Monday, June 20, 2016

Yuyutsu Sharmato read at Daytona Beach

Yuyutsu Sharma to read at Daytona Beach

PRESS RELEASE
yuyu barnes
HIMALAYAN POET FEATURED IN DAYTONA BEACH

Yuyutsu RD Sharma will be the featured poet on Wednesday, June 22, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Wine-Me on Beach Street in Daytona Beach. Mr. Sharma, who lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, will read from his two newest books: Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems, and A Blizzard in My Bones: New York Poems (Nirala, 2016). He will also discuss the continuing tragedy of the earthquake that devastated Nepal a year ago.
The program is presented by Volusia County Poet Laureate Dr. David B. Axelrod. “Yuyustu’s work is of interest to more than poets. He speaks lovingly of his homeland, but he also describes all our lives.”  says Axelrod. “We who have moved from the north to Florida certainly know what it means to have ‘a blizzard in our bones.’”

In addition to teaching at Columbia University and just previously at New York University, Mr. Sharma is a recipient of a fellowship from The Rockefeller Foundation, author of nine poetry collections, and is a frequent performer and workshop teacher throughout the world.

A gifted translator, Yuyutsu’s book of Nepali translations entitled Roaring Recitals; Five Nepali Poets was nominated by the Library of Congress as Best Book of the Year from Asia under the program, “A World of Books 2001: International Perspectives.”  His own poetry has been translated into and published in seven languages.

Wine-Me is located at 204 South Beach Street and can be reached at 386-871-7769. For more information about Mr. Sharma and the program, email Dr. Axelrod,axelrod@poetrydoctor.org, or call 386-337-4567.

An Evening with the Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu Sharma in Berkeley

An Evening with the Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu Sharma in Berkeley

IMG_3500

Thursday, June 30, 2016   7:00 – 9:30 PM
at the Himalayan Flavors Restaurant
1585 University Avenue (corner California)
Berkeley California 94703
Currently on his West coast tour, Yuyutsu Sharma  will read from his most recent book,Quaking Cantos and A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems . 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. Currently Visiting Poet at Columbia University, New York and he has just returned from Argentina where he was participating in XI International Poetry Festival, Buenos Aires as a Special Guest. More www.www.yuyutsu.de orwww.niralapublications.com
Quake
Quaking Cantos is the creative response of a world-renowned Himalayan poet to the earthquakes that shook Nepal in 2015, killing thousands and leaving more than a million people homeless, vulnerable to the ravages of the harsh Himalayan environment. In the aftermath of the earthquakes, his North and Central American reading tours suspended, Yuyutsu returns to Nepal to bear witness to the devastation the “cosmic commotion” has caused in his own Himalayan home. “These are wonderful, troubling, and moving poems.”
Bliaard front
A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems constitute Sharma’s reflections on what it means for a Himalayan poet to transform to a new creation….a New Yorker! Himalayan culture collides with cultures of New York City as he celebrates a shared vision of humanity forged in a metropolis and in the mountains of home.
Himalayan Flavors Restaurant Features authentic cuisine of the greater Himalayan regions Please 7:00 – 8:00 PM Dinner and socializing 8:00 – 9:30 PM Reading, book-signing, more socializing www.himalayanflavors.com
PLEASE NOTE:  Free parking available in restaurant lot and street parking after 7 PM.  Or BART to Downtown Berkeley, and walk or take 51B bus to California St. The restaurant is wheelchair accessible.
Please RSVP to Estelle Schneider at estelabella2003@yahoo.com so we can give the restaurant an estimate

The Other Voice offers a bonus reading this spring featuring well-known Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu Sharma.


!yuyu-eyes-open
The Other Voice, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, offers a bonus reading this spring featuring well-known Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu Sharma.
Allegra Silberstein will open for Yuyutsu making this a very special occasion.
Allegra
DATE/TIME:           TUESDAY June 28, 2016, 7:30 p.m.  
ADDRESS:             27074 Patwin Road, Davis (in the library)
 
Refreshments and open mic follow the reading
 
Yuyutsu Sharma is a distinguished poet and translator. He is currently the Visiting Poet at Columbia University in New York and will visit Argentina in June to participate in the International Poetry Festival in Buenos Aires. 
 
Yuyutsu has published nine poetry collections including,  A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems (Nirala, 2016), Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems, (Nirala, 2016),  Milarepa’s Bones, 33 New Poems, (Nirala, 2012),  and  Nepal Trilogy, Photographs and Poetry on Annapurna, Everest, Helambu & Langtang (www.Nepal-Trilogy.de ) Two books of his poetry, Poemes de l’ Himalayas(L’Harmattan, Paris) andPoemas de Los Himalayas (Cosmopoeticia, Cordoba, Spain) just appeared in French and Spanish respectively.
quake cover final
He is the 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.
 
Widely traveled, he has read his works at several prestigious venues and  held workshops in creative writing and translation at Queen’s University, Belfast; University of Ottawa; South Asian Institute; Heidelberg University, Germany; University of California, Davis; Sacramento State University and New York University.  
a blizzard-final
When he is not traveling the world reading his poetry and conducting workshops, Yuyutsu spends his time trekking in the Himalayas.
 
Allegra Silberstein Poet Laureate Emerita of the City of Davis has been widely published in journals and in several anthologies.  Her chapbooks include Acceptance by Small Poetry Press; In the Folds by Rattlesnake Review and Through Sun-glinting Particlespublished by Parallel Press in Madison, Wisconsin.  In 2015, her book, West of Angelswas published by Cold River Press.  She is also the long time host of The Other Voice. 

Sunday, April 17, 2016

A Letter from Auburn, New Hampshire about Quaking Cantos


Response to "Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems" and A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems from Lisa T, Concord, New Hampshire, I met Lisa last week at my reading and book signing at Griffin Free Public library...

Hello Yuyu,

I read your book "Quaking Cantos," and I am so impressed with your keen use of language especially when I consider that English is not your first language. The way that you marry words together shows the endlessness of your imagination and creates imagery that is staggering and vivid. Your form is as jagged and painful as the events themselves and I am struck by your ability to take on such a massive task. How painful the actual events must have been!

"The Burning Sun," is an example of this, the baby is "bare and howling in the bleeding eye of the growling sun..."

In "The Family Deity," the use of "atonement stubs," is so perfect, but to have thought of the two together is brilliant.

If I had to pick a favorite it would be "Course of Courage," for its cadence, language and imagery.

I have begun to read "A Blizzard in my Bones," and it is quite a different experience. It is fun to read the impressions of a city I love by someone with more clarity and objectivity. There is a lot of humor, irony and reality in this book and I was very amused by your poem about observing a woman on the subway putting on her make up, stop by stop.

Great work!

Namaste
Lisa T"


Sunday, February 28, 2016

New York based American poet, Michael Graves on "Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems"

In their panoramic sweep, headlong rushing catalogues, visionary moments, their courage and  compassion, numinous imagery, and beautiful music, Yuyutsu Sharma’ Quaking Cantos are worthy of comparison to “The Sleepers” of Whitman. 

These poems will shake the attentive reader like the quakes they witness. In the dramatic immediacy of their confrontation with the cosmos and powers beyond comprehension or control—powers that seem to have gone utterly mad--they recreate the terror and terrible beauty of what Rudolf Otto has called “The Holy. 

As one small example of the flood Sharma provides, consider the conclusion of “A Burning Sun”: in which for a moment a woman has left her baby kicking alone, outside playfully at the eye of heaven:

And it hit again,
the second time, right there,
burying her shoulder
deep under a pile
of mud and damp bricks,

leaving her son
bare and howling
in the bleeding eye
of the growling sun.


Michael Graves, author of Outside St. Jude’s Adam and Cain, Illegal Border Crosser and In Fragility

German Writer & Journalist Eckhart Nickel on Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems

"We cannot leave the reconstruction of the damage done by the earthquake to the conservators alone. Yuyutsu Sharma turns the devastation into vivid poetry to humanize the pain and revive the gracious dignified and loving spirit of the Nepali people in a moment of insurmountable grief, preserving the majestic and mystical ambiance of their ancient artifacts"
 Eckhart Nickel, 
German Writer & Journalist

Saturday, February 27, 2016

American Poet David Austell on Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems by Yuyutsu Sharma

There are several things immediately noticeable in Yuyu Sharma’s very powerful Quaking Cantos. The poetic form is fairly unusual (the poems are jagged and rapid fire), and even when you bind the short lines tightly in couplets, this does not relieve the feel of sharp edges. There is a great deal of fractured enjambment, for example The earth/opened up/ her jaws   (from “Nipple”) to the point that the poems themselves seem broken. This is highly successful and effective given the very difficult subject matter. Yuyu’s approach to the challenge of form in the Cantos is that of a master. The anger and grief expressed from poem to poem (and even within poems) pop up very quickly then subside like an aftershock. The reader is then often left with some indelible image: a crying lamb, a grandmother who has just died, a baby searching for the sustenance of a mother’s breast. The poetic form certainly enhances this, but it is the images, which are so electric. These are wonderful, troubling, and moving poems.  It must have drained Yuyu to the core to write of such catastrophe.

— Dr. David Austell, Columbia University, New York

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Yuyutsu Sharma to read with Christian Wiman at Columbia University…



An Evening with Christian Wiman and Yuyutsu Ram Dass Sharma

April 30 @ 7:30 pm

The Global Poets Series presents an evening with Christian Wiman and Yuyutsu Ram Dass Sharma for a poetry reading event being called Poetry in the Presence of the Holy.  There will also be a discussion as part of the readings.  The event will occur at the International House/Dodge Room, 155 Claremont, at 7:30 pm.  Please RSVP here. The Global Poets Series is a Collaborative Program of Columbia University International Students and Scholars Office and International House-New York City.
http://ouc.columbia.edu/event/an-evening-with-christian-wiman-and-yuyutsu-ram-dass-sharma/

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Presentación del libro "POEMAS DE LOS HIMALAYAS" Del poeta Indio-Nepalés Yuyutsu Sharma

Presentación del libro
"POEMAS DE LOS HIMALAYAS"
Del poeta Indio-Nepalés Yuyutsu Sharma
Sábado 25 de Abril - 1 pm
Poemas Image
LECTURA DE POESÍA 
Una de la voces más importantes de la poesía nepalesa y de mayor reconocimiento internacional.
Yuyutsu Sharma estará con nosotros y nos ofrecerá una lectura bilingüe (sus poemas acaban de ser traducidos
al español) junto a tres excelente poetas: 
Samantha Wischnia, 
Alejandro Chacón y
Evgueni Bezzubikoff
quienes leerán
poemas propios y célebres.

Ven a celebrar el MES DE LA POESíA con los propios poetas.

Ossining Public Library
53 Croton Ave, Ossining, NY 10562
(914) 941-2416

Ossining Public Library ossininglibrary.org/ The Ossining Public Library

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Yuyutsu Sharma’s Upcoming Readings in New York, Massachusetts and Boston


yuyu
Yuyutsu Sharma is South Asia’s leading poet published by Nirala and Epsilonmedia, Germany with growing International acclaim. He is currently in New York City as a visiting poet at New York University and had several readings in Nicaragua, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Coast. Here is the list of some immediate readings in New York, Massachusetts and Boston…
Friday, April 10, 2015 Yuyutsu Sharma reading at The Grolier Book Shop, Cambridge, The Grolier Book Shop, 6 Plympton Street, Cambridge, , MA 02138, United States (map)http://www.grolierpoetrybookshop.org/
Friday, April 12, 2015 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm at Salem Athenaeum Dangerous Words—Unexpected Destinations: Yuyu Sharma to read at Salem Athenaeum Library with Maria Bennett, Kristine Doll, Shreejana Sharma & Bill Wolak.
Salem Athenaeum 337 Essex Street, Salem, MA 01970 USA, Free to Public, Contact : Kristine Doll
Thursday, April 16, 6:30 pm, Yuyutsu Sharma reading with Sharon Dolin at New York University, Office of Global Studies in collaboration with NYU-SPS, at 7 E, 12 St. fifth Floor.
Tuesday, April 21, 7:30 to 9:30, Yuyutsu Sharma reading as Special Feature for Poetry Month at Sip It, 64 Rockaway Av, Valley Stream, Long Island, NY 11580 (516) 341-0491 Hosted by Lorraine Conlin
Thursday, April 30,7:30 Christian Wiman and Yuyutsu Ram Dass Sharma: Poetry in the Presence of the Holy, A Poetry Reading and Discussion, at International House, 500 Riverside Drive, Columbia University, New York, 10027, NY Organised by Columbia-ISSO, Columbia Global Poets Series: A poetry reading in collaboration with International House-New York City, and the Columbia School of General Studies.
http://niralapublications.com/

Monday, April 6, 2015

Dangerous Words—Unexpected Destinations: Yuyu Sharma to read at Salem Athenaeum Library

Dangerous Words—Unexpected Destinations: Yuyu Sharma to read at Salem Athenaeum Library with Maria Bennett, Kristine Doll, Shreejana Sharma & Bill Wolak

Dangerous Words—Unexpected Destinations: Five Poets Read Their Work and Translations
March 26, 2015
WHEN: April 12, 2015 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
WHERE: Salem Athenaeum
337 Essex Street, Salem, MA 01970 USA
COST: Free
CONTACT: Kristine Doll
PROGRAMS’ WRITERS
Maria Bennett, Kristine Doll, Shreejana Sharma, Yuyutsu Sharma, and Bill Wolak will offer a Spring inventory of risky declamations on the themes of intimacy, loss, alienation, perishability, travel, and unexpected pleasures. Each of the poets will offer temptations, celebrations, and insights. In addition, these five poets will explore various destinations in the world of “the other” through their translations from around the globe, including brief stopovers in Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Persian, and Nepalese.
The afternoon will feature the distinguished Indian/Nepali poet Yuyutsu Sharma, who is currently on a tour of North and South America. Having just returned from Nicaragua, where he read his poetry in the streets of Managua with Ernesto Cardenal to an audience of thirty thousand people, Mr. Sharma will offer poems that evoke both the daunting primordial landscape of the Himalayas and the contemporary space cake of Amsterdam.
yuyu pho
Maria Bennett has published a book of poetry entitled Because You Love. Her poetry has appeared in California Quarterly, Timber Creek Review, Gargoyle, Southern California Review, River Poets Journal, Red Rock Review, Caveat Lector, The Mochila Review, Barbaric Yawp, Eclipse, Common Ground Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Pinch, Main Street Rag, Third Wednesday, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Illuminations, andPsychic Meatloaf. Recently she has published a translation of the works of the Italian poet Annelisa Addolorato with Bill Wolak entitled My Voice Seeks You: The Selected Poetry of Annelisa Addolorato, Cross-Cultural Communications, 2013. Ms. Bennett’s articles and reviews have appeared in The Daily News, Utne Reader, Epicurean, and other newspapers and magazines. Her critical work The Unfractioned Idiom: Hart Crane and Modernism was published by Peter Lang Press in 1987.
Kristine Doll is the author of the poetry collection Speak to Me Again (Feral Press, 2014). “My Friends” from this book was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry. She is also a translator of Catalan poetry, including her translations into English of Joan Alcover’sElegies (Cross-Cultural Communications, 2004) and the poetry of the Catalan writer, August Bover. She is currently guest editor of The Seventh Quarry’s special edition of the translation into English of six of Catalonia’s contemporary poets. Doll’s translations and her own poetry have been published internationally in such venues as The Seventh Quarry, Cross-Cultural Communications Art & Poetry Series Broadsides, The Paterson Literary Review, Immagine & Poesia, Gargoyle and Voices Israel. She is Professor of World Languages and Cultures at Salem State University, Salem MA.
Shreejana Sharma is an emerging Nepali voice, who was born and raised in Kathmandu. She is particularly interested in Nepalese folk lore and legends. Widely travelled, she has conducted Nepali poetry translation workshops with Yuyutsu Sharma at Heidelberg University and has been instrumental in preserving the treasure of Nepali poetry in Nepalese circles. Currently she lives in Kathmandu, heads the White Lotus Book Shop, and is working on a manuscript of poems, entitled Papaji & Other Poems soon to be published in New Delhi.
Yuyutsu Sharma is the 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. He is a distinguished Indian/Nepali poet and translator. He has published nine poetry collections including, Nine New York Poems: A Prelude to A Blizzard in My Bones, 2014, Milarepa’s Bones, 33 New Poems, Nirala, 2012. Yuyutsu’s own work has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch. Half the year, he travels all over the world to read from his works and conduct creative writing workshops at various universities in North America and Europe, and the other half he goes trekking in the Himalayas when he returns back home to Nepal. Currently, he is in New York as a Visiting Poet at New York University.
Bill Wolak is a poet who lives in New Jersey and teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University. He has just published his thirteenth collection of poetry entitled Love Opens the Hands: New and Selected Love Poems with Nirala Press. His poetry has appeared in over a hundred magazines. His most recent translation with Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Love Me More Than the Others: Selected Poetry of Iraj Mirza, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in 2014. He was selected to be a featured poet at festivals in India four times: at the 2011 Kritya International Poetry Festival in Nagpur, at the 2013 Hyderabad Literary Festival, at the Tarjuma 2013: Festival of Translators in Ahmedabad, and most recently at the 2014 Hyderabad Literary Festival.

Poet Yuyutsu Reads at Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Cambridge

Poet Yuyutsu Reads at Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Cambridge

Poet Yuyutsu Reads
When
Fri, April 10, 7pm – 9pm
Where
Grolier Poetry Book Shop,
6 Plympton Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States (map)
http://www.grolierpoetrybookshop.org/
IMG_3500
Description
Yuyutsu RD Sharma is a distinguished poet and translator. He has published nine poetry collections including, Nine New York Poems: A Prelude to A Blizzard in my Bones, (2014), Milarepa’s Bones, 33 New Poems, (Nirala, New Delhi 2012). Yuyutsu’s own work has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch. Currently,
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.
He is in New York as a Visiting Poet at New York University.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Upcoming Poetry Month event: Yuyutsu Sharma reading with Sharon Dolin at New York University

Thursday, April 16, 6:30 pm, Yuyutsu Sharma reading with Sharon Dolin at New York University, Office of Global Studies in collaboration with NYU-SPS at 7E 12 Street, Fifth Floor Lounge. Refreshments served  

Yuyutsu Sharma: Reading Schedule 2015



Yuyu at Oyster Bay Photo By Bill Wolak
Yuyutsu Sharma is South Asia’s leading poet published by Nirala with growing International acclaim. He is currently in New York City as a visiting poet at New York University and had several g readings in Nicaragua, New York, Boston and West Coast. Here is a list of some the immediate readings.
(Only Public readings are listed)



Nicaragua International Granada Poetry Festival,
Granada, Nicaragua, Feb 15 Feb-23, Feb

3.00 a 4.00 PM
PRESENTACIÓN DEL LIBRO “POEMAS DE LOS HIMALAYAS”DEL POETA
YUYUTSU RAM DASS SHARMA DE NEPAL/INDIA

Presenta: Gioconda Belli
Lugar: Feria del Libro
Poemas Image
LECTURA DE POESÍA
Lugar: Plaza de la Independencia
INAUGURACIÓN OFICIAL DEL XI FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE POESÍA DE GRANADA, NICARAGUA, EN HONOR AL POETA ENRIQUE FERNÁNDEZ MORALES, Y A LA MEMORIA DE LA POETA COSTARRICENSE EUNICE ODIO
PRESIDEN:
Primera Mesa:
Ernesto Cardenal ( Nicaragua), Luis Eduardo Aute ( España), Richard Blanco( EU) , Eduardo Chirino ( Perú), Marco Antonio Campos ( México), Eva Bourke ( Alemania), Walis Nokan ( Taiwán ), Yuyutsu Sharma ( Nepal/ India), Tugrul Tanyol ( Turquía)
2:00 a 6:00 PM
CARNAVAL POÉTICO
ENTIERRO DE “LA VIOLENCIA DEL TIEMPO Y LA VIOLENCIA CONTRA LA MUJER”
CORTEJO FÚNEBRE

Septima Esquina:
Victor Rodríguez (Cuba), Yuyutsu Sharma ( Nepal/India),Alfonso Fajardo ( El Salvador), Héctor Avellán ( Nicaragua) Juan Gavura ( Eslovaquia)
10:00 AM a 12:00 PM
Lectura de poesía en la ciudad de Managua:
Colegios: Pierre y Marie Curie, Doris María
COLEGIO PIERRE Y MARIE CURIE:
Les Wicks ( Australia), Yuyutsu Sharma( Nepal-India), Beng Bert ( Suecia ), Héctor Avellán ( Nicaragua)

TrilogieBuchphoto2015_002
Long Island University, Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Tuesday, March 3, 2015, with Charles Fisherman, Long Island University, Host: THE POETRY CENTER at LIU-Post at Steinberg Art Museum Hillwood Commons12:30-1:30 common hour. This event is free and open to the public. Sponsors include the LIU- Post Poetry Center and Poets & Writers, Inc., with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.


Friday, March 13, 6.00 pm, An Evening with Yuyu, at The Poets Hall,1140 E, Lake Rd, Erie, PA 16507

Friday, March 15, 3.00 pm, Poetry and Photography Workshop, followed by a reading at BGFA,33 3rd St. SE #103 Barberton Ohio 44203 

Sunday, March 22, 2015, 6.00pm, Yuyutsu Sharma reading at Phoenix Poetry Series, with Bill Wolak and Carolyn Wells, Left Bank Books, NYC, 17 8th Ave (Between Bank and W 12th Streets), New York. Hosted by Mike Graves, (212) 924-5638 leftbankbooksny@yahoo.com, open reading follows…

, March 26, 2015 – 7:00pm, Whittier Collge, Guest Readings: Yuyutsu Sharma and Vandana Khanna at Wardman Library (7031 Founders Hill Rd., Whittier CA 90602, tel. 562-907-4247) Free and open to the public.


Sunday, March 29, 3:pm: Yuyutsu Sharma reading at Mosaic of Voices, with Tim Kahl, Rhony Bhopla, Nancy Aide Gonzalez & Penny Kline at Avid Reader at Tower, 1600, Broadway, Sacramento, Ca. 95818
Friday, April 10, 2015 Yuyutsu Sharma at The Grolier Book Shop, Cambridge, Introduced by William Wolak, The Grolier Book Shop, 6 Plympton Street, Cambridge,

Thursday, April 16, 6:30 pm, Yuyutsu Sharma reading with Sharon Dolin at New York University, Office of Global Studies in collaboration with NYU-SPS at 7E 12 Street, Fifth Floor Lounge. Refreshments served  


April 30, Yuyutsu Sharma reading with Christian Wiman at Columbia University, Columbia-ISSO, Columbia Global Poets Series: A poetry reading in collaboration with International House-New York City, and the Columbia School of General Studies. Details Follow

Saturday, January 10, 2015

The Pocket Edition of Yuyutsu Sharma/Andreas Stimm's Nepal-trilogy

Smaller 200-page postcard sized edition of
Yuyutsu Sharma's
900-page poetry/picture book,
http://www.nepal-trilogy.de/
with German photographer,
Andreas Stimm
Now at last most of his poetry lovers, friends and Himal admirers
can afford to collect this tiny treasure...

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

The Ofi Press Magazine Review of Yuyutsu Sharma's books, Space Cake, Amsterdam & Other Poems and Nine New York Poems

 

The Ofi Press Magazine

International Poetry and Fiction from Mexico City

By Agnes Marton

Poetry Review: Yuyu, the wandering poet

Both books are beautifully designed, with elegant bookmarks. I received them from India by post. When opening the envelope, the first thing I noticed was the spicy scent coming out of the pages. Then I started reading and couldn’t stop.



Yuyutsu Sharma: Nine New York Poems. A Prelude to A Blizzard In My Bones. New York Poems
Nirala Publications, New Delhi, 2014
Yuyutsu Sharma: Space Cake Amsterdam & Other Poems from Europe and America
Nirala Publications, New Delhi, 2014
Poetry Review by Agnes Marton
Published in issue 39 of The Ofi Press



Yuyu is Mona Lisa’s hallucinatory lover, saying Namaste (‘I salute the soul of God that is within you’) (Mona Lisa Drunk). A shaman “chewing Tesco’s vegpledges” on the Tube (Miles on the Tube). A cityhopper who is not at all a tourist, who is at home everywhere, exploring urban fields through his Himalayan gaze. The master of observation, of detail, of compassion.
Half the year, Yuyutsu Sharma leads creative writing workshops at American universities and performs his poems all over the world, but then he returns to Nepal and India.
Yuyu’s New York poems are full of collisions and intersections, and his verse itself is also multicultural, with echoes of sounds and rhythms of the city:
“Meager, skimpy, bloodless,
punching the city’s famed roaches
my legs clanging, wheeling mantras
of angry and drunken avatars,
my breaths measuring menus
of Fast Food takeaways
like curses of the demented
on shaky subway tracks”
(The Scream, Subway Avatars)

and fractions of the everyday sightseeing of an expat:
“The day you stop taking the free
Staten Island Ferry to click a perfect shot
of the Statue of Liberty,
or stop visiting Times Square at night
and forget to find a way out of its labyrinth (…)
You are a New Yorker.”
(You are a New Yorker)

It’s glorious contemporary urban poetry where sometimes traces of pastoral elegy can be found, sometimes magic realism, sometimes the individual’s concerns of global matters, sometimes eroticism, sometimes the mythology of Sufi saints… Most often all of these together in harmony.

The collection ‘Space Cake Amsterdam’ is more like a series of colourful snapshots (of museums, of cafés, of castles), without any superficiality, on the contrary, time to time reaching the profound. Yuyu calls himself a “shaking frame” (Temple, London); inherits his role as a writer and he can accomplish it through his wandering (“Someone left a pen / on the palpable table of my travels”). In De Zuarte Ruiter Café he (“you man from the Himalayas”) is asked whether he can stop ghosts of relatives slipping into dreams, whether he can explain nightmares.

“I knew they wished me to wear
a shaman’s feathered crown for my head     
and dance round and round for several centuries
to avenge the atrocities of the male Buddhas
in the corridors of history for them.”

He depicts naked, noble, leopard‑like, shiny dances (Ruigoord) and talks about remembering long‑ago admired lovers (Look‑alike, Galway), about the uncanny language of husbands (Frankfurt), and about parrots flying out of the zoo to the city to sing (what else?) the song of survival (Heidelberg, Danke!).

Both books are beautifully designed, with elegant bookmarks. I received them from India by post. When opening the envelope, the first thing I noticed was the spicy scent coming out of the pages. Then I started reading and couldn’t stop.