Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Praise for Yuyutsu RD Sharma’s Works


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
 



Monday, November 2, 2009

Space cake, Amsterdam and other poems from Europe and America - New book



Space cake, Amsterdam and other poems from Europe and America




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.

HOWLING DOG PRESS, 2009, POETRY, $18.95, 6”x 9”, 109 pages, softbound with
double covers, black inner, full color outer; color endsheets; Designed & edited by
Michael Annis. Artwork by Henry Avignon & Michael Annis.
ISBN: 978-1-882863-95-2. Reviewers contact publicity@howlingdogpress.com.
Ordering: www.howlingdogpress.com/Publications/Publications.htm. Request complimentary
review copies by e-mailing, or by regular mail on publication letterhead.
For radio, television, internet, and print interviews, contact Michael Annis at
970-231-8106 [in USA], or by e-mail at publicity@howlingdogpress.com




Saturday, October 31, 2009

Roaring Recitals--Nirala book share



Roaring Recitals
Five Nepali Poets Translated from the Nepali
by 
Yuyutsu RD Sharma
ISBN81-85693-95-1 1999 Hardcover pp.99
Rs.150 Indian
Roaring Recitals 
is a stunning anthology revealing the range and power of contemporary Nepalese imagination.

Translated into English for the first time by well-known poet Yuyutsu R.D, active in Nepal’s literary life for last two decades, this is a ground-breaking volume of solemn rage displaying richness and diversity of Nepali poetry.
Since politics has always played a decisive role in every field of Nepal, including literature, Yuyustu R.D. translated a selection of five major Nepali poets who have in some way or the other shattered ugly castles of orthodoxy and autocracy to usher modernism in the life and literature Nepali. For it’s Gopal Prasad Rimal who liberated Nepali literature from the shackles of traditional Sanskrit usage and meter and initiated a tradition of prose poems, employing native symbols and folklore, to voice the agony of Nepalese people suffering at the hands of Rana oligarchy.
 Following footsteps of Rimal, we find Bhupi Sherchan, Banira Giri, Shailendra Sakar and Bimal Nibha raise their voice against the despotic partyless Panchayat regime. Here Bhupi Sherchan evokes the geopolitical compulsion of Nepal to remain a non-entity and raises delicate questions of nationalism, sovereignty and a liberated prosperous Nepal, Banira employs man-woman relations to clean the vicious webs of despots and “missile makers,” Sakar discovers the anguish of discarded communities to restore the dignity of the poet from the clutches of Establishment and Nibha flings stones of fury at “soft-nailed civilians”, the Panchayat demons, to dramatise the interplay of “tears and blood.”
Roaring Recitals is a dazzling treasure that shall interest those readers worldwide who are curious to acquaint themselves with a secret flame of vitality, a creative turbulence that has remained at the center of modern Nepal’s creative life.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Annapurnas and Stains of Blood: Life Travels and Writing on a Page of Snow


Annapurnas and Stains of Blood: Life Travels and Writing on a Page of Snow

A highly engrossing account of world’s youngest republic passing through great historic transformation.

Internationally known poet and columnist for several dailies including The Himalayan Times and The Kathmandu Post, Yuyutsu RD Sharma for the first time brings alive the secret commotion behind the great change in Himalayan nation that the whole world has been watching curiously. In his lucent prose, he puts together his best to unleash the myriad colors of violence in the contemporary Nepal and in the rest of the world during his legendry travels.

Terror on the deserted Nepalese highways, merciless butchering of innocent Nepali workers in Baghdad, dismal day of London Bombing, murder of Theo van Gogh, the State of emergency in India, the book captures rare moments in contemporary history that readers would treasure not just for themselves but for the posterity.

Here you will find a distinguished poet churning out his best prose, at best of his poetic capabilities.

ISBN81-8250-012-5
Published by Nirala Publications New Delhi-2 2010 Price:395 Non- Fiction Hard Cover


Annapurna Poems Review--A Trek with the Buddhist Bard

http://dansemacabre.art.officelive.com/atrekwiththebuddhabard.aspx

Trek with the Buddhist Bard

http://dansemacabre.art.officelive.com/atrekwiththebuddhabard.aspx

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

University of Ottawa Reading

Friday Circle and the Creative Writing Program,
Department of English.
University of Ottawa
are pleased to invite you to an evening of poetry and commentary
with one of Nepal’s leading authors,
Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma.


Time: Tuesday, October 27, 2009,

5:30 p.m. (17.30 hrs.)

Place:   Glenn Clever Room, 3rd floor
Arts Building
70 Laurier Ave East



Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma is a distinguished poet and translator who was born at Nakodar, Punjab, and moved to Nepal when he was very young.  He now lives in Kathmandu and edits Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing and contributes literary columns to Nepal’s leading papers, The Himalayan Times and The Kathmandu Post.

He has  published nine  poetry collections including Space Cake, Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America (Howling Dog Press, Colorado, 2009), Annapurna Poems,(Nirala, New Delhi 2008), and  www.WayToEverest.de: A photographic and Poetic Journey to the Foot of Everest, (Epsilonmedia, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2006) with German photographer Andreas Stimm.

He is the recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature.  He is presently on a reading tour in Canada and the U.S.

Free admission

For further information, please contact Prof. S. Mayne, 613 562-5800, x 1148

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

ECS Magazine news--Space Cake Amsterdam Book Launch

Space Cake, Amsterdam, and Other Poems Nepal
Tourism Board
September 2, 2009

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.

Hudson Valley readings

Yuyutsu R. D. Sharma,
one of the most distinguished authors of South Asia,
author of  The Lake Fewa & a HorseSpace Cake Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America, Around Annapurna,
and five other books of poetry will read

                                                              photo by Patricia Seaton
* at 7:00 p.m. on November 5 at Noble Coffee Roasters, Rte. 207, Campbell Hall,

* at 4:00 p.m. on November 7 at Baby Grand Books, 7 West Street in Warwick,

* and at 7:00 p. m. at Morrison Hall, SUNY Orange, Middletown.


Enemies of Poetry




A monkey’s anarchic
hand tears apart

a weaver-bird’s nest
hanging like an embroidered dream

from the green
core of a bamboo grove.

A critic’s frog
eye dabbles with colors

of a rainbow of a poem
on a cold table of Establishment.

One-eyed baron
what would you prove?

that poetry doesn’t mean anything?
and that like the earth itself it is dying?

How many villages
of silences would you bulldoze

to build
an empire of lecherous tycoons?

How many mantras,
mountains and riverbeds would you

swallow to raise
reeking pyramids of audio-visual cassettes

compact discs and Internet
wherein like an ancient

king’s bejeweled mummy
a wail of poetry shall feverishly

stretch itself
for the restoration of a regime of written words.

A good looking career woman
shall rise out from a showman’s wet bed

and start putting
her makeup on for a bestseller’s blurb.

Enemies of poetry shall
first blast a poet’s

innocent, aerial hand
drawing pure mandalas

of lilting alphabets
on a crisp homemade sheet of paper

and laying the last
flower on the poet’s garve

shall switch
the color T.V. on.

Nirala Book of Chicagoland Poets


Nirala Book of Chicagoland Poets
Call for Submissions
Nirala Publications, (New Delhi, www.niralapublications.com) has announced the forthcoming publication of Chicagoland Poets.
The 300-page anthology, edited by Illinois poets Robin Metz and Nina Corwin, will be launched in Chicago, New York, London, New Delhi, and Kathmandu for worldwide distribution. The Series Editor is Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma.

Named after the great Indian poet, Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’, Nirala Publications is a significant South Asian publishing house featuring best known as well as little known authors from India, Nepal, and rest of the world. Over past two decades, it has featured scores of internationally known writers like Rabindra Nath Tagore, Jayanta Mahapatra, David Ray, Cathal O’ Searcaigh, Rishikesh Shaha, Larry G Peters, Yuyutsu RD Sharma, Murari P Regmi, Ronny Someck, Gopal Prasad Rimal, Ramanand Rathi, Laxmi Devkota, and Evald Flisar.

Over the years its focus has been Nepal, Buddhism, shamanism, and the Himalayan studies. Today it remains the largest publishing house in the world to publish maximum books on Nepal. It also aspires to bring to the Asian readers the best known literature from all over world, especially poetry.

Nirala also collaborates with several foreign publishers and institutes and in future hopes to present to its readers the healthy literature and original research from all over the world. In addition, it supports Pratik, A Magazine of Contemporary Writing edited by Yuyutsu RD Sharma and has been instrumental in making publication of the magazine’s several special issues.

Among many of its Special issues, most recent remains the Special British issue featuring the very best of contemporary poetry from the UK including Moniza Alvi, Ruth Padel, Robin Robertson, Sean O’Brien, David Constantine, Mimi Khalvati, Fiona Sampson, Alice Oswald, Daljit Nagra, Patience Agbabi, Selima Hill, Matthew Sweeney, Robert Minhinnick, Gwyneth Lewis, Les Murray, Tim Liardet, George Szirtes, Pascale Petit, John Kinsella, Polly Clark, Nick Laird, Colette Bryce, John Haynes, Carol Rumens, Penelope Shuttle, and W.N. Herbert. Pascale Petit, leading British poet and Former Editor of Poetry London remained its Guest Editor.

For the forthcoming Chicago Anthology, poets born or currently living in Chicago (or environs) may submit up to five poems of any length on any subject (including, especially, poems about Chicago and environs, or southeast Asia).

Poets not born or currently living in Chicago may also submit up to five poems on any subject related to Chicago (or environs).

While unpublished poems are preferred, previously published poems are welcomed. A statement indicating that the poet retains reprint rights should accompany each submission of previously published poems.

A brief biographical statement of 100 words (indicating the poet’s ties to Chicago, if applicable) should accompany the submission.

Deadline for submissions is August 31, 2009 and should be emailed to: treehouse523@sbcglobal.net in a single .doc or .rtf file with Chicagoland Poetry in the subject line OR addressed to: Chicagoland Poetry c/o Nina Corwin 523 S Plymouth Ct, Chicago, IL 60605. Please include SASE for reply only. MSS will not be returned.

Poets included in the anthology will receive a complimentary copy.

Poemes De L'Himalaya --New Book Share



   Trouvez une librairie près de chez vous sur Place des Libraires : cliquez ici

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Harmattan
http://editions-harmattan.fr/
Parution : 15 Septembre 2009
Genre : Poesie Grand Format
95 grammes
9782296102132
Prix éditeur ttc : 11.00 €
Disponible chez l'éditeur
ce livre est présent dans
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L'avis des éditeurs
=0 A
La poésie de Yuyutsu R. D. Sharma mêle humour et gravité pour raconter l'expérience commune humaine. Entendre ses poèmes en népali, c'est entendre un chant venu des plus hautes cimes, mais c'est aussi pénétrer les fêlures de la modernité du monde. Qu'il évoque les porteurs de l'Himalaya, qu'il raconte ses aventures à New York, il décrit les expressions fondamentales de l'humanité en mêlant les rêves, l'espoir et la réalité. Son travail poétique est aussi bien nourri des grands auteurs (Shakespeare, Brecht, Pinter...) que de situations inédites et personnelles.



 

Monday, October 12, 2009

Press Release from Nirala-- New book
Yuyutsu RD Sharma's Annapurnas and Stains of Blood: Life Travels and Writing on a Page of Snow

Annapurnas & Stains of Blood is a highly engrossing account of world’s youngest republic passing through great historic transformation.

Internationally known poet and columnist for several dailies including The Himalayan Times and The Kathmandu Post, Yuyutsu RD Sharma for the first time brings alive the secret commotion behind the great change in Himalayan nation that the whole world has been watching curiously. In his lucent prose, he puts together his best to unleash the myriad colors of violence in the contemporary Nepal and in the rest of the world during his legendry travels.

Terror on the deserted Nepalese highways, merciless butchering of innocent Nepali workers in Baghdad, dismal day of London Bombing, murder of Theo van Gogh, the State of emergency in India, the book captures rare moments in contemporary history that readers would treasure not just for themselves but for the posterity.

Here you will find a distinguished poet churning out his best prose, at best of his poetic capabilities.

ISBN81-8250-012-5
Published by
Nirala Publications New Delhi-2 2010 Price:395 Hard Non- Fiction