About the Book
Sudeep Sen's FRACTALS includes a wide swath of his poetry, from 1980 to the present, as well as a representative collection of his translations into English of other poets writing in Bengali, Hindu, Urdu and other languages. Sen's poems are both vivid observations and insightful meditations, often ekphrastic in that they are inspired by other art forms -- from modern European painters to classical Indian dancers. Narratives generally underlie his poems, giving us stories from around the world, past and present, from the grit of war to the mysteries of mythology. This collection gathers the best work from a writer described by Outlook India as ""the best-known Indian poetic voice of his generation working in English.
About the Author :
Sudeep Sen studied at University of Delhi and as an Inlaks Scholar received an MS from Columbia University (New York). His awards/fellowships include: Hawthornden (UK), Pushcart Prize nomination (USA), BreadLoaf (USA), Pleiades (Macedonia), NLPVF Dutch Foundation for Literature (Amsterdam), Ledig House (New York), and Sanskriti (New Delhi). He was international writer-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library (Edinburgh) and visiting scholar at Harvard University. Sen is widely recognised as a major ""new generation voice"" in world literature and one of India's ""finest English-language poets in the international literary scene"" (BBC Radio). He received a Pleiades Honour (at the Struga Poetry Festival, Macedonia) for having made a significant contribution to contemporary world poetry. Sen's prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Distracted Geographies, Rain, Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), Ladakh, and The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (editor). His poems, translated into twenty-five languages, have been featured in major international anthologies. His words have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph, Herald, Harvard Review, Hindu, Hindustan Times, Times of India, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast on BBC, PBS, CNN IBN, NDTV, AIR & Doordarshan. Sen's newer work appears in New Writing 15 (Granta), Language for a New Century (Norton), Leela (Collins), Indian Love Poems (Knopf/Random House/Everyman), Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe), and Initiate: Oxford New Writing (Blackwell). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS and the editor of Atlas. As a photographer and graphic artist, his work is part of many professional print portfolios, magazine and newspaper pieces, book jacket covers, and private collections. He has also published two books of photography, Prayer Flag and Postcards from Bangladesh. Sen lives and works in New Delhi. Sen was the first Asian to be honoured with an invitation to participate at the Nobel Laureate Week in St Lucia in 2013, where he delivered the Derek Walcott Lecture and read his own poetry. A special commemorative edition of his work, Fractals: New & Selected Poems|Translations 1978-2013, was released by the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott himself. The same year, the Government of India Ministry of Cultures awarded him the senior fellowship for outstanding persons in the field of culture.
Review :
"...In Fractals, Sudeep Sen is telling the world that he has produced a substantial body of work, some of it honoured by international prizes and worthy of standing between hard covers on a serious reader's shelf.... Sen has carved out a distinctive space for himself. It's time for the rest of us to sit up and take notice." --Shashi Tharoor, Outlook India
"Fractals contains a collection of over 250 new poems and translations composed between 1998 and 2015. It is like the Russian matryoshka, dolls-within-dolls, where each poem goes on revealing the other. Sudeep Sen has a deft ability to be both realistic and self-effacing, expressing control and poetic facility embedded in structure . . . . Sen's poems wiggle us out from our well settled notions about poets and poetry. They are by turn rhythmic, subtle, versatile, vivacious and innovative. His poems are always balanced and evoke various emotions. Fractals with its various experiments in poetic style can be called as a promoter of avant-garde. It's a comprehensive collection of highly stylized and experimental poetry collection with camera sharp imagery -- an awaited volume from one of India's leading poets." --Queen Sarkar and H.S. Komalesha, ashvamegh.net
"Fractals gathers more than three decades of poetry from one of India's most technically gifted poets working in English. Sen's poetic scope and knowledge of form and meter will dazzle poetry lovers while drawing in more casual admirers with his sophistication of language and range of topics. Fractals is an important retrospective collection from a poet even now just reaching the height of his powers." --World Literature Today Nota Benes
