This World of Mine: selected poems

GJV Prasad pens in this volume precisely the transparent, four-cornered verses you might expect a teacher-poet-scholar of literature to strew around your mind: self-effacive, but significant as the tags of talismans that mark memory and determine destiny. 1984, Godhra, violence against women; an anatomy of public shame and public outrage in this country is dissected by him in an incisive manner. His lines are short, sharp, simple, his humour jamuni and his rhymes occasional and swift as the scent of saffron in his mother’s kitchen. Like memories that linger long after waves of crises have swept away, consumed by the fervent activity of shock and conversation, these poems on this world of his are here to quietly stay. GJV Prasad is a poet, novelist, academic, and translator. His first book of poems, In Delhi without a Visa (Har Anand 1996), was published to critical success. His latest publication is A Red-necked Green Bird (Simon & Schuster India 2021), a translation of Ambai’s collection of short stories written originally in Tamil. This World of Mine is Prasad’s newest collection of fifty selected poems.