Guest Editor’s Note: Local (Setu Special, June 2020)

When the world is embracing social distancing, this special issue of Setu on LOCAL will give a window to the readers. Love for the immediate never comes with an expiry date. It breaks boundaries at several levels.

Celebration of the local is praxis of a postcolonial society. We are at first local, then global. Local happening, events and rituals, tea shops, vendors, falling of leaves, gossips, etc are our immediate culture where usual doors of escape are shut and sealed. Writers have words and images for all minute occurrences of daily acts. For them, history chose to smell nothing but the stench of burning flesh. Acts of history is nothing but the barbed wires running through streams of blood They sounds very distinctive here. All writers’ is a search, the shore of which keeps us alluring:

“Gaze at night at the lonely planet

Which attracts satellites as does a magnet.

The glow of the sun is its own, nor a gift of a deity

nor does the lack of company eclipse its glory.”

The primary function of all the arts is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. Indian art possesses harmony and proportion and can hold its own against attempts at derision. Clay, wax, wood, bronze, stone-whatever material the artist lay his hands on with his consummate artistry in brilliance shone. Ecological crisis, gender stereotyping, patriarchal hegemony and contemporary socio-political situations are some of the other prominent issues that find voice in this collage of ideas. In fascinating poems by poets from different cultures rain-drops and life interplay in a spirit gay like the notes in a symphony, rising, falling, diverging and coalescing for eternity.

Nothing can stop the flow of the heart—love! The vision of love is like a post rain rainbow. The objective of this special issue of Setu is to attend that blessed state of happiness.

Writers are good friends for all seasons. I thank all soul makers of this very special issue for Setu.

-Jaydeep Sarangi

Jhargram/Kolkata, June 2020

Bio: Jaydeep Sarangi is a widely anthologized bilingual poet with eight collections in English latest being Heart Raining the Light (2020) released in Rome. Sarangi has read his poems in different shores of the globe. His later readings were at Flinders University, University of Western Australia, University of South Australia, University of Wollongong, Perth Poetry Club (Australia), University of Udine (Italy)and University of Rezeszow (Poland). Sarangi is on the editorial boards of different journals featuring poetry and articles on poetry like Mascara Literary Review, Transnational Literature (Australia), Setu (USA), Geetanjali and Beyond (Scottland) Teesta, WEC(India). He has forty-two critical and edited books and edited special issues on new poetry for reputed journals in India and abroad. With Rob Harle, he has guest edited six anthologies of poems from Australia and India. He is the translator of Not in My Name: Poems of Subodh Sarkar. With Dr Amelia Walker he is guest editing a special volume for TEXT (Australia). Among his recent awards, the Setu Award of Excellence for 2019 (USA). He is a professor of English and principal at New Alipore College, Kolkata.. E mail: jaydeepsarangi@gmail.com

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Local: Authors

Anoucheka Sweety Gangabissoon Asha Viswas Bashabi Fraser Basudhara Roy Catherine Cole (Poetry) Catherine Cole (Book Review) Chrys Salt Deepa Agarwal Denis Barasa Gopal Lahiri Jagari Mukherjee Joseph S. Spence

Ajanta Paul Kavita Ezekiel Leonard Dabydeen Mandakini Bhattacherya Marina Mijakovska Nandini Sahu Nishi Pulugurtha Rob Harle Roula Pollard Sravasti Guha Thakurta Syed Ali Hamid Zinia Mitra

Setu, June, 2020