Carcanet Press Logo
Quote of the Day
Carcanet Press is our most courageous publisher. When you look at what they have brought out since their beginnings, it makes so many other houses seem timid or merely predictable.
Charles Tomlinson

Angular Desire

Selected Poems and Prose

Srinivas Rayaprol

Edited by Graziano Krätli and Vidyan Ravinthiran

Cover of Angular Desire by Srinivas Rayaprol
10% off eBook (EPUB)
10% off Paperback
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, Indian
Imprint: Carcanet Classics
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (208 pages)
(Pub. Mar 2020)
9781784109257
£16.99 £15.29
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Mar 2020)
9781784109264
£13.59 £12.23
Digital access available through Exact Editions
To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions.
  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Poetry Book Society Spring 2020 Special Commendation

    A handful of writers defines the canon of postcolonial anglophone poetry in India. Srinivas Rayaprol has generally been omitted from the list, but his recently published correspondence with William Carlos Williams and publisher James Laughlin reveals an accomplished, complex and enigmatic figure torn between opposing forces. His Brahmin Indian background and his profession as a civil engineer in a newly independent country were at odds with his Western education, literary vocation and demonic impulses. Such contradictions are expressed in his intense poetry, here restored to print, providing insights into Anglo-Indian and American writing, and a unique contribution to international literary modernism.
    Srinivas Rayaprol
    Srinivas Rayaprol was born in 1925 in Secunderabad. He studied in Nizam College, Hyderabad and at the Banaras Hindu University before going to Stanford University from where he obtained an M.S. in Civil Engineering. While in the U.S., he started writing poetry in English and interacted closely with writers like William ... read more
    Graziano Krätli
    Graziano Krätli is a translator, editor and author based in Connecticut, USA, where he works as a librarian at Yale University. He has published articles and reviews on literary subjects, particularly modern and contemporary anglophone literature in India, as well as articles on manuscript production, circulation and preservation in West Africa. ... read more
    Vidyan Ravinthiran
    Vidyan Ravinthiran is an Associate Professor at Harvard University, and the author of two books of poetry, as well as Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic (Bucknell UP, 2015), winner of both the University English Prize and the Warren-Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Criticism. ... read more
    Awards won by Srinivas Rayaprol Winner, 2020 Poetry Book Society Spring Special Commendation
    (Angular Desire)
    'Rayaprol's lyric voice is inflected by a thorny, sensuous turn of phrase... It is useful to think of Rayaprol grappling with the materials and structures available to him to fashion an idiom of his own... There is perspective and depth in his retrospective observations, a sense of a life lived and a quiet resolution, communicated as the poet looks back on the body of work he has produced'

    Saba Ahmed, Poetry London

     'Angular Desire is a landmark anthology of modern Indian poetry... Rayaprol's poetry borrows, with a bee-like instinct, from various traditions, some homegrown, others imported... It is mobilised by Rayaprol's disquiet to find a language to represent all the possibilities of his present moment'

    Mantra Mukim, Review 31
     'The selection is both a literary gift and an archival treasure, illuminating the work of a poet who was in many ways out of synch with his time... it is a poetry of glimpses and gestures, accompanied by moments of utter intensity that the reader will cherish.'

    Emma Bird, The Poetry Review
      'Rayaprol shapes the voices and traditions in his head into a new nest of words - smooth, nourishing, timelessly spring-like.'

    Carol Rumens, 'Godhuli Time' Poem of the Week in The Guardian
      
    'The imagistic lightness and sparseness of Rayaprol's writing is present throughout the book. Elsewhere there's a neo-Victorian sentimentality that, as Ravinthiran's excellent introduction points out, is a function of a colonial discourse and the inescapability of the English poet for Indian writers.'

    Sandeep Parmar, PBS Spring 2020 Bulletin
Share this...
The Carcanet Blog Baby Schema: Isabel Galleymore read more The Iron Bridge: Rebecca Hurst read more Sleepers Awake: Oli Hazzard read more The Miraculous Season: V.R. 'Bunny' Lang, edited by Rosa Campbell read more Egg/Shell: Victoria Kennefick read more The Devil Prefers Mozart: Anthony Burgess read more
Find your local bookshop logo
Arts Council Logo
We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
This website ©2000-2024 Carcanet Press Ltd