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APRIL IS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH IN CANADA

The League of Canadian Poets (LCP) sat down to express who they are, what they stand for, and what their goals are and this is what they had to say:

What is the League of Canadian Poets (LCP)?

The LCP is a non-profit arts service organization with a mission to enhance the status of poets, nurture a professional poetic community and facilitate the teaching of Canadian poetry at all levels of education. 

How did the LCP originate?

The LCP was founded in 1966 by a group of five poets to enhance the status of poets and to nurture a professional poetic community, to facilitate the teaching of Canadian poetry at all levels of education.  The League currently serves some 700 members whose work reflects the regional and cultural diversity of Canada.

Why is the LCP needed? 

The LCP develops the audience for poetry by encouraging publication, performance and recognition of Canadian poetry nationally and internationally.

What does the LCP do today?

The LCP speaks for poets on many issues such as freedom of expression, Public Lending Rights, Access Copyright, contract advice and grievances. Through its monthly newsletter, the LCP keeps members informed of matters, both political and professional, and provides a common voice for collective response to important issues.

What programs and projects does the LCP provide? 

We have a variety of programs including:

• National Poetry Month, the website and e-zine, poetry awards, promotion of Canadian poetry books that children, students, teachers, librarians and people across Canada have come to depend on each year
• Making National Poetry Month a growing success in Canada
• Supporting hundreds of events year-round across the country
• Offering the Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Contest for Youth
• Continuing with educational programming for teachers and students on our website
• Presenting annual poetry awards and helping to recognize excellence in poetry

What is National Poetry Month (NPM)?

National Poetry Month has been established by the LCP as a month-long, national celebration of poetry. The LCP’s National Poetry Month initiative is to bring together schools, publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, and poets across the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in Canada's culture. Communities and businesses participate through readings, festivals, book displays, and other events. 

 Who designated National Poetry Month?

The League of Canadian Poets has led this program in Canada from its inception in 1998 and, over time, adopted affiliates with government agencies and official, educational leaders, publishers, sponsors, poets, and arts organizations.

What are the goals of National Poetry Month?

The goals of NPM are to:

• Preserve and support the endurance of dedicated Canadian poets
• Promote the pleasures of reading poetry to more Canadians
• Highlight the importance of poetry as part of the school curriculum
• Increase the attention paid to poetry by local and national media
• Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
• Bringing poets and poetry to the public in efficient and effective ways
• Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry

How does the LCP celebrate National Poetry Month?

The LCP creates and distributes its official NPM posters, which are mailed free to teachers, librarians, booksellers and members across Canada. 

They present special events and readings across Canada in April and include Ontario’s Poets in the School's Program during Young Poets Week.

The LCP also mails press releases, media kits and posters each year to editors and journalists across the country. To ensure that Poetry gains national attention in the media each April, articles generated about NPM appear in newspapers, magazines, and online media outlets.

Lastly, the LCP offers a variety of practical resources for celebrating NPM including tips for teaching poetry, bringing a poet into the classroom during April and presenting a poetry reading or contest amongst many other initiatives.

"False Sanctuaries: Stories from the Troubled Territories of South Asia"

You cannot shun war and run away from the

Kareena Releases Style Diary

"It is quite a responsibility to always be stylish", actress Kareena Kapoor said at the launch of her book -- "The Style Diary of a Bollywood Diva".

She also said the book had something for everyone. "There is something for people from 14 to 35 years. My husband is 40 plus so there has to be something for the 40 plus," Kareena, who co-wrote the book with Rochelle Pinto, said.

The book has Kareena's take on styling and has been published by Shobhaa De Books and Penguin India. 

"When (writer Shobhaa) De called me for this book, I thought I might write a book when I'm 60. What if something more interesting happens 20 years later? But she said it was going to be a style diary." 

"Then I realised: 'Yes, I'm stylish and I should take the compliment. I took the responsibility of how it feels like to be a style diva," she said.

She said one would get to know more about her through this book.

"As you turn the pages, you get to know Kareena more."

Lingering Tides and Other Stories by Latha Viswanathan

These poignant stories finely depict the lives of immigrants, through the themes of family adjustment, loss, and starting afresh in a new place. Set in suburban Toronto, New Jersey, Texas, and India, they draw out the conflicts in three generations of Indians whose lives interconnect even as
they straddle the old and the new. What we sense is both the anguish of loss and the thrill of discovery.

Viswanathan's quiet prose imparts powerful emotions that ring true, and her rendering of cultural clash is truly skillful and nuanced. The depiction of her characters’ interior lives is so full and vital that they breathe and walk off the page. The reader is drawn in and completely absorbed into her world of transitions.

"Viswanathan's debut collection--set in locales as diverse as India, Texas, and Canada--comprises twelve masterfully told tales. . .The stories are brimming with compelling and complex characters. . .The strongest story is by far the titular "Lingering Tide," whose tight and sparing narrative illuminates the 45-year marriage of Surya and his late wife Uma."
—Publisher's Weekly

"Whether she is writing about North America or India, a middle aged musician or a young boy, Latha Viswanathan's prose is unfailingly vivid, tender and intelligent, full of sensual details and pungent insights. Lingering Tide is a lovely, generous collection.”
—Margot Livesey, author of Criminals

“Viswanathan writes so incisively and so intensely and so beautifully about what she refers to as this life, this moment, that readers owe her a debt almost even before they have read a single word. Her stories focus with lazer-like intensity on our shape-shifting culture and, as they do so, define it.” 
—Alan Cheuse author of The Grandmother's Club

“I have read a number of works by Indian or Indian-American writers and find Latha’s among the best. She has such a sympathetic but unsparing view of the interface between two cultures, and an eye for detail that draws the reader in immediately and is also rather eye-opening. I especially like the women’s voices— the mothers, and the parents, in fact. I especially loved the voice in ‘Cool Wedding.’ And beside being touching, these stories are often so funny.” 
—Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce

About the Author:

Latha Viswanathan has worked as a journalist, copywriter, editor and teacher in India, London, Manila, Montreal, Toronto and the United States. These stories have appeared in major American literary magazines and won awards. Her work received a grant from the Texas Commission of the Arts in Fiction, was published in Best New Stories from the South and broadcast on National Public Radio. She currently lives and writes in Houston.

Book Review: A Walk Across the Sun

Written by: Wendy Aujla, Special Contributor to MyBindi.com

A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison is a fictional story, however it puts into perspective how human trafficking is a horrifying reality across the world. Addison introduces the reader to two young girls who are tragically orphaned after a tsunami tore through their home. The girls, 17-year old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister, Sita, are kidnapped and taken into the brothels of Mumbai where their lives change.

Eventually the girls are rescued from their nightmare by a D.C.-based attorney, Thomas Clarke, who faces his own marital and career challenges. His wife, Priya, has returned to her family in India after she lost her own infant daughter. Thomas ends up working in Mumbai after he is granted a paid sabbatical leave to work on a pro bono case overseas. It is in Mumbai that he connects with a coalition against sexual exploitation (CASE) and discovers how difficult it is to rescue young girls from the human trafficking business. During this time he also reconnects with Priya.

This is a book that will touch on hope, power dynamics, exploitation, violation of human rights, social injustices, drugs, forced labour and the difficulty of inter-cultural marriages. All of these issues are complex and the reader will develop his or her own perspective on each. Once I started reading, I could not put this book down! I would encourage you to read A Walk Across the Sun as the author has done extensive research to take you on a journey about a sensitive and challenging topic: Human Trafficking. The story is heartbreaking and eye-opening for those who are not familiar with these issues in society.

Corban Addison, a litigation attorney and supporter of human rights/social-justice causes globally, has, in his first novel, situated a call for action and change!

About Wendy Aujla

Wendy Aujla is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology (Faculty of Arts) at the University of Alberta. She obtained her Master’s in Sociology at the University of Alberta and her Bachelor of Arts at Concordia University College of Alberta.

Her research interests include gender and social inequality, race and ethnic relations, human rights, immigration and domestic violence. She has conducted a number of different studies in the area of domestic violence, shelter services, immigrant women and the South Asian community. She also has an interest in community-based  research (CBR), community service-learning (CSL) pedagogies and research ethics.

The Taste of Water by Franky Dias

Exuberant and irreverent, The Taste of Water is about adventurous men whose morals are suspect and strong women who are the anchors of their homes.- F. Escalona, author of A Proposition

Victor and Shambu, two young boys mesmerized by a performing cyclist in their sleepy village of Uppal, South India, hatch a mischievous plan to prevent his macabre live burial finale - the first of many collaborations in their lifelong struggles with ambition and success, lust and love, power and impotence, and sin and redemption.

Victor achieves success as a telecom analyst in Toronto and New York City during the dot-com boom. His spectacular rise to fortune is matched only by his painful fall into excess and depravity. Shambu becomes a feared man in the underworld, selling cheap government booze. But his success, too, comes at a price.

Along the way we meet Rama Rao, a Brahmin storyteller and exorcist who plays chess with malevolent demons; Meena Rai, whose husband kills her lover then remains locked up in their house for decades until convinced to leave his room to murder again; the Alvares sisters, devout spinster twins who strip naked to scare away ghosts and later engage in nocturnal activities with one; Girija Bhandari, a young mother who cures inflamed eyes with jets of fresh milk from her breasts; and Zuao Manuel De Souza, famous for vanquishing a demon with the power of his rosary.

A different India, a surprising India, and a refreshing India. Utterly original. A rare and authentic slice of life in the villages around Mangalore - one that should be preserved in a time capsule. - Richard Crasta, author of The Revised Kama Sutra

By turns magical and mystical, tragic and triumphant, The Taste of Water tells an unforgettable tale weaving history, folklore, humour, irreverence and adventure on two continents in a sweeping story spanning three generations set against the backdrop of Indian mythology and Western philosophy.

Author Biography

Franky Dias grew up in a small village near Mangalore, India. At the age of twenty-one, he moved to Mumbai and worked as a bank officer. Later posted to Goa for five years, he wrote and produced a musical, then moved to Dubai where he worked in international banking and wrote a column for the local newspaper. He is fluent in Konkani, Kannada, Tulu, Hindi and English.

In 1990, he and his wife, along with their daughter and son, then three and six years old, moved to Toronto, Canada. Franky Dias spends his time composing music and writing, and lives between Canada, India and the south of France.

The Taste of Water by Franky Dias is available in a limited premium edition at Life Rattle Press for $25, paperback addition at Amazon.com for $12.99 and in electronic edition at Kindle ebooks for $6.99.

Celebrate the book launch of The Taste of Water by Franky Dias Sunday, December 2, 2012 at The Supermarket Restaurant in Toronto at 4pm. Event also features a concert by "The Nandita Dias Band."

DSC Prize 2013 shortlist announced

The shortlist for the 2013 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, announced in London on Tuesday night, includes this year’s Booker Prize-nominated Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil, as well as Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon, winner of the 2011 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize.

Six novels by South Asian writers were chosen from a longlist of 16, announced in October. Apart from Ahmad and Thayil’s novels, the shortlist includes Tahmima Anam’s The Good Muslim, Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke, Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, and Jason Grunebaum’s English translation of three Hindi stories by the legendary writer Uday Prakash, The Walls of Delhi.

Most of these novels have already found a wide readership in South Asia. Prakash’s work may be the least well-known among audiences of popular English fiction here—published in March by UWA Publishing (Uwap), The University of Western Australia press, it brings together three stories (described as “stinging and comic” by Uwap) about, respectively, a sweeper who chances upon a cache of black money, a man trying to reclaim his identity stolen by an upper-caste thief, and the head of a slum-born baby growing bigger as he grows smarter.

The DSC Prize longlist, selected by a jury chaired by poet K. Satchidanandan, includes several other well-praised novels, like Jerry Pinto’s Em And the Big Hoom, Rahul Bhattacharya’s The Sly Company of People Who Care, and Anuradha Roy’s The Folded Earth. A statement from Satchidanandan said, “The six shortlisted books from different countries represent the diversity of South Asian fiction in terms of theme as well as idiom. We were looking for works which are thematically fresh, stylistically innovative and are a definitive contribution to novel as a genre.”

According to a press statement from the DSC Prize publicity office released early on Wednesday, 81 books were entered for consideration for the $50,000 (around Rs.28 lakh) prize. Previous winners of the prize include Karachi-based novelist H.M. Naqvi’s Home Boy, and Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew.

The prize was instituted in 2011. Its eligibility criteria admit any novel predominantly concerned with South Asian themes; this year, its window for publication stretched from 1 January 2011 to 30 April 2012. The winner is announced every year in a ceremony at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Both Naqvi and Karunatilaka are debutant novelists; as it happens, both Thayil’s Narcopolis and Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon are first novels. Thayil is also a well-published contemporary poet; Ahmad is a retired Pakistani civil servant, born in 1933, who once said that The Wandering Falcon, a novel of interlinked narratives set in the border areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, had been completed in 1973, but left to “hibernate” for 40 years.

In another coincidence, both Anam and Ghosh’s works are second novels of projected trilogies. Anam’s The Good Muslim follows the story of the children of the protagonist of her 2007 novel A Golden Age, part of her proposed Bengal trilogy, set in Bangladesh around and during the 1971 war of independence. Ghosh’s River of Smoke is the sequel to his 2008 novel Sea of Poppies, and unfolds on the vast historical waterways of the British empire in the Indian Ocean and neighbouring seas.

The DSC Prize 2013 shortlist in full:

• Jamil Ahmad: The Wandering Falcon (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)
• Tahmima Anam: The Good Muslim (Penguin Books)
• Amitav Ghosh: River of Smoke (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)
• Mohammed Hanif: Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (Random House India)
• Uday Prakash: The Walls of Delhi (translated by Jason Grunebaum; Uwap, Western Australia)
• Jeet Thayil: Narcopolis (Faber and Faber)

This article first appeared HERE.

Interview: Ayesha Chatterjee confers 'clarity' on her latest book of poetry

Written in spare language and often using metaphors drawn from both Eastern and Western sources, the poems in The Clarity of Distance by Ayesha Chatterjee pare down the complexity of existence in today’s global world into simple moments of truth.

Born and raised in Kolkata, Chatterjee has lived in England, the USA and Germany, and currently lives in Toronto. She graduated from Smith College, Massachussetts, where one of her most vividly remembered courses was a lyric poetry class taught by Joseph Brodsky. Her work gained notice when one of her poems was shortlisted in the Guardian Unlimited Poetry Workshop in October 2004. Her poems have appeared in nth position, BluSlate and Autumn Sky Poetry. The Clarity of Distance is her first collection.

MyBindi.com's Ashna Singh gets to know Chatterjee as she provides insight on The Clarity of Distance.

What inspired you to write this book of poetry?

I knew I wanted to have my poems published and I wrote steadily until I had enough decent poems together to form a collection—and I was extremely fortunate that Bayeux Arts liked them enough to publish them.

Your poetry contains metaphors drawn from both Eastern and Western sources. How has living in Asia, Europe and North America influenced your writing?

The most visible influence is the setting of each poem. My poetry is very visual and so you can see how the German poems have a lot of nature in them, the Toronto poems are much more urban and the ones about India are clearly Asian. On the other hand, although my literary influences have all been Western, I express myself best by drawing from everything I know, from wherever I’ve lived. Living in Germany for so long gave me a kind of freedom to write without automatically using every day English terms and phrases. Sometimes I felt as though I had to work a little harder at keeping the language of the poems “pure”, and yet I could be more creative in how I formulated my thoughts.

What was your objective behind including “a soft thread of violence” in this collection?

It’s like life, I think. There’s always a little bit of danger lurking somewhere around the corner.

Describe one of your most memorable poems from the collection.

The poem that took the most courage for me to write is “The Last Generation”. And here also, voice, language, identity and, yes, distance plays a role.

Why is it important for you to get your readers to view the world ‘differently’? And, what do you mean by ‘differently’?

All art forms at their best have the ability to change people in some way. My favourite poems and poets have done that for me all my life; woken me up to new possibilities, cleared away cobwebs…made me think. I’d like more than anything for my poetry to do the same for others. How, is up to them.

Have you ever considered publishing works in the narrative form? Why or why not?

I actually have written a novel. It took me six years to write and it’s since been gathering dust in a drawer, which is where it belongs! I found it very hard to write and realized somewhere along the line that the reason it was taking me so long to finish it, was that I was approaching it as if it were poetry. I’m no good with dialogue or plot, I’m afraid. I’m much more comfortable writing poetry; I have better instinct for it.

Who are your favourite authors/poets? What book/poem do you read time and time again?

Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson and Salman Rushdie. I read Dickinson’s poems over and over and never get tired of them. And reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie is a winter ritual for me. 

To purchase The Clarity of Distance, click HERE.

For more information on Ayesha Chatterjee, click HERE.

Jaipur Literature Festival: 16 Nominees for South Asian Fiction Award

The sponsor of the Jaipur Literature Festival announced a “long list” of the best recent South Asian fiction this week, dominated by Indian and Indian-origin authors.

The 16 writers on the list, released Tuesday, hail from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Britain, and four are first-time novelists. Topics range from opium addiction to an unlikely relationship between a courtesan and a wrestler.

The award, introduced by the infrastructure company DSC Limited in 2010, is for fictional work in English that is about South Asia, but is not limited to South Asian writers. The cash prize of $50,000 has quickly made it a coveted award, with more than 80 writers entering the contest this year.

The Indian poet K. Satchidanandan, who led this year’s five-member jury, said there was “an unprecedented response” worldwide to the call for submissions.

Mr. Satchidanandan said that even though the authors came from “different linguistic and cultural backgrounds,” they demonstrated a deep understanding of South Asia in their work.

The jury will announce a short list of five or six writers on Nov. 20, and the winner will be announced in January at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

The final list of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize will also be announced at the festival. That winner of that prize will take home 60,000 pounds ($97,000).

When it is not sponsoring literary events and awards, DSC spearheads heavy-duty rail and road projects in India, including building the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway. (That’s right — the very highway that Jaipur Literature Festival attendees coming from Delhi will take.)

Here is the long list:

Jamil Ahmad: The Wandering Falcon (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)

Alice Albinia: Leela’s Book (Harvill Secker, London)

Tahmima Anam: The Good Muslim (Penguin Books)

Rahul Bhattacharya: The Sly Company of People Who Care (Picador, London)

Roopa Farooki: The Flying Man (Headline Review/ Hachette, London) 

Musharraf Ali Farooqi: Between Clay and Dust (Aleph Book Company, India)

Amitav Ghosh: River of Smoke (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)

Niven Govinden: Black Bread White Beer (Fourth Estate/ Harper Collins India)

Sunetra Gupta: So Good in Black (Clockroot Books, Massachusetts)

Mohammed Hanif, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (Random House India)

Jerry Pinto: Em and the Big Hoom (Aleph Book Company, India)

Uday Prakash: The Walls of Delhi (Translated by Jason Grunebaum; UWA Publishing, W. Australia)

Anuradha Roy: The Folded Earth (Hachette India) Saswati Sengupta: The Song Seekers (Zubaan, India)

Geetanjali Shree: The Empty Space (Translated by Nivedita Menon; Harper Perennial/ Harper Collins India)

Jeet Thayil: Narcopolis ( Faber and Faber, London)

 

This article first appeared HERE.

The Clarity of Distance

By Ayesha Chatterjee.

Poetry of place, identity and belonging.

Written in spare language and often using metaphors drawn from both Eastern and Western sources, the poems in this first collection pare down the complexity of existence in today’s global society into simple moments of truth.

Chatterjee believes that the power of poetry is in its accessibility and this is reflected in the simplicity of her writing. Much of her poetry is short, some of it is photographic and all of it is approachable. Her poems are intended to pry her readers out of complacency

into looking at the world differently, perhaps even into thinking of their place in it.

There is a soft thread of violence running through this collection juxtaposed against the imagery in much the same way as the intention of her approach.

Click HERE to purchase the book and learn more about the author.