Five Nepali Poets : Gopal Prasad Rimal , Bhupi Sherchan , Banira Giri, Shailendra Sakar & Bimal Nibha

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 world renowned Himalayan poet Yuyutsu R.D, Sharma active in Nepal’s literary life for last four 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.

y Yuyutsu RD Sharma