Praise for
Yuyutsu RD Sharma’s Works
The ‘blinding
snows of the Annapurnas ridge’ inspire a poetry that confronts natural
magnificence with exuberant humanity. Yuyutsu R D Sharma’s generous vision
embraces not only the landscape and its people but the lesser fauna, like the
pigeons that speak ‘a kind of hushed speech that robbers might use’ and the
mules on the Tibetan salt route, exhausted and bow-legged from hauling ‘cartons
of Iceberg, mineral water bottles,/ solar heaters, Chinese tiles, tin cans…’ These
vividly coloured, muscular and energetic poems have an atmosphere of freshness,
as though the snow itself had rinsed and brightened them. Like the ‘waterfall
beds that/ smelled of the birth of fresh fish’, they have the tangy, dust-free
odour of language born of lived experience.
Carol Rumens, The United Kingdom
Yuyutsu RD
Sharma brings the bracing airs of the Himalayas
to any city. His vigorous, expansive and elemental poems leave Yeti tracks on
the streets and mule trails on the Tube. They are packed with rapturous
couplings of the urban and the feral.
Pascale Petit, Former
Poetry Editor, Poetry London
Yuyutsu is a
first-rate poet in English and an excellent place to begin if you want to get
in touch with Nepalese writing today.
William Seaton, in Bylines
Interview
Yuyutsu’s
subject is the intertwinement of the social and geographic, namely, how even
the Himalayas were dirtied and damaged by
partisan politics. In the poems, sacred energy appears in sexual, rather than
theological, form; his incredibly tangy descriptions of crags and cliff faces
swell with eroticism.
Jim Feast in The
Brooklyn Rail, New York
Each poem is a
delight in itself, a discovery, a new turn of phrase, a new sensation, a world
of sound and light, and visions all colliding against each other to provide an
unexpected and haunting experience.
David Clark in Exiled
Ink, London
Yuyutsu RD lives close
to Everest. His poetry climbs mountains, swims in rivers, and paints the
falling leaves in copper. This tango with nature also occurs when Yuyutsu RD closes
the window for a moment…
Ronny Someck in Iton77, Tel
Aviv
The poems… are
shining jewels of passion, energy and splendid craft, redolent with vivid,
dreamlike visual imagery, strengthened by realistic observation and powered by
strong male eroticism. His is an unabashed return to the male gaze that is
refreshing and solemn by turns, reminding one of the stirring sounds of rolling
drums, and beating rain…
Sucheta Das
Gupta in
The Himalayan Times, Kathmandu
A fiercely
sublime poet …the book confirms an enormous talent, as well as purity of
purpose with which he approaches his calling. Lines jump out, burning
themselves into your consciousness.
Eddie Woods in Amsterdam Weekly
With this
buoyantly audacious work, Yuyutsu
RD should be assured of his place in the canon of
Asian poetry.
In this new
volume, he conveys the people and places, the flora and fauna of the Annapurna
area of Nepal
with an exhilaratingly fresh vision. It is poetry where pastoral elegy
becomes fused with magic realism; where earthy common-sense mysticism becomes
interlaced with a lush sexuality. The book is a voluptuous and loving evocation
of Nepal
and I admire its dramatic intensity.
Cathal O
Searcaigh, Ireland
Yuyutsu RD
Sharma’s poetry runs clear, tender, and passionate with a rage that often
erupts volcanic in the face of the cruelty, despair, and injustice that saddles
the disenfranchised poor of the earth. Poems powerful and devastating, yet
gentle as flower petals wafting to earth in a summer breeze.
Michael Annis, senior
editor, Howling Dog Press, Colorado
This is what
Asiaweek has to say of Yuyutsu’s translations of Nepali poetry:
‘… magnificent
achievement evoking lives of Nepalese peasants while remaining highly
readable… The reader will come away breathless from these short,
wonderfully concentrated poems’
These vivid
and readable translations show the poets coming to terms both with political
development and with the influence of Western modernism in literature.
— Allen W.
Thrasher,
Library of
Congress, Washington DC
Young,
versatile energetic, he is rocking and rolling with new impressions...
Yuyutsu’s poetry touches on concerns of global matters, acknowledging that we
can never with violence create a Utopia or “construct a gorgeous pagoda
from/furious flames/and whistling winds … Such lines capture for me the
futility of the Iraq War, which I refuse to dignify with its official title,
even more euphemistic and tainted with doublethink than earlier
misadventures. We can’t build even a humble pagoda from furious flames
and whistling winds.
— David
Ray, The
United States of America
“Yuyutsu R.D.
brings to the Indian readers a distinct flavor of the Nepalese landscape and
culture, in a sequence of poems that pulsate with needle-sharp images—Equally
sensitive is his language that, scrupulously avoids stilted diction-words or
phrases. His writing is so densely imagistic that he holds reader’s attention
all the way through. Behind plethora of packed images is a genuine concern for
the human predicament the trials and tribulations of the destitute everywhere.
Hunger is the theme that runs as an under current-hunger that gnaws into the
vitals of both humans and animals.”
—Shiv K.
Kumar in The Hindustan Times
“Something is
always happening in Yuyutsu’s poetry. Like some burning concern for
truth, something that, I think, a poem should do. For this, we owe Yuyutsu
much.
— Jayanta
Mahapatra, Cuttack, India
Yuyutsu has a
good eye and a good ear:
The rain
stopped in the jungle.
The cicada
stopped its chirr.
To have an ear
for a sudden silence in unique.
— Keki
N. Daruwala in The Hindustan Times
“Yuyutsu’s
poetry has long been a part of the Nepalese consciousness: We use his more
aphoristic lines as a paradigm of contemporary Nepali political and social
changes.”
—The Kathmandu Post
Some Female
Yeti is a tribute to the various changing as well as timeless aspects of the Himalayan Kingdom. There is crippling touch of
stark and naked reality in these poems. They remind us of the time when women
were raped, men were killed and human rights were abused. Yes, some of the
poems deal with the democratic upsurge and its aftermath in Nepal.”
— Connection
“It is an
agony ride through the darkness of modern times. The symbols are powerful and
disturbing, the metaphors violent. The female Yeti becomes as icon for
man’s sexual angst... This collection marks an important phase in the
poet’s evolution, revealing a more mature poet in terms of symbol, diction and
style. ‘Hitting notes of a secret language of lust’, Yuyutsu has made his
poetic presence felt.”
—The Observer
“...Highly
vibrant portrayal of the individual’s existential issues, ranging from the
mundane deprivations to the primordial lust and passion, anguish and
anger… Equally powerful is the author’s projection of the public life in
all its shenanigans, conspiracies and treachery.
The most
redeeming aspect of Yuyutsu’s poetry is his powerful writing style that brings
forth the human experience directly without the binds of sophistication that
tends to dissipated original spirit. The rawness of his writing is so
exhilarating; it brings the full flavor of the locale to the sense.”
—The Rising Nepal
Yuyutsu’s
poetry is the poetry of agony and anger. It does not soothe; it shocks.
It does not lull; it awakens the reader to a reality he is least bothered
about. Also, it has a distinct native flavor: maize fields, bare cots,
hearths, querns, mud-plastered wall, and a grain of monsoon. It is different
from the poetry of those who roll in the labyrinth of inner life or rejoice in
the cities where skyscrapers bloom. His poetry is evidently akin to the
regional literatures he is familiar with, Punjabi, Hindi and Nepali.
— The Indian
Literature
In Yuyutsu
R.D.’s poems you can feel nature — the rainbow, the river, the day and
night. Nature is a metaphor to express human agony and
Yuyutsu draws this situation in strong and rich colors. In his poems about
poetry, Yuyutsu metaphors are galloping, noble and wild. He shows us other
specials ways we need in the face of
poetry.
— Ronny
Someck, Israel
Yuyutsu R. D.
is a superbly gifted poet. His volumes may be small in size but they are
massive in scope and immense in vision. His poems are lovely artifacts of
craft and ardor, patiently distilled perceptions; finely polished insights.
I love the
lyric accuracy of his Lake
Fewa poems. They
are linguistically taut and melodically lithe. Heart stunning stuff where
every word tells, where every line flows. It is clear that Yuyutsu R. D.
loves the heave and surge of language; the swell and swirl of syllables; the
roll and rush of sound. In these poems, he rafts the roaring river of
language with the whirl and whoosh of a true master rafter.
— Cathal Ó
Searcaigh, Ireland
Yuyutsu RD Sharma,
The prelaunch of 'Space Cake, Amsterdam, and Other Poems from Europe and America' was held on the 2nd of September in the Lecture Hall of Nepal Tourism Board. Yuyutsu RD Sharma, an eminent poet and translator, who delivered a few of his favorite poems and shared some personal experiences of his travel. Poems titled 'At 40 you die', 'Temple London' and 'Space Cake, Amsterdam' were discussed among others. Sharma shared the feeling of euphoria and paranoia he'd experienced. A 'space cake,' (common in regions with liberal drug policies), are bakery products containing a form of cannabis usually hash or marijuana. Edited by Michael Annis, the book contains poems that celebrate the political and social aspects of life. Sharma also shared with the audience how he was boisterously travelling about spreading poetry, passion and knowledge about the Himalayas. Although it is already published by Howling Dog Press, (Colorado, U.S.A), 'Space Cake, Amsterdam, and Other Poems from Europe and America' is being published by Nirala Publications (New Delhi) too and is already available in Kathmandu's White Lotus Book Shop.
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