Distinguished film maker Stephan Bookas' film based on Yuyutsu Sharma poem, "I See My World Shaking" from 'Quaking Cantos' has been selected from nearly 2000 submissions by the programme commission to be a part of the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival taking place from 19 to 22 November 2020 in the Kino in der KulturBrauerei in Berlin.
https://www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/…/literaturwerkstatt…/home/Sunday, September 6, 2020
Sunday, August 23, 2020
What nature means to me : Yuyutsu Sharma Note on Royal Kew Gardens Collaboration
What nature means to me
Writers share the inspiration behind their displays dotted across the Gardens this summer
BY MERYL WESTLAKE
Leo Boix
I live in Deal, a small East Kent coastal town overlooking the English Channel, where I swim regularly.
Nature, in all its forms, has inspired my poetry in unexpected ways, from the marine environment where I live and work, to the woodland trees and migratory birds I'm surrounded by.
This special connection became even stronger since I moved to the UK from Argentina in 1997, as it reinforced in me notions of belonging, exile, and fleetingness.
Óscar Martín Centeno
For me,
nature connects with the human being, transmits its heartbeat, amplifies its
silences. In the poem it is more than just a stage. It is the invention of
love.
The
photograph is of a crasa, it is a typical plant in arid areas, quite
common in southern Spain.
I like it a
lot because it looks like a green rose that is born in unsuspected places. I
took the picture on a rainy day and the drops of water shine on the plant.
©Óscar Martín Centeno
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
When I was young, my mother told me there were kami, spirits,
everywhere. Sometimes, I sit still and try to listen out for them.
Jini Reddy
Nature is
the living earth – in nature I experience freedom, belonging, repose, an
unravelling, and often, joy.
This is an
image of the St. Lawrence River ( and the Lachine Rapids) taken from the
end of the street I grew up on in Montreal. Whenever I arrive back in Canada,
this is the first place I go, and it represents so much: sweet memory and
homecoming but also the beauty and power of nature. When I come to this spot, I
exhale, unravel, feel free and at peace.
St Lawrence
River©Jini Reddy
Yuyutsu RD Sharma
Nature in
the Himalayas is not just a physical thing but a spiritual entity, Devatatma, a
Sanskrit word meaning a place where soul of the god lives. It’s through the
celebration of these magnificent Himalayan glaciers, named after divine beings
like Annapurna, Lord Shiva’s consort, that I have been able to get in touch
with the sublime and seek higher truths in life.
The song of
these glaciers that melt and replenish the granary stores of the Subcontinent
bestow upon us a sacred mission to survive, keeping us physically fit, agile
like birds, connecting our breaths to the colossal soul of the gods.
Himalayan
peaks ©Andreas Stimm
Nina Mingya Powles
I took this
picture outside a temple in Yunnan, China, in 2016.
The
courtyard was coated in yellow leaves; the air was full of incense. Ginkgo
trees are very ancient – to me they represent memory, history, and
connectedness.
Gingko,
Yunnan, China ©Nina Mingya Powles
Toni Giselle Stuart
My walks in
Silvermine have become about connecting to my ancestors, the indigenous ones
who have walked this land for thousands of years, and those who immigrated here
centuries ago in various ways.
In the
mountains and at the ocean, I remember and feel, how I am part of something
much bigger. This makes me feel held and safe.
Source: https://www.kew.org/
Saturday, August 22, 2020
'The Guardian' feature on Yuyutsu Sharma collaboration along with nine other celebrated writers at London's Royal Kew Gardens!
'A journey around the world': Kew Gardens offers visitors an escape
Travel the World at Kew series will showcases plants from 10 countries across six continents
Thu 20 Aug 2020 14.36 BSTLast modified on Fri 21 Aug 2020 04.37 BST
Children looking at humpback whale sculpture
Those unable to satisfy their wanderlust in these uncertain days of lockdown and travel quarantine are invited to immerse themselves in the sights, smells and spirit of faraway places – in a botanical sense at least – here in the UK.
From colossal Californian redwoods, those imposing ancient giants of the plant kingdom, to the balmy fragrance of Mediterranean rosemary and lavender, visitors to Kew Gardens in London will be transported to 10 countries across six continents within just a few hours as part of its Travel the World trail experience from next week.
The essence of
a tranquil Japanese tea garden and delights of the Himalayan flora of an
undulating Rhododendron dell are still within reach, for a tiny fraction of the
real cost, with visitors’ senses heightened by accompanying prose, poetry and
illustrations specially commissioned from talent across the world.
Sophie Rochelle
walk past beds of asterids in the Agius Evolution garden within Kew Gardens,
London.
A visitor walking past beds of asterids in the Agius Evolution garden within Kew Gardens. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA
“In a year
when many holidays and travel plans have had to change, Travel the World at Kew
will offer visitors a chance to experience the next best thing, a journey
around the world inside the safety of our walls,” said Richard Barley, the
director of horticulture, learning and operations at the Royal Botanic Gardens,
Kew.
“Visiting 10 special locations dotted throughout our 320-acres landscape is a perfect way to reconnect with nature after months of lockdown.”
Kew’s Great Pagoda towers over plant specimens collected in China’s Sichuan province. South Africa’s bergs and kloofs are replicated in a rock garden stippled with cascading waterfalls. Eucalyptus trees arouse thoughts of Australia, as do spectacular mountain gums.
The monkey puzzle trees – “coiled succulent pine / with saurian arms, bony plates / on reptilian back” in the words of the Latino-British poet Leo Boix – are redolent of the time of dinosaurs. They evoke, too, Argentina’s “sub-Antarctic forests” and rivers of “the most radiant turquoise I’ve seen”, writes the Kew scientist Dr Laura Martinez-Suz in her accompanying prose.
Britain’s native woodlands of tall grasses, wildflowers and whispering beech and hazel are also on show. Meanwhile, Óscar Martín Centeno’s poem The dance of sunrise in the Mediterranean Garden is a dreamscape of flowers swaying in the light of a rising sun.
A centrepiece will be a large-scale humpback whale botanical living sculpture, created by the winner of the Netflix series The Big Flower Fight and on display from 22 August – 18 September.
The specially commissioned poetry and prose by literary award-nominated writers, with a strong connection to each country, are displayed alongside vibrant illustrations by artist Mark Boardman.
Visitors walk past flowering beds along the Broad Walk, Kew Gardens, London.
Visitors walking past flowering beds along the
Broad Walk at Kew Gardens, London. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA
Writers include Joe Cottonwood, who lives in the coastal mountains of California, whose words read: “because a redwood with its power / will never preach / makes no demands / sips from the clouds / swallows the sunlight …”
The world-renowned Himalayan poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma has penned Rhododendron’s Suitor, which includes the lines: “an eternal lover / jilted by the silver-barked / suitor of the steep cliffs, / the Nepalese alder …”
Paul Denton, the head of visitor programmes at Kew, said the trail highlighted some of the “hidden gems” of Kew Gardens. “You can be reading a beautiful piece of poetry at the same time as seeing the landscape, so you can get a real sense of place and space,” he said. “It’s like taking the perfect holiday snap.”
His
favourites? “I love the Californian redwoods. There is something about the
colossal nature of these trees. And the monkey puzzle tree, which just has such
a strangeness about it.”
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
Yuyutsu Sharma's Poetry to be featured at Royal Kew Garden, London's upcoming August, 2020 show, "Travel the World at Kew"
Travel the World at Kew
DATE
LOCATION
PRICE
- Robert Montgomery
- Joe Cottonwood
- Nina Mingya Powles
- Óscar Martín Centeno
- Leo Boix
- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
- Tamryn Bennett and Lyndsay Urquhart
- Jini Reddy
- Dara McAnulty
- Yuyutsu RD Sharma
- Toni Giselle Stuart
Guidance about coronavirus
Saturday, June 6, 2020
New Poem, Yuyutsu Sharma's "Dai, Chengdu" published in "On the Verge- Poets of the Palisades III Anthology."
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Yuyutsu Sharma's "Jasmine Jewels" inspired by American photographer, Julie Williams-Krishnan's photograph at "Live Encounters", Ireland's leading online magazine
https://liveencounters.net/le-poetry-writing-2020/06-june-pw-2020/yuyutsu-sharma-on-an-empty-sac-street/?fbclid=IwAR1YxA06YNlL87FMXP0yNZY7FbTwAYdvqVVTKOwWtoAUPG5FOosTKwprRG0
Friday, April 17, 2020
An Older Poem about a dead monkey : "To Muktinath" by Yuyutsu Sharma
On my way to Muktinath
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Corina Poem 3: The Supermarket, Elmhurst by Yuyutsu Sharma
as he struggled unpacking his box
of 99 cent merchandise in the aisle,
then rose to face me,
“I speak no Englis.”
I walked the superstore,
stench of the dead and the dying
stinging my nostrils...
A stone crab menacing moving
its smashed pincers atop
a pile of soft shelled turtles
frozen and defaced from
uncouth handling and numerous inspections--
Tilapia, carp and caby fish,
Dungeness crab and special lobsters,
jelly fish, yellow eel, the snake of the sea,
all live and squirming
in the murky waters of my brain...
The striped bass whose face
has been scrubbed along
endless tracks of transportations,
buffalo carp moving in
a murky glass case,
or live frogs in a tin box,
inert, not croaking to bring
Dionysus to these golden
Superstores in the Queens.
Great China crab frozen
beneath layers of an affluence,
conch shells hushed before the snail
could wriggle out of the shell
and name million cosmic metaphors
of self, salvation and sacrifice.
Or leave the empty body
of the Lord to utter a prayer
or a war cry of justice...
I guess it was a revolution
of sparrows as he lifted his step
to stop in the middle
of the jungle on his way out
of the castle Kapilvastu
and carefully step aside
so as not to crush
a line of Industrious ants
or stop a summer song
of ecstatic cicadas
along the raging rivers...
I haste I rushed out
of the slaughter house,
feeling the dragon’s hook
in my throat and bowed to
million little lives on the earth
singing and swaying in an erratic energy
to the music of His long
lustrous earlobes of wisdom...
Sunday, March 22, 2020
First Corona Poem: "The Shopkeeper’s Daughter" by Yuyutsu Sharma #ContagiamociDiPoesia
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Celebrating Annapurna: The Majestic Mountain Range in Nepal -- Poetry reading by Yuyutsu Sharma
has held workshops 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, Beijing Open University and New York University, New York. Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world and conducts Creative Writing workshops at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home. Currently, Yuyutsu Sharma is a visiting poet at Columbia University and edits, Pratik: A Quarterly Magazine of Contemporary Writing.