflect on a Unique BBC Broadcast (Recent Work Press, Australia), 2020
Rewriting Rabindranath Tagore’s Autobiography: ‘Gitanjali’, Reliquiae, Vol 8.No 2 (Corbel Stone Press, UK), 2020
Dialogue -1 & Fireflies 4, Still We Sing: Voices on Violence Against Women (Dhauli Books, India), 2020
Everyday Things in My Life, Another English: Anglophone Poems From Around The World (Poetry Foundation, Tupelo Press, USA), 2014
The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry (HarperCollins Publishers India, India), 2012
Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (W W Norton &Co.USA), 2008