Author of the Month: SUDEEP SEN

Sudeep Sen

POLLEN DUST

On unpopulated rocky heights,

   I spot butterflies hovering over 

ancient stone receptacles — carved 

   unevenly by wind’s corrosive love. 

They flit, showering pollen-dust 

   on shallow algae-green waters

collected over time’s stagnation.

   This dense liquid stillness allows 

reflection — bright fluorescent light

   only noble metals can induce.

Even butterfly’s three-day lifespan 

   is enough to weave transient magic,

its slow-motion wing-flaps colour

   the air — exquisite histories etched, 

preserved carefully in stone bowls.

   I love their invisible heavy-breath 

recording season’s nuanced moods 

   as red-hued petroglyphs, fiercely lit.

Rachakonda, Telangana

*

KINTSUKUROI

for Munu

   The cracked bowl that I mean to repair everyday

keeps getting neglected by my secret awe for bone china

          and its story of unbreaking.

 

   There were happier times when it stood perfect

in its shape, its porcelain clay-fluted nape

elegant as a swan’s neck.

 

   I found it in a heap of beautiful pottery, 

one among many, that its maker carefully crafted

in her tropical rooftop studio.

 

   To me it was new even after it accidentally

slipped from my hands as I tried to wipe

the Delhi dust

 

   that clung to us like camel-brown film,

like innocuous powder — transparent and deceptive

like make-up.

 

   There are scenes I painted on its milk-white skin, 

words I wrote, lines etched in, fragments of poems 

left unfinished, hieroglyphic

 

   encoded secrets 

that only I knew and understood,

impervious to gossip’s glare and jealous chatter.

 

   Today, I shall bring out Super Glue 

and try to make repairs. 

Maybe I will splurge 

   on a rare metal —

silver or even gold, to seal the cracks and fill them

with molten healing. 

 

   Anointing it with gold, 

memory, love and desire, 

is better than the perfection

 

   of its prior shape. Unbroken, poised as it was, 

unhurt love is not necessarily purer 

than love that is flawed.

 

   Kintsukuroi — a gift I have been granted.

My bowl deserves the lacquer touch of a silver-wish

and the purest of rare gold.

*Kintsukuroi (n.) (v. phr.) “to repair with gold”; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. 

*

SEA GODDESS 

An eroded wooden four-armed Hindu god

   throws two of them up in exasperation —

her expression obscured from my terrace’s

   intimate distance. Mere proximity does not

guarantee intimacy. Despite sitting atop

   a multi-tiered open pagoda with 180° view

of the ocean’s free expanse, she longs 

   to touch my outstretched palms-fingertips

in a warm embrace. The state-flag flutters

   close by, standing guard — its red and white,

policing the strict separation of burning flesh

   and purity — polygamy institutionalised 

as the only way. But the gods know better 

   than this — they worship polyamory. 

That’s why I hear her cry out — hands-up, 

   not in surrender but freedom from the norm.

The sea envelops everything around us —

   in its acrid sanctity, there is hope for a few.

*

PETALINE

Petals profusely carpet the mown grass —

   frangipani, hibiscus, bougainvillea —

 

lilac, purple, orange, red, gold, amber —

   dew-soaked, emerge shyly to welcome

dawn’s incipient morning. Courtship period 

   is short, yet unhurried, in these heated climes —

the sun too swift, sharp, strong for slow-

   artful lovemaking.  Before moisture

evaporates, sheathes of shimmering

   petaline-skin slow-gesture — their consorts

subtly-quick to pick up any pheromones

   in sight. Upon meeting, a colour-riot —

a frolicking petaloid symphony — nubile,

   wet, vapour-soaked — a short-lived ecstasy.

*

MA | MOTHER

[RATNA SEN 18.12.1940 - 27.01. 2013]

for Baba

As if in a dream, you disappeared 

   unannounced — untimely and unprepared.

The handwritten diary you left behind 

   weepingly revealed your sordid, searing pain. 

Grief-struck, I run around city’s municipal offices

   rummaging through bureaucratic files,

seeking your death certificate for validation —

   as if losing you, wasn’t loss enough.

*

Sudeep Sen’s [www.sudeepsen.org] is widely recognised as a major new generation voice in world literature and ‘one of the finest English-language poets in the international literary scene’ (BBC Radio), ‘fascinated not just by language but the possibilities of language’ (Scotland on Sunday). He received a Pleiades Honour (at the Struga Poetry Festival, Macedonia) for having made “a significant contribution to contemporary world poetry”. His prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Rain, Aria (A. K. Ramanujan Translation Award), Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions), EroText (Vintage: Penguin Random House), Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms (Bloomsbury), Anthropocene: Climate Change, Contagion, Consolation (Pippa Rann, 2021-22 Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize winner), and Red (Nirox Foundation, 2023). He has edited influential anthologies, including: The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (editor), World English Poetry, Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi), and Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians (Pippa Rann). Blue Nude: Ekphrasis & New Poems (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize), and The Whispering Anklets are forthcoming. Sen’s works have been translated into over 25 languages. His words have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph, Financial Times, Herald, Poetry Review, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Hindu, Hindustan Times, Times of India, Indian Express, 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: An Erotic Play of Verse and Art (Collins), Indian Love Poems (Knopf/Random House/Everyman), Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe), Initiate: Oxford New Writing (Blackwell), and Name me a Word (Yale). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS, editor of Atlas, and recently on a fellowship as a writer-in-residence at the Nirox Foundation (South Africa). His professional photography is represented by ArtMbassy, Rome [http://www.artmbassy.com/artists.html]; and currently the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Museo Camera (India). The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for “outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.” Sen is the first Asian honoured to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival.

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Setu, August 2025