Love after Babel and other poems

ANNOUNCEMENT: Love After Babel wins Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Outstanding Book Award by the Caribbean Philosophical Association
Congratulations to Chandramohan S!


Love after Babel is a collection of poems that deal with themes such as caste, the resistance of Dalit people, Dalit literature, islamophobia and other political themes, with almost one hundred poems divided into three sections (Call Me Ishmail Tonight; Name Me a Word; Love after Babel). The introduction is by Suraj Yengde (award-winning scholar and activist from India, author of the bestseller Caste Matters, inaugural postdoctoral fellow at the Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School).

Chandramohan’s poems are dialogues of the ‘ self’ with the ‘other’. He brings to life a world that subverts myths, literary canons, gender and caste stereotypes by pooling in sparklingly new metaphors with sensitivity and care. He draws his images from contemporary incidents as well as myths and legends of yore, and delves deep into the politicized realm, thus ‘rupturing the hymen of demarcations’ of identity, resistance, repression and love.

—Babitha Marina Justin, poet, artist and academician

Chandramohan’s poetry is an extraordinary combination of a strong individual voice, crying out against a deeply felt sense of personal abuse, and a sophisticated understanding of the long history and mythology of such abuse, in India but also in the world at large. Mythological figures like Shambuka and Urmila illluminate, and are illuminated by, modern atrocities.   The poems are by turns shocking, moving, and exhilarating.  —Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty is an American Indologist whose professional career has spanned five decades.

Chandramohan S has the stark ability as a poet to react to any social happening, and these turn out to be in the most responses to societal happenings, plunged into the dark interiors of human behavior. So these could be related to caste oppression. Economic exploitation, religious polemics etc. But the poetic ability or the agility is always there to handle a situation born out of politico- social situations. There lies his remarkable dexterity as a poet commentator. His lines are direct, and even angry. But that does not matter. This is poetry- at its best.  No wonder then that, his poems have been published world wide. He is perhaps now one of the very few, if not the only Indian poet in English to have taken the burden of social and political repression, as a distinct and livid political idiom. To read his poems is also painful, but the poetry is in the pain!—Ananya S Guha lives in Shillong in North East India. He has been writing and publishing his poetry for the last 33 years.

Love after Babel selected by as one of Twelve books that form part of the arsenal of Dalit writing by Suraj Yangde.

surajyengde
@surajyengde

Had an honor to introduce this extremely riveting collection of humanity-filled radical lines “Love After Babel” told by the incomparable art form—Dalit Poetry. Chandramohan is confidently flirtatious with his words. by

ISBN Print: 978-1-988832-37-1
ISBN eBook: 978-1-988832-38-8
Publication Date: January 2020
Page Count: 110
Binding Type: Soft cover
Trim Size: 6in x 9in
Language: English
Colour: B&W

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Chandramohan S (Sathyanathan) is an Dalit Indian poet, short story writer and a social critique based in the south Indian state of Kerala. He is pursuing research in mathematics, apart from being a translator, editor and a social activist. Chandramohan…

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    Customer Reviews

    1-5 of 2 reviews

    • Kate McDonnell

      Chandramohan’s poetry is an extraordinary combination of a strong individual voice, crying out against a deeply felt sense of personal abuse, and a sophisticated understanding of the long history and mythology of such abuse, in India but also in the
      world at large. Mythological figures like Shambuka and Urmila illluminate, and are illuminated by, modern atrocities. The poems are by turns shocking, moving, and exhilarating.
      – Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of the History of Religions; also in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on Social Thought

      September 8, 2019
    • Kate McDonnell

      [Chandramohan S]’s poems reflect the socio-political struggles of the marginalized, the working class and the nomadic outcasts of the world who are victimized and then forgotten as nations clash and wage relentless war. His work has been profiled in New Asia Writing and Mascara Literary Review. Poet Chandramohan S defines a Dalit as “someone who is politically disenfranchised, culturally interiorised and economically impoverished,” but he also firmly believes that “being a Dalit poet endows one with a tremendous potential to turn one’s own experiences and unique perspectives on history into poetry. From Edex Live

      September 8, 2019

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