University of Arkansas Press Publishes First Anthology of South Asian American Poetry

Photo Submitted

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The first anthology of its kind, Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, edited by Neelanjana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa and Pireeni Sundaralingam ($24.95 paper, $65 cloth), has been published by the University of Arkansas Press.

Indivisible brings together 49 American poets who trace their roots to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The collection features such award-winning poets as Meena Alexander, Agha Shahid Ali, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Vijay Seshadri. All the poets share a long history of grappling with a multiplicity of languages, cultures and faiths.

The poems take us from basketball courts to Bollywood, from the Grand Canyon to sugar plantations, and from Hindu-Muslim riots in India to anti-immigrant attacks on the streets of post-Sept. 11 America. Showcasing a diversity of forms, from traditional ghazals and sestinas to free verse, experimental writing and slam poetry, Indivisible presents 141 poems by authors who are rewriting the cultural and literary landscape of their time and their place.

Past United States Poet Laureate Billy Collins says, “Rarely does one have the pleasure of seeing so many poets violate the truth that no one can be in two places at once. Indivisible provides hundreds of local poetic delights and deserves a place among the best anthologies of poetry.”

Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winner and Distinguished Senior Poet at NYU, describes the collection as “seamless passion, held together by the will to cross borders and embrace that which is sacred in the individual. This collection of poems underscores a voyage through physical and psychological time and space, but it also clearly undermines any notion of a diaspora of the soul and spirit. Moments of graceful resiliency are captured again and again, and Indivisible becomes an unbroken map of lyrical recollection. There are lived lives behind these marvelous poems.”

Matthew Shenoda, author of the poetry collection Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone, says that the poems in Indivisible “widen the literary landscape and expose the reader to fresh terrain.” Reading this book is “like witnessing the wings of a newly discovered bird, outstretched, reaching for an untouched horizon.” And historian Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World says, “No one can speak for ‘America’ or ‘Humanity,’ but these poems give us a glimpse of both. Scattered among them are treasures and heartbreaks, mercurial descriptions of life and languid backward glances at what is left behind, what cannot be recovered. This is a language map of South Asian America. Come. Come for a ride.”

Neelanjana Banerjee is a poet, fiction writer and journalist who has been teaching media skills and creative writing to young people for the past six years. Summi Kaipa is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, author of three chapbooks and a play, and past editor of an Asian American literary magazine. Pireeni Sundaralingam has held national fellowships in poetry and cognitive science, and her poetry has been published in Ireland, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.

The editors will be promoting the anthology widely. In early April they will be hosting panels at the Associated Writing Programs conference in Denver and participating in the San Francisco Book Festival with an event at The Booksmith. In mid-April they will be at the Machine Project in Los Angeles and later at San Francisco State University. In early May they’ll be in New York City doing events at the United States of Asian American Festival at the Mission Cultural Center, The Poetry Project and the Asia Society.

On the University of Arkansas campus, the book is available at the University of Arkansas Bookstore in the Arkansas Union.