Author: C P Surendran
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Publisher: Yeti Books
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 97
ISBN/UPC (if available): 818833006X
Description
The 68 poems here consolidate Surendran’s reputation as a vengefully individual voice among English poets in India. The barely-contained, visceral quality of the voice breathes new life into seemingly dull, ordinary words, turn clichés on there heads. It at once makes his poetry both exciting and accessible. Surendran’s poetic constitution is exceptionally gifted to perceive moments of truth, and the touch of the bizarre in everyday reality, the world within the world, or, to use one of his phrases, the universe we miss in a blink. Each poem here is glittering, hard, polished like a precious stone. And caught in its clear light is a whole world on edge.
REVIEWS:
Surendran lives in a universe of landscapes. Elemental forces vein these landscapes. Sometimes they surface with horrifying impact, at other times gently.
Essentially natural, these forces also run through Surendran’s cities and towns, so that the dominant impression I’m left with is that his cities and towns are landscapes too, contoured like natural phenomena, again darkly veined, fissures subject to unexpected shocks. This is just one of the features of Surendran’s work I am drawn to. His is a voice I admire and respect.
-Adil Jussawalla
Surendran is one of the few Indian poets in English whose early promise has turned into mature achievement. From the outset his work has been fierce, bitter, and imbued with the sense that the world is a hostile place. This, in his early work, produced powerful imagery and rhythms. They are still clearly visible in his new collection, Canaries on the Moon, but what also emerges is a new and delicate lyricism. This is an admirable work.
-Dom Moraes
Contents
Prospect
Key
Where’s he gone?
Extra terrestrial
A drop
Sentence
Clockwork
A necessary war
Season Flipping
The Lamplit Answer
Economy
Sphynx
Exile and the Kingdom
Daze
Asthma
Replenishment
Terror my Brother
Blow by blow account of a boy missing
Soldier
Neighbours of the sky
A Quick Brown Fox
Bless and Curse
Coffee
Out of focus
Emergency
Passover
Race
Excavation
Enemy
Exit
Native
Each king in his place
Blank Call
Star-Crossed
Bat
Parody
Sweat
Being There
Futile
Gift
Edge
Pause
Panic in the Garden
Cambridge, autumn
Kalki brimming
Statistics
Captive
Poem
Flavour
Season’s Offering
The man with the mike
Offspring
A Nightmare
Traffic
Stone
Meaning
Today
Getting it right
Harvest
News in Brief
Reading Glasses
Aasa Khosa
Waiting
Because
Crucifixion
What happens
What I want