

… i dream of an english

full of the words of my language.

an english in small letters

an english that shall tire a white man’s tongue…







… And I grew up

Like a human with his fuse blown up

On the shit in the street

Saying, “Give five paisa,

Take five curses”

On the way to the dargah."





…Arbiter of identity

remake me as you will.

Write me a new alphabet of danger,

a new patois to match

the Chola bronze of my skin…





… I know only this: the way I spent my whole life daydreaming about what it

would be like to wake up with your hair in my mouth, your feet curved

against the soles of mine. Learning your texture long before I knew your

touch…





… No one knows

It’s a secret

Not on my face

My eyes are open…





…You turned out to be just like us;

Similarly stupid, wallowing in the past,

You’ve reached the same doorstep at last.

Congratulations, many congratulations…





… That woman who spreads her legs,

who is beaten, who cannot hold

her grief or her drink.

Don’t become that woman….





…Perhaps I will become a ray

of sunshine to be

embraced by your colours

I will paint myself on your canvas...





…Other pains exist than those that love brings,

Other joys than those of lovers’ mingling…





… Did the stammer precede language

or succeed it?

Is it only a dialect or a

language itself? These questions

make linguists stammer…



If you don't read (much) poetry, today (March 21) is the perfect day to start. It’s World Poetry Day, after all. Listening to a poet bring their own work to an audience used to be a rare opportunity, till the era of online videos brought so much of poetry within reach of the ears and eyes. Over to the poets on this hand-picked list:Kandasamy dreams of “an English where a pregnant woman is simply stomach-child-lady”. In doing so, she not only acknowledges the ways in which the language is already reshaped by “brown or black men and women”, but also the ways in which it still enforces a certain regime.The poet reveals the violence that visits a child and his mother on the streets of Mumbai:Read the the full translation by Dilip Chitre The winner of this year's Khushwant Singh Memorial Prize for Poetry reads eight poems from her collection Where I Live: New and Collected Poems. Particularly compelling isTo the Welsh Critic who doesn't find me Identifiably Indian, where the poet challenges the critic:Imagine Karna as a woman: this is one such poem. On her blog , Manivannan explains why she wrote this way: “Karna is my mythological archetype, and the deeper I delved into creating my own art, the more I wanted to appropriate this story in a way that was truly mine.”The Bengali poet talks in poetic form of what it means to be depressed, yet still hopeful:Read the full translation by Arunava Sinha The Urdu poet (Riaz is Pakistani, but spent many years in exile in India) delights a laughing audience with her satirical comparison of religious fundamentalism in both India and Pakistan.Read the translation by Khushwant Singh The poem imagines a comradeship with the kind of woman that young girls are constantly told not to become:No separation here.Read the full translation by Nirupama Dutt Zohra Sehgal recites the nazm by Faiz on the poet's disenchantment with romantic love in a world full of injustice and violence.Read two translations The Malayalam original of poem Stammer, which he has translated into English himself