Saturday, July 15, 2017

Nepal’s Earthquake Through the Eyes of a Poet: Yuyutsu Sharma The Diplomat Interview


Nepal’s Earthquake Through the Eyes of a Poet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzrusDPNe3U&feature=youtu.be

India-born poet Yuyutsu Sharma is known as a “Himalayan poet,” as he has spent years in the Himalayas in Nepal listening to the silence of the mountains and using that as an inspiration to write poems. However, the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, which killed at least 9,000 people, shattered his celebration of the quietude that he had been relishing. That’s when he wrote a series of poems on the calamity, published earlier this year as a book, Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems.
In this video interview with The Diplomat, held in Kathmandu in June 2017, the poet recalls his emotional reaction to the earthquake and recites stanzas from his poems.

India-born poet Yuyutsu Sharma is known as a “Himalayan poet,” as he has spent 

Monday, June 19, 2017

Father by Yuyutsu Sharma

My hair go aflame
as you hiccup and breathe the last of this earth.

A grey wart appears on my forehead.

I clasp your cold palms
to feel blackout of your blood vessels.

On your chest, I burst
a silent pitcher of my life’s sleep

Darkness,
a savage silence of Sunya’s eternal ocean.

I glisten your rubbery body
with honey, curd and milk of seven rivers;

a tear keeps rolling endlessly
on the naked wound of my secret grief.

For the last time, I hold
this face of yours in my trembling hands;

the blast of a wail
ravages sunlight of my faith.

On your body, I place
heavy logs damp from a history of vanquished hearths.

In the crack of your still mouth
I drop grain of a rainbow

and light the last fire
that shall blacken quiet pages of my youth.

I hit the centre of your skull
aflame in the sputtering pyre

to ignite a bejewelled passage to eternity.

On the flooded banks of the Ganges
I knead your limbs all over again;

I make your head
heart, hands, life-veins, lines of your fate.

From the mantras of my breaths
I feed hunger of your blood vessels

and see you go alone
along the blazing fields of The Garuda Purana

eating crumbs of the blessed food
lost in the memories of my childhood

when once you had lifted me up
in the fragrant stretch of the blue hillside air

and probably for the first time
in life, smiled…


From Annapurna Poems

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Yuyutsu Sharma reading with Philip Nikolayev in Cambridge, MA




Poets Yuyutsu Sharma and Philip Nikolayev

Saturday, June 17, 2017, 4:pm to 5.30 pm
Free to Public
Outpost 186
186 1/2 Hampshire St, Inman Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02

Born in Moscow and raised in Russia and Moldova, poet Philip Nikolayev is the son of a linguist. He grew up speaking both English and Russian and immigrated to the United States in 1990. Nikolayev earned a BA and an MA at Harvard University and a PhD at Boston University. His poetry collections include Dusk Raga (1998), Monkey Time (2003), which won a Verse prize, and Letters from Aldenderry (2006).

In his poems, Nikolayev pairs philosophical questions with daily life, frequently combining formal and experimental approaches. In an interview with Jack Alun for The Argotist Online, Nikolayev stated, “Writing is largely spontaneous for me and improvisation and self-surprise are important parts of it. ... I write in hopes that what moves or interests or surprises me may also cause a similar response in someone else—the providential reader, in Mandelstam’s phrase, if you will. Often I don’t know exactly where a poem—a certain kind of poem—leads me until the very end, where with some luck everything just happens to click sharply into focus.” 

Nikolayev is one of the founding editors of Fulcrum, “an annual of poetry and aesthetics,” and his work has been featured in 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (2005). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, the poet Katia Kapovich.
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 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),  Nepal Trilogy, Photographs and Poetry on Annapurna, Everest, Helambu & Langtang (www.Nepal-Trilogy.de, Epsilonmedia, Karlsruhe, 2010), a 900-page book with renowned German photographer, Andreas Stimm, Space Cake, Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America, (2009, Indian reprint 2014) and Annapurna Poems, 2008, Reprint, 2012).
Yuyutsu also brought out a translation of Irish poet Cathal O’ Searcaigh poetry in Nepali in a bilingual collection entitled, Kathmandu: Poems, Selected and New (2006) and a translation of Hebrew poet Ronny Someck’s poetry in Nepali in a bilingual edition, Baghdad, February 1991 & Other Poems. 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.

Two books of his poetry, Poemes de l’ Himalayas (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Poemas de Los Himalayas (Cosmopoeticia, Cordoba, Spain) just appeared in French and Spanish respectively.

Widely traveled author, he has read his works at several prestigious places including Poetry CafĂ©, London, Seamus Heaney Center for Poetry, Belfast, New York University, 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, Cosmopoetica, Cordoba, Spain,  Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin, Columbia University, New York, 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, International Poetry Festival, Granada,  Nicaragua, Nehru Center, London, March Hare, Newfoundland, Canada, Gannon University, Erie, 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, University of California, Davis, Sacramento State University, California and New York University, New York.

His works have appeared in Poetry Review, Chanrdrabhaga, Sodobnost, Amsterdam Weekly, Indian Literature, Irish Pages, Delo, Modern Poetry in Translation, Exiled Ink, Iton77, Little Magazine, The Telegraph, Indian Express and Asiaweek.

The Library of Congress has nominated his 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. He just published his nonfiction, Annapurnas & Stains of Blood: Life, Travel and Writing a Page of Snow, (Nirala, 2010). He edits Pratik, A Magazine of Contemporary Writing and contributes literary columns to Nepal’s leading daily, The Himalayan Times.

He was at the Poetry Parnassus Festival organized to celebrate London Olympics 2012 where he represented Nepal and India. Yuyutsu is the Visiting Poet at Columbia University, New York and has just returned from Argentina where had had gone to participate in International Poetry Festival, Buenos Aires.

Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world to read from his works and conducts creative writing workshop at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home.

More: 
www.yuyutsu.de, www.niralapublications.com


Friday, June 2, 2017

Yuyutsu Sharma June readings

Yuyutsu Sharma June readings





JUNE, 2017

Saturday, June 3, 2017, 4:30 -6:00 pm Yuyutsu Sharma Reading with Carolyn Wells and Eugene Hyon in The Brooklyn Bell Poetry Reading Series,  843 Classon Ave Brooklyn, New York Call (718) 399-2613 info@broolynbell.com Hosted by Kati Duncan 

Monday, June 12, 2017, 7.00 pm Yuyutsu Sharma Reading in Long Island Reading Series,  pm 254 41 Horace Harding Expressway Little Neck NY 11362 Hosted by James Romano

Wednesday, June 14, 2017, 6.30- 10.00 pm at Salon on Maple Street: Evening of Poetry with Yuyutsu Sharma, Ravi Shankar, Ruth Danon and Arabella Hutter,  281 Maple St, Brooklyn, NY 11225-5106, United States. Followed by Potluck dinner: bring a dish or drinks for 4 people!

APRIL-MAY, 17

Thursday, April 6, at 7 pm to 9 pm The  Red Room Reading Series: Yuyutsu Sharma with Ailish Hopper, Philip McLaren and Sheila Kohler, Hosted by The New York Writers Workshop,  85 E 4th St 3rd Floor, New York, New York 10003 The NYWW Red Room Reading Series takes place on the first Thursday of every month, Host : Tim Tomlinson  http://www.newyorkwritersworkshop.com/

April 19, 2017 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM The Global Poets Series: Yuyutsu Sharma reading with Sholeh Wolpe, Lewisohn Hall GS Student Lounge, Third Floor, 2970 Broadway, Columbia University,  New York, NY 10027The Global Poets Series is a celebration through poetry of our diverse global community at Columbia, and is co-sponsored by the School of General Studies, the International Students and Scholars Office, the School of the Arts, and Columbia College. Hosted by David Austell https://isso.columbia.edu/events/

Sunday, April 23 • 4:40pm Yuyutsu Sharma, Reading from ‘Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems’ at LA Times Festival of Books University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, CA 90089 http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Saturday, April 29, 7 pm:  Blue Light at Think Round Series.  Yuyutsu Sharma reads poetry at Think Round Fine Arts, 2140 Bush Street, Suite 1B, San Francisco CA 94115 (between Fillmore and Webster. Gallery entrance is on the driveway. (Street parking, or you can park in the garage at Japantown, which is close to the gallery.)
 Saturday, April 29, 7 pm:  10 am to 4 pm: Workshop with Yuyutsu Sharma at “The Pink Palace” — home to Diane Frank & Erik Levins People interested from your list can send me an email:  GeishaPoet@aol.com.

Sunday, May 7 at 3 pm at Molloy College presents Yuyutsu Sharma and Contributors to Nassau County Poet Laureate Review, Vol. IV in the Reception Room, Hosted by  Barbara Novack Writer-in-Residence, Molloy College 1000 Hempstead Avenue P.O. Box 5002 Rockville Centre, NY 11571-5002 516.323.3273bnovack@molloy.edu

Monday, May 8 at 8 pm: Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma reading in Saturn Poetry Series with Su Polo, Jay Chollick and the Taurus Poets Party at Shades of Green Pub & Restaurant 125 East 15 Street, NYC Between 3rd Ave. & Irving Place… Train: 6NRQL to 14th Street Union Square, walk one block north Host: Su Polo www.supolo.com


Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Announcing Final List of The Poets of Eternal Snow

Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of  One Hundred Twenty FivePoetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma
 Edited by David Austell & Kathleen D Gallagher
ISBN : 81-8250-0915 2017 Paperback pp 309 plus  24 Photo pages

John Clarke
Tracie Morell
Lori Ann Kusterbeck
David Ray
James Ragan
Ravi Shankar
Eileen O’Connor
Gorka Lasa
Elena Karina Byrne
Pascale Petit
Chuck Joy
Lorraine Conlin
Paul Nash &
Denise La Neve
Andrew Taylor
Amarendra Khatua
Meera Ekkanath Klein
Eskimo Pie
Christi Shannon Kline
Revigya Joshi
Kathleen D Gallagher
David Austell
Maria Heath Beckett
Renay Sanders
Shawn Aveningo
Juan Carlos Abril
Tim Kahl
Dom Kafley
Judy Ray
Tera Vale Regan
Diane Frank
Lady K (Kathy Smith)
Karen Corinne Herceg
Kate Lamberg
Penny Kline
Sharon Metzler-Dow
M. L. Williams
Robert Scotto
Nicole Barriere
Anne Fritz
Ruth Danon
Tim Tomlinson
Mary E. Weems
Roopa Ramamoorthi
Dan Szczesny
Nancy Aidé Gonzalez
Nancy R Lange
Michael Graves
Eugene Hyon
Marcus Bales
Peter V. Dugan
Aixia de Villanova
Leah Taylor
Cristina Querrer
Bari Falese
Agnes Marton
Patricia Carragon
Dd. Spungin
VerĂłnica Aranda
Samantha Bear
Darlene Costello
Mindy Kronenberg
David Axlerod
Tony Barnstone
Russ Green
Alessandra Francesca
Nabina Das
Ronnie Norpel
Eddie Woods
Kim Nuzzo
Chiff Fyman
Barun Bajracharya
Shreejana Bhandari
Charles Peter Watson
Christopher Wheeling
Merik van der Torren
Art Good Times
Robin Mets
Erica Mapp
Bill Wolak
Roxanne Hoffman
Civa Bhusal
James Romano
D. B. Meltzer 
Cee Williams
Bidur Prasad Chaulagain
Vicki Iorio
Barbara Novack
Mary Ryan Garcia
Theresa Göttl Brightman
Steve Brightman
Jack Tar
Kymberly Avinasha Brown
Catherine Gigante-Brown
Marion Palm
Hélène Cardona
André Baum
Phillip Giambri
Devin Wayne Davis
Alex Symington
Rajesh Siddharth
Marisa Moks-Unger
Lorraine  Bouchard
Don Carroll
Anthony Murphy
Timothy Gager
John J. Trause
Jack Locke
Anuj Ghimire
Elaine Karas-Shadle
Irene O’ Garden
Allegra Jostad Silberstein
Gaurav Bhattarai
Su Polo
Ernie Burns
Roger McClain
Ken Ruan
Jen Pezzo
Marcus Calvert
Thomas Jenney
Judi Chabola
Bishwa  Sigdel
Carolyn Wells
Arun Budhathoki
Carol Hebald
Melissa Hobbs
Jan Garden Castro
Swati Sharma






Sunday, May 14, 2017

World Literature Today, May issue, on Yuyutsu Sharma's Quaking Cantos


Author: 
The cover to Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems by Yuyutsu SharmaNew Delhi. Nirala. 2016. 81 pages.
On what seemed like an ordinary day in 2015, a series of rumbles jostled the Nepali region, killing thousands and thrusting countless more into homelessness. An encounter with this disorientating rift produced Quaking Cantos, a visual and verbal response to the wreckage that emerged when planet ground against earth. Much like the title itself, Quaking Cantos—either an epic poem or a quavering song, depending on orientation—is a stunningly heart-wrenching, albeit healing, rendezvous with torment of the highest order. In this compilation, photography by Prasant Shrestha joins the verse of Himalayan poet Yuyutsu Sharma to produce a slim rejoinder to an otherwise blind and mute confrontation with chaos.
Sleek and glossy images smolder from behind the eyes and intersperse this rubblelike arrangement of verse, the cover of which prominently demands an immediate reckoning with unexpected tumult. Bricks, dust, and the unrecognizable remains of a once-normal life confront the reader before the title page to part 1, “I generally do not cry . . .” and once again in the middle of part 2, “Seven Things That Caused the Quakes.” (The title page to part 1 likewise locates itself before the table of contents, another disjunction.) Two etchings of the writer’s face directly follow the epilogue, “A Song of Extinguished Hearths,” and portray the writer with eyes shut and, later, wide open.
With eyes wide shut, emotions tremor from page to page throughout two parts and their summation. Somnolent images of an ancestral grandmother shuffle from one world to the next, leaving Sharma, as it were, to mull over the collective remains of grief under a vast dome of sky. Paradox meets fate when, in an initial poem entitled “Twisted Galaxies,” Sharma soulfully pens: “My bed shakes / as I prepare to reclaim / fractured / fragments of my sleep.”
Like many collections of verse, Quaking Cantos ends in epilogue. What is different is that the grandmother, once again, instructs the scribe to sing, as he recalls, “A song of livid flames / rising out of clay hearths / in makeshift shacks / along the mule paths.” A spiritual quest in search of explanation journeys through a cacophony of images yet ends under the flames of the unknown of what was once possessed but has been lost. Transient and reflective, Quaking Cantos distills loss into revelation as only a shaman and photographer can envisage.
Andrea Dawn Bryant
Georgetown University

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Yuyutsu Sharma Reading from Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems at LA Times Festival of Books

Yuyutsu Sharma Reading from Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems at LA Times Festival of Books

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

APRIL 22 – 23, 2017 | USC CAMPUs
Sunday, April 23 • 4:40pm – 5:00pm
 Yuyutsu Sharma, Reading from ‘Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems’
Speakers
avatar for Yuyutsu Sharma

Yuyutsu Sharma

recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange & The Institute for the | Translation of Hebrew Literature, is a distinguished Himalayan poet. Currently Visiting Poet at Columbia University, Sharma has published ten poetry collections and just finished a memoir on Nepal earthquakes, “Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems.” Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world but… Read More →

Sunday April 23, 2017 4:40pm – 5:00pm
Poetry Stage, Signing Area 5

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Yuyutsu Sharma’s Blue Light Press San Francisco Reading and Workshop


Blue Light Press proudly presents…
Yuyutsu Sharma, beloved Poet from Nepal
for an intimate evening of poetry and storiesSaturday, April 29, 2017 – 7:00 p.m.
Think Round Fine Arts
2140 Bush Street, Suite 1B, San Francisco CA 94115
(It’s between Fillmore and Webster. Gallery entrance is on the driveway.
Street parking, or park in the garage at Japantown, which is close to the gallery.)Sweet and savory potluck after the reading.
Yuyutsu’s books include A Blizzard in My Bones: New York Poems,
Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems, Space Cake Amsterdam & Other poems from Europe and America.

Also that day…
Poetry Workshop with Yuyutsu Sharma
Celebrating the Himalayas, Touching the Soul of God in Your Own Sacred Place with ideas about writing, poems, stories and writing prompts.
Saturday, April 29, 2017 – 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For information, send an email to GeishaPoet@aol.com
The workshop is in San Francisco, in the Outer Sunset.

Amity University Interview after receiving Honorary Professorship


Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Yuyutsu Sharma’s upcoming April/ May 2017 readings: New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco

Thursday, April 6, at 7 pm to 9 pm The Red Room Reading Series: Yuyutsu Sharma with Ailish Hopper, Philip McLaren and Sheila Kohler, Hosted by The New York Writers Workshop, 85 E 4th St 3rd Floor, New York, New York 10003 The NYWW Red Room Reading Series takes place on the first Thursday of every month, Host : Tim Tomlinson http://www.newyorkwritersworkshop.com/

April 19, 2017 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM The Global Poets Series: Yuyutsu Sharma reading with Sholeh Wolpe, Lewisohn Hall GS Student Lounge, Third Floor, 2970 Broadway, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027The Global Poets Series is a celebration through poetry of our diverse global community at Columbia, and is co-sponsored by the School of General Studies, the International Students and Scholars Office, the School of the Arts, and Columbia College. Hosted by David Austell https://isso.columbia.edu/events/

Sunday, April 23 • 4:40 pm Yuyutsu Sharma, Reading from ‘Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems’ at LA Times Festival of Books University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, CA 90089 http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Saturday, April 29, 7 pm: Blue Light at Think Round Series. Yuyutsu Sharma reads poetry at Think Round Fine Arts, 2140 Bush Street, Suite 1B, San Francisco CA 94115 (between Fillmore and Webster. Gallery entrance is on the driveway. (Street parking, or you can park in the garage at Japantown, which is close to the gallery.)

Saturday, April 29, 7 pm: 10 am to 4 pm: Workshop with Yuyutsu Sharma at “The Pink Palace” — home to Diane Frank & Erik Levins People interested from your list can send me an email: GeishaPoet@aol.com.

Sunday, May 7 at 3 pm at Molloy College presents Yuyutsu Sharma and Contributors to Nassau County Poet Laureate Review, Vol. IV in the Reception Room, Hosted by Barbara Novack Writer-in-Residence, Molloy College 1000 Hempstead Avenue P.O. Box 5002 Rockville Centre, NY 11571-5002 516.323.3273 bnovack@molloy.edu

http://niralapublications.com/yuyutsu-sharmas-upcoming-april-may-2017-readings-new-york-los-angeles-and-san-francisco/