Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

We think ofcontemporary Indian writing as sharing the same teeming quality as the countryitself. But the simplicity and clarity of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's poems pointto another Indian literary tradition, one based on understatement andresonance, enhanced in Mehrotra's case by the influence of the surrealists andWilliam Carlos Williams, and the Beats, the first enhancing his focus on theimage, the second giving a colloquial ease to the language of his poetry. Inthis respect he is closely related to our Australian poets who developed theircraft in the 1970s and 1980s. His poetry discovers dignity and continuity inordinary detail, while raising it to a magical or dream-like intensity. At thesame time it offers glimpses into his own life and history, fixing andextending the moment in modest yet compelling ways.

This collectionbrings together Mehrotra's poems written over more than four decades, andincludes many new poems, as well as his celebrated translations of thefifteenth-century Bakhti poet Kabir, and those of more recent poets working intraditions similar to his own. Mehrotra is the author of four previous books ofpoetry and a collection of essays PartialRecall (2012), the author-translator of Songsof Kabir (2011), and the editor of the Oxford India anthology Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992). Hewas raised in Allahabad and Dehradun, where he now lives, in northern India, inthe foothills of the Himalayas.