INTERVIEWS
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I met co-editors Ravi Shankar and Alvin Pang in New Haven, at a public discussion of their recent anthology, Union: 15 Years of Drunken Boat, 50 Years of Writing from Singapore(Ethos Books and Drunken Boat, 2015). Inspired by their global perspective (they talked about their travels to poetry festivals in India and Nicaragua), and by the collaborative nature of three recent books, I asked Ravi for an interview.
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When I think of Drunken Boat, I think first of Arthur Rimbaud, and second of this wonderful International web-magazine, which just released its 18th issue. I thought maybe we could start with you saying a few words about your online magazine.
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Ravi Shankar wears many hats. Poet, teacher, essayist, and one of the founding editors of the online journalDrunken Boat, Shankar connects with the notion of creative expression in a range of forms.
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Obviously, the title ‘Drunken Boat’ comes from the famous Rimbaud poem. Why did you select that title?
I have a bipartite response to that question, the first reason being that Rimbaud, in his work and in his life, was perhaps the first truly modern poet. What Beat doesn’t have Rimbaud memorized when he states ‘the poet makes himself into a seer by a long, prodigious and rational disordering of all the senses.
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Notes Towards a Twenty-Second Century American Poetics
If America is the home-run and the skyscraper, hamburgers and the electric guitar, (it's not, else it's more or less), then its poetry need retain some element of longitude and latitude, some immensity of scale and the distraction of sport, cooked together with reconstituted flesh and amplified with feedback and volume.
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The energy in Shankar’s poems is visceral. The language is restless, lurching, hungry for surprise, the verbs packed with velocity, the register swinging between formal and the demotic (both American and Indian).
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he Indo-American Arts Council announces the 5th Annual Literature Festival, this year aptly themed, ‘Wonderland@IAAC’. One of the premier celebrations of works influenced by the Indian sub continent, this year, the festival is larger than ever with not only a stellar adult literature lineup but also the first children’s literature program and a wide selection of poetry.
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At the 5th Annual IAAC Literary Festival, the Indo-American Arts Council celebrated literary works representing South Asian heritage. On October 19 and 20, authors and poets, all of them multiple award-winning and acclaimed in their own right, participated in talks and readings, making it an unforgettable experience for adults and children alike. -
At the 5th Annual IAAC Literary Festival, the Indo-American Arts Council celebrated literary works representing South Asian heritage. On October 19 and 20, authors and poets, all of them multiple award-winning and acclaimed in their own right, participated in talks and readings, making it an unforgettable experience for adults and children alike.
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Nearly 30 authors came together at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University, for a two-day festival celebrating different genres of Indian writing including fiction, non-fiction, mysteries, fantasy and food writing.