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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 eight poetry collections including, Space Cake, Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America, (Howling Dog Press, Colorado, 2009), Annapurna Poems, (Nirala, New Delhi 2008), Everest Failures (White Lotus Book Shop, Kathmandu, 2008) www.AroundAnnapurna.de – Eine photographic-poetische Reise um die Annapurnas, Nepal, www.WayToEverest.de: A photographic and Poetic Journey to the Foot of Everest, (Epsilonmedia, Germany, 2006) with German photographer Andreas Stimm and recently a translation of Hebrew poet Ronny Someck’s poetry in Nepali in a bilingual collection, 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 Café, London, Seamus Heaney Center for Poetry, Belfast, New York University, New York, Western Writers’ Center, Galway, Bowery Poetry Place, 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, Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin, 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, Ruigoord, Amsterdam, Nehru Center, London, 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, Omega, Howling Dog Press, Exiled Ink, Iton77, Little Magazine, The Telegraph, Indian Express and Asiaweek.
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| 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 |
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