Sujata Bhatt - Böcker

For several years Sujata Bhatt has been working on two parallel projects, a new collection of poems to be called Habitat (her most recent book was Poppies in Translation in 2015) and her Appa stories, a move into prose. Appa is a physician, a father; he is wise, witty, always imaginative, making sure his children understand the connections between things, how blood flows, cures work, and how unpredictable life is, though patterns underlie even the most unexpected experiences. He speaks differently from his children, with an accent that delights and amuses them. He wants his children to be wise. He helps them imagine their way through their expanding worlds.Bhatt tells the stories in no particular order. They're not building a novel. They come like lyric poems. There are unifying themes but no connected narrative. This is a treasury of stories that recur to the poet in response to something seen, heard or dreamt. They come as living memory.

"One of our most beloved contemporary poets", is how former Ireland Professor of Poetry Paula Meehan describes Philip Casey (1950-2018). Cherished by many for his tenderness, fortitude, hope and tenacity, Philip was an award-winning novelist, admired poet and vital presence on the Irish literary scene for four decades. Philip battled repeated health challenges, stood up for causes he believed in, and relished making mischief. He was, in the words of the poet Theo Dorgan, "some man for one man". Philip believed in the idea of a community of writers, and his open-mindedness drew others towards him - whether to his Dublin home, or to his grassroots support base in his earlier home of Hollyfort, Co Wexford. His booming laugh and powerful handshake were legendary. The many contributors, including Sebastian Barry, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Dermot Bolger, Moya Cannon and Thomas Lynch, praise Philip Casey's gifts as a writer of poetry and fiction, as well as highlighting their admiration for him as a man.

Sujata Bhatt's first book of poems, the award-winning Brunizem, appeared in 1988. In a very short time she has gained recognition as one of the distinct and reckonable new voices. She has things to say about her native India and her native tongue (Gujarati), about America and Britain, and about Germany where she now lives. She is, the New Statesman declared, 'one of the finest poets alive', and alive in a unique way to language, to issues of politics and gender, to place and history. Hers is a remarkable complete imagination, generous and at the same time unsparingly severe in its quest for the difficult truths of experience.

This book gathers four decades of writing, published in collections from Brunizem in 1988 to Pure Lizard in 2008. It maps the poet’s trajectory, following her exile from her homeland, India, and her mother tongue, Gujarati, to the landscapes and languages of the USA and then Europe. Urgent, compassionate and inventive, Bhatt’s work forms a uniquely sustained project of reinvention and rediscovery.