Witnesses of Remembrance

Book excerpt: A new selection of far-reaching poems from an outstanding literary doyen of our times. Kunwar Narain is widely regarded as one of India’s finest contemporary poets and thinkers, with a universal appeal. Awarded with the Jnanpith, his work bears witness to how the lived and the written coalesce. His poems say more than their words—taking us into and out of the morass of our bizarre worlds, signalling inner disquiets in their solicitudes, waking us up to hope in the interstices between lines, and creating entire worldviews in their collectivity. This is the first book-length translation of the author’s poetry to appear after his passing away in 2017. It has an eclectic, wide-ranging selection of poems from his latest five collections. This bilingual edition is also substantive, with over a hundred poems—translated and introduced by Apurva Narain, who has spent years with his father’s poems. Among the most accomplished translators of Hindi poetry into English today, he brings here a compelling level of precision and evocation that Kunwar Narain’s poems demand—slowly expansive as they are in their visionary insights, tender intimations, austere surfaces and silent remembrances; conversing with their readers and urging them to re-read. and is among the most accomplished translators of Hindi poetry into English today.