Purple Poets
Writer-in-Residence: Kim Morrissey
guest poet: Sudeep Sen
Sudeep Sen
internet workshop poet
2006
guest poet: Camden Green Fair 2008
Sudeep Sen is a poet, translator, editor, publisher
and artist. He lives in New Delhi and London. His award-winning books include:
Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins),
Distracted Geographies, Prayer Flag and, most recently,
Rain. He was written for the Times Literary Supplement,
Guardian, Independent, Observer, Herald, Financial Times, London Magazine,
Literary Review and BBC, and was a visiting scholar at Harvard
University.
He is the editor of ATLAS
a new international literary magazine, launched in June 2006.
For National Poetry Day 2006, Sudeep
turned Great Britain's National Poetry Day into International Poetry Day
with our inter-continental e-mail workshop. Sudeep, on-line in New Delhi,
shared the workshop with the Purple Poets' Writer-in-Residence Kim Morrissey
in London.
In 2008, Sudeep joined the Purple Poets in their reading at the Camden Green
Fair, and held a question and answer session after the reading (archival
dvd in Purple Poets' library).
Poems
by Sudeep Sen
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KISS:
AN HAIKU
Sudeep Sen
a languorous kiss
the faintest smell of ocean
salt lipped breeze, pleading
from Lines of Desire (USA, 2000)
"PRAYER FLAG"
Sudeep Sen
Om, Mani Padme Hum
O, the Jewel in the Lotus
-- inscription on a Tibetan prayer flag
1. MANAS SAROVAR, MT. KKAILASH
Frayed, flapping in the high winds --
prayer flags unravel --
homage to the day's first light.
But today, the dawn is not as bright,
though heavy, brooding, silver-grey
like the lake's shimmering glass-top.
No one is here, except for a woman
staring far away,
wrapped in her sanctity
of continuous linen -- her own sari
like a prayer flag --
though devoid of any colour.
She isn't mourning or crying,
just gazing fixedly
into the water's changing glimmer.
as the sky's wet weight
and the shore's rocky line meet,
their edges meanderingly
melting into the lake itself.
I stood far behind her,
behind everything she saw.
Sudeep Sen
"Offering"
from prayer flag [cd]
(Leeds, Peepal Press, 2003)
also published as "Offering, fluids" in
RAIN (India:MapinLit) 2005
(London:MapinLit) 2006
www.sudeepsen.net
Offering, fluids
Sudeep Sen
the kindess of libation, lyric, and blood.
her endless notes left for me -
little secrets, graces --
trills recorded on blue and purple parchment
to be lipped, tasted, devoured--
only the essence remains--
its stickiness, its juice, its memory --
seamless juxtaposition --
the brute and the passion,
dry of bone
and wet of the sea,
coarseness of the page and smooth of the nib's iridium --
I try and trace a line, a very long line --
the ink blots
as this line's
linear edges
dissolves and fray --
like capillary threads
gone mad,
twirling in
the deep heat of the tropics --
threads unraveling,
each sinew tense with the want of moisture
and the other's flesh --
there are no endings here --
only beginnings- -
precious
incipience --
transclucent drops of sweat
perched precariously on her collar-bone
waiting to slide,
roll unannounced into the gulleys
that yearn to soak in the rain --
heartbeat shift
the shape of globules
as they alter
their balance and colour,
changing their very point of gravity --
constantly deceiving the other
I stand, wanting --
wanting more of the bone's dry edge,
the infinite blur of desire,
the dream,
the wet, the salt, the ink,
and
the underside of her skin
PRAYER FLAG cd available from peepaltreepress
17 King's Avenue, Leeds LS6 1QS, United Kingdom |
Thess poems were performed
by Sudeep Sen
with the West Euston Time Bank Purple Poets
at the Camden Green Fair,
Regent's Park, London, June 1st 2008.
(all poems © Sudeep Sen. All rights reserved).
PRAISE FOR SUDEEP SEN:
'Sen [has] extended the range of Indian verse in English
to encompass a variety of alternative views of language,
history and culture'.
-- Pears Cyclopaedia 2003 (Penguin)
'Sen is an eclectic poet whose understated work eschews fashionable trends,
while exhibiting considerable technical virtuosity and versatility'.
-- JOHN THIEME in Cambridge Guide to Literature in English
[Cambridge University Press]
'Sudeep Sen's poems are a present which bring - like all true poetry - so
much companionship'.
--JOHN BERGER, The Ways of Seeing (Penguin & BBC)
WEBSITES FEATURING SUDEEP SEN'S WORK
AS A POET AND EDITOR:
Sudeep Sen
(work, biography and complete bibliography):
http://www.sudeepsen.net/
Atlas 02 Magazine (Atlas 02 poets reading)
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/index.asp?id=91
ATLAS website: http://atlasaarkarts.net/
Delhi International Litarary Festival
DILF Dec 13-17, 2008
atlasaarkarts.net/dilf/
http://atlasaarkarts.net/dilf/bios.html
Hypertext Poetry Workshop -
1999 - 2000 workshops with the Poetry workshop
(London, England) Site:
http://www.btinternet.com/~carpenter/home1.htm
This is an educational site.
© resides with the author. All rights reserved.
For permission to use any of this material
or to contact the Purple Poets regarding readings,
festivals, workshops or permissions to print or perform,
please contact The Purple Poets
Workshop Leader
Kim Morrissey
poets AT purplepoets.com
THE
PURPLE POETS HAVE INCLUDED, OVER THE YEARS ....
(CLICK TO GO TO THEIR WORK):
Babushka, Bithi
Das, Brenda Stevenson, Carol Moon, Eileen Francis, Eppie Caredda, Ferdous
Rahman, Serajul Islam Molla, Jean Watt, Kathy Randle, Nahar Islam, Norah
Platt, Patsy Futatsugi, Shelagh Beale, Sheila Green, Steve Maly. The Purple
Poets are members of Time Banking UK, and have co-produced projectswith
The Bloomsbury Time Bank, The West Euston Time Bank, The Third Age
Project Drama (The TADs) directed by Gary Kielty and T.A.P.'s
Fine Line-Dancers led by Alicia Frost, as well as co-producing projects
with the Wellcome Trust, and the Quaker Library. |
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