Yuyutsu Sharma New Book Party at Bowery
Showing of Illustrations by Henry Avignon created for the book
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Time:
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location:
The Bowery Poetry Club, New York
Street:
308 Bowery, New York, NY 10012 Phone 212.614.0505 foot of First Street, between Houston & Bleecker across the street from CBGBs F train to Second Ave, or 6 train to Bleecker
City/Town:
New York, NY
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Description
SATURDAY, JANUARY 23 (2010)
Yuyutsu Sharma Book Party!
6:00 PM
Space cake, Amsterdam
& other poems from Europe and America
Published by Howling Dog Press, Colorado
Yuyutsu and other fellow poets will read poems from the book with Himalayan music and drawing on the poems from the book.
Illustrations by Henry Avignon and other artists will be present. Those hinged to the dynamic poetics of Yuyutsu RD Sharma will be digitally displayed on stage.
A Representative for Henry Avignon Art will be at the event.
EMPLOYING A SURREALISTIC BLEND of Asian mystic and worldly Beat adventurer -worthy of a Ginsberg, a Corso, or a Tom Wolfe- Yuyutsu RD Sharma invades the lowlands of Amsterdam with its concentric circles of SpaceCake consciousness, then sojourns through Europe and back to the United States, romping like a Hindu gargoyle spreading poetry and passion wherever he alights. Sharma's poems celebrate mind-altering perspectives on politics, social foibles, riotous living, and the hopeless giddiness
of depraved and damaged humanity in the urban sprawl of tanking economies. In Sharma's stanzas, the melancholic shadow of a shaman living life towards its ubiquitous overflow passionately unfolds. In lines concealed by humorous overtones, the dark truth
of decaying squalor is suspended like the husk of a fly in the spiraling web of conflict created by the Lost spinning smoke rings around tales of their past glories. Like Diogenes peering through a glass darkly, he seeks out garrulous men and beckoning women straight from the plays of Synge- their souls dead, their teeth chattering, plated in fools gold. Sharma writes,
"Later in the bar as I stretched / folds of her skin back on her luscious face // years receded into / the faint drawers of my age, // time stepped down / the ladder of my lifespan, // a monkey-thief / in my youth's backyard...
Her tongue curled like a dry leaf in my ear / and crackled, 'How much did you take, / just a piece? I took thirty-eight grams once... / You can pat my back, / tickle my belly or stroke my breasts / for awhile, if it comforts you... // it can be heavenly, / licking the rim of the forbidden frontiers of human life."
The surreal tension of a man from the highest point on earth reveling through the eros and addictions of those from one of the lowest produces poetry that captivates and compels the reader to transcend the moment of spiritual impact like a lotus exploding from a lion's heart.
Sharma's poetry frees us from the mundane tribulation of karmic oppression of day by day struggle, elevating us to view the world with the third eye of the shaman, to find the 10,000-eyed serpentine Buddha laughing in the midst of psychological pandemonium.
Recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, Yuyutsu RD Sharma is a distinguished poet and translator.
He has published eight poetry collections including, Space Cake, Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America, (Howling Dog Press, Colorado, 2009), Annapurna Poems, (Nirala, New Delhi 2008), Everest Failures (White Lotus Book Shop, Kathmandu, 2008) www.WayToEverest.de: A photographic and Poetic Journey to the Foot of Everest, (Epsilonmedia, Germany, 2006) with German photographer Andreas Stimm and a translation of Irish poet Cathal O' Searcaigh poetry in Nepali in a bilingual collection entitled, Kathmandu: Poems, Selected and New, 2006. He has translated and edited several anthologies of contemporary Nepali poetry in English and launched a literary movement, Kathya Kayakalpa (Content Metamorphosis) in Nepali poetry.
A collection of his poems in Slovenian translation, entitled, Jezero Fewa in Konj come out from the Sodobnost International Press, Ljubljana. A collection of his poems in French, Entitled, Poemes de l' Himalayas has just appeared from Harmattan, Paris.
Widely traveled author, he has read his works at several prestigious places including Poetry Café, London, Seamus Heaney Center for Poetry, Belfast, Western Writers' Center, Galway, Bowery Poetry Place, New York, The Kring, Amsterdam, P.E.N. Paris, Knox College, Illinois, Whittier College, California, Baruch College, New York, WB Yeats' Center, Sligo, Gustav Stressemann Institute, Bonn, Rubin Museum, New York, Irish Writers' Centre, Dublin, The Guardian Newsroom, London, Trois Rivieres Poetry Festival, Quebec, Arnofini, Bristol, Borders, London, Slovenian Book Days, Ljubljana, Royal Society of Dramatic Arts, London, Gunter Grass House, Bremen, GTZ, Kathmandu, Ruigoord, Amsterdam, Nehru Center, London, Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt, Indian International Center, New Delhi, and Villa Serbelloni,Italy.
He has held workshop in creative writing and translation at Queen's University, Belfast, University of Ottawa and South Asian Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany.
His works have appeared in Poetry Review, Chanrdrabhaga, Sodobnost, Amsterdam Weekly, Indian Literature, Irish Pages, Delo, Omega, Howling Dog Press, Exiled Ink, Iton77, Little Magazine, The Telegraph, Indian Express and Asiaweek.
Born at Nakodar, Punjab and educated at Baring Union Christian College, Batala and later at Rajasthan University, Jaipur, Yuyutsu remained active in the literary circles of Rajasthan and acted in plays by Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Harold Pinter, and Edward Albee. Later he taught at various campuses of Punjab University, and Tribhuwan University, Kathmandu.
The Library of Congress has nominated his recent book of Nepali translations entitled Roaring Recitals; Five Nepali Poets as Best Book of the Year 2001 from Asia under the Program, A World of Books International Perspectives.
Yuyutsu's own work has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch. Currently, he edits Pratik, A Magazine of Contemporary Writing and contributes literary columns to Nepal's leading daily, The Himalayan Times and The Kathmandu Post. He has completed his first novel.
