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poetry

prose

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Habib Tengour's nimble poems take their speaker and the act of speaking to those borderlands where language withers, blooms and is exiled in the same instance.

Anitha Thampi is one of Kerala’s most singular poetic voices and her poems here merge the tender and the sharp, treading light-footed while saying the most significant things.

Phanishwarnath Renu’s essay on the Bihar drought is an incisive and deeply personal account of the tragedy and the communities it affects but also communities it inevitably attracts, including his fellow traveller the Hindi-writer Agyeya.

Aishwarya Iyer's poems chart a voice that is slowly turning towards the world, with a map-maker’s fascination and a crow's hesitation before the plunge.

These poems of Jibanananda Das are situated between the intense agrarian labour of morning and the assured rewards of dusk—in that sleep-inducing, slow moving body of afternoon.

Translated by the pre-eminent Hindi modernist, Krishna Baldev Vaid, this Udayan Vajpeyi poem is an ultimate poet's walking tour of a city that they have inhabited, invented, paid taxes in, but also harvested for their work.

Mexican poet Balam Rodrigo writes a poem on an Indian ear-cleaner, before his visit to India through the Almost Island Dialogues. The ear-cleaner becomes a starting point from where Rodrigo invents his own startling cosmology and myths.

Almost Island Readings & Reflections IV, held on 24th September 2022 features moving readings by Celerina Patricia Sánchez Santiago, Hubert Matiúwàa, Paul M. Worley, Souradeep Roy, Amit Majmudar, and Ari Sitas followed by an exceptional discussion that touched upon, among other things, the way words come to life in indigenous Mexican thought and the relationship between dramatic dialogue and the poetic line.