ISBN: 9781939810809 • ebook ISBN: 9781939810816
A radiant collection of poetry about womanhood, intimacy, and the body politic that together evokes the arc of an ordinary life. Nabaneeta Dev Sen's rhythmic lines explore the joys and agonies of first love, childbirth, and decay with a restless, tactile imagination, both picking apart and celebrating the rituals that make us human. When she warns, "know that blood can be easily shed by lips," her words tune to the fierce and biting depths of language, to the "treachery that lingers on tongue tips." At once compassionate and unsparing, conversational and symphonic, these poems tell of a rope shivering beneath an acrobat's nimble feet or of a twisted, blood-soaked umbilical cord – they pluck the invisible threads that bind us together.
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"Nandana’s excellent translations privilege the musicality and rhythm of the language, retaining, in some cases, the internal rhymes… As I describe them, I find myself reaching again and again for words like clarity, honesty, brilliance. But I think the word I am really searching for is freedom."
"The translator has done a superb job retaining the flavor of the translated poems matching those that the author herself wrote and translated into English . . . Nabaneeta’s poetry is a precious addition to international literature."
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— Praise for Acrobat —
“Poetry and music are both languages of the heart, so it is a special gift when a great poet of the world is finally well translated. Here, the legendary Bengali poet, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, is re-birthed in English by her daughter, Nandana Dev Sen. I believe that Acrobat is a book that will rescue us and be loved around the world.”
— Gloria Steinem
“These translations of Nabaneeta Dev Sen's poems capture her quirky yet profound voice so beautifully that I felt I could hear her reading them aloud. These are the poems of an adventurous and indefatigable traveler, observing the world with deep understanding and sympathy, through the prism of a sensibility that is securely rooted in the culture of Bengal.
Even though Nabaneetadi was a towering figure in Bengali letters, very little of her work is available in English. This is all the more reason to be grateful to her daughter, Nandana Dev Sen, who is a hugely talented writer in her own right, for translating a selection of her poems into English.”
— Amitav Ghosh
”A new collection of Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s work, translated with great felicity by her daughter Nandana, covers a spectrum of the poet’s gifts, from the playful and tender that recall Tagore to the fierce and passionate, the final poems not so much shadowed by death as ignited by it.”
— Anita Desai
”Nandana’s voice, overlapping her mother’s, makes a perfect fit, as one simultaneously hears the voices of mother and daughter in a duet of complete harmony. The translations don’t read as translations; they read as poems, a new voice perfect in its own right, transcending the barrier of death.”
— Wendy Doniger
”These sparkling translations from Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s long, important body of work cycle through her (and our own) exigent concerns: time, identity, the familial. Dev Sen is famous for perfecting a remarkably clear syntax that incorporates sensual detail and repetition not as ornament but as the very ingredients of its riveting precision. And she always follows her own prescription: ‘Stay awake in every line.’”
— Forrest Gander
“There's an aching beauty within each one of these translations. There's assuredness balanced against vulnerability; there's dignity and compassion. Nabaneeta was an acrobatic writer, uniquely able to negotiate the tightropes of language, migration, separation, union and motherhood.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
”In Nabaneeta Dev Sen's poems, she walks a tightrope between a black cloud and a cloud that is blood-red. When the rope shivers, you, the reader, can feel it in the lines and hold your breath. Good translations of modern Indian poetry are hard to come by. This one by Nandana Dev Sen has to be one of the best.”
— Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
”I knew Nabaneeta Dev Sen as a brilliant academic and a fierce advocate of women's writing. Now, thanks to Nandana's superb translations, I'm getting to know another Nabaneeta, whose insights into sadness, loss, and the inexorable march of time illuminate the world of the heart with blinding honesty and verbal grace. Above all, a Nabaneeta who is a very distinguished poet, up there with the best.”
— Martha C. Nussbaum
”Nabaneeta Dev Sen's Acrobat is that rare, majestic creature: a book that, through every page, underscores the quiet high-wire act required from the poet. It is a feat whose complexity is only matched by its mastery in inhabiting the multiple selves of artist, daughter, lover, mother, translator, scholar and more. Here are poems that capture the pleasures and trials of the human experience - desire, decay, mortality, childbirth, bereavement, wonder - with unsparing detail and sensitivity, and celebrate the gift of language which helps us transcend them.”
— Karthika Naïr
”Alternately fierce and tender, Dev Sen's voice reveals the hidden places of the human heart.”
— Arshia Sattar
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Full Reviews of Acrobat
(see Reviews of Acrobat)
Los Angeles Review of Books - click here for the full article (external website)
October 21, 2022
New York Journal of Books - click here for full article (external link)
April 2021
“The translator has done a superb job retaining the flavor of the translated poems matching those that the author herself wrote and translated into English... Saturated with feelings of sadness, betrayal, haunting memories, and amorous grievances... Nabaneeta’s poetry is a precious addition to international literature."
Amitav Ghosh Blog - click here for full website (external link)
February 2021
Witty Partition - click here for full article (external link)
June 2022
Translated and introduced by her daughter Nandana Dev Sen, Acrobat is an illustrative and delicate portrayal of Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s immense poetic life… Nandana’s translation of Acrobat, then, is a material necessity that achieves her mother’s standards in a compelling and artful way. The collection also goes a step further, as it is a testament to lives committed to the beauty of kinship and its enduring ability to inspire poetry.
Full Stop - click here for the full article
April 4, 2022
Full Stop - click here for the full article (external link)
April 4, 2022
Kenyon Review - click here for website (external link)
August 2021
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“Nandana Dev Sen has distilled 60 years of Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s life into Acrobat, a posthumous poetry collection that is also a familial labor of love, a tender duet between mother and daughter… To read Acrobat is to feel the poet’s clarity of compassion, the radiating warmth of her words unshakably ringing out ‘as an instrument for women’s freedom and unity.”
Poetry Foundation
May 9, 2021 - click here for the full review
Poetry Foundation - click here for full article (external webiste)
May 9, 2021
roughghosts
August 20, 2021 - click here for full review (external site)
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“It is a testimony to her versatility as a poet, and to the skill of translator Nandana Dev Sen, that without the notes identifying which poems were originally written in English and which were the translations done by the poet herself, it would be impossible to know the genesis of the texts we have before us…Dev Sen always finds a way to surprise us with life, only to remind us that we are finite…”
Nicola Vulpe, Asymptote
July 2021 - click here for the full review
Asymptote - click here for the full review (external website)
July 2021
Words without Borders
May 2021 - click here for the full article (external website)
Circumference - click here for the full article (external link)
May, 2021
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“Acrobat is moving in both content and context: translated with great heart by the poet’s daughter and published posthumously, it is a two-way love story between generations and a celebration of life in all its complexity and contradictions”
Helen Vassallo, Translating Women
July 2021 - click here for the full review
Centre for the Art of Translation - click here for full article (external website)
April 7, 2021
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"Acrobat by Nabaneeta Dev Sen is a tour de force collection of poetry from a master of the craft. Not only is the collection expansive in subject and image, but ambitious in feeling. Reading the collection, the reader becomes the acrobat, leaping between the poems and the worlds Dev Sen creates within them."
Katrina Agbayani, Acta Victoriana
July 2021 - click here for the full review
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Mekong Review - click here for full article (subscription site)
May 2021
Scroll - click here for the full article (external link)
January 2, 2022
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2023
JLF New York: The Poetic Imagination: Rhyme, Rhythm and Reason - Vijay Seshadri, Arundhathi Subramaniam and Nandana Dev Sen
Center for Fiction, Brooklyn, USA (in person)
September 12, 2023
Frontlist Facebook Live! Author and Translator Session
Facebook (online)
May 3, 20, 2023
A Poetry Reading: Acrobat
Maldon Books, Maldon, UK (in person)
March 27, 2022
Third Tuesday & Transnational Series : On Poetry & Translation
Brookline Booksmith, Boston, USA (in person)
April 20, 2023
A Poetry Reading: Acrobat
Maldon Books, Maldon, UK (in person)
March 27, 2023
Acrobat Book Launch & Poetry: Mother Tongues - Celebrating Three Generations of Poetry on World Poetry Day
Nehru Centre, London, UK (in person)
March 21, 2023
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2022
Burning Dreams Poetry Event (Wingword Prize)
New Delhi, India (in person)
December 18, 2022
Belongg Podcast: Nandana Dev Sen on Translating her Mother’s Celebrated Poetry (online)
https://reimaginings.simplecast.com/episodes/words-of-belonging-ep-7-nandana-dev-sen-on-translating-her-mothers-celebrated-poetry
November 4, 2022
In Conversation with Sanjoy K. Roy
Jaipur Literature Festival Colorado 2022, Boulder City, USA (in person)
September 17, 2022
Acrobat Book Tour, India
Delhi Book Launch and Conversation with Arunava Sinha
Oxford Bookstore, New Delhi (in person)
July 25, 2022
Kolkata Book Launch and Conversation with Srijato Bandyopadhyay
Oxford Bookstore, Kolkata (in person)
July 20, 2022
Shantiniketan Book Launch hosted by Arthshila Gallery
Shantiniketan, Bolpur (in person)
July 12, 2022
From Silver Screen to Writer and Activist: A Creative Journey
Saturday Club, Phoenix, Kolkata (in person)
July 15, 2022
Bombay Book Launch: Nandana Sen In Conversation with Shobhaa De and Sampurna Chatterji
White Crow Books and Coffee, Mumbai (in person)
July 7, 2022
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Politics and Poetry: Nandana Sen In Conversation with Ambassador Richard Verma
Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington DC, USA (in person)
May 31, 2022
Unbroken Time, Infinite Space: The Acrobatic Poetry of Nabaneeta Dev Sen. An Afternoon of Poetry, Dance and Dialogue
Lincoln Center, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York, USA (in person)
May 14, 2022
Nandana Dev Sen In Conversation with Professor Suchorita Chattopadhyay, Jadavpur University Women's Conclave (online)
March 10, 2022
Facebook Live – An Evening of Poetry with Nandana Dev Sen with GurgaonMoms, Momimperfecto, Momwearsprada, and SippingThoughts
https://www.facebook.com/GurgaonMom/videos/1145308316205610/
February 26, 2022
Facebook Live - An Intimate Conversation with Jeroninio “Jerry” Almeid
https://www.facebook.com/Rexideas/videos/470236001255149/?vh=e
February 20, 2022
Instagram Live with Nandana Dev Sen and Vivek Tejuja
https://www.instagram.com/p/CaFdGKTpQB0/
February 17, 2022
Acrobat - Nandana Dev Sen in Conversation with Arshia Sattar
Asia Society (online)
February 2, 2022
Acrobat: Poems of Nabaneeta Dev Sen. Nandana Dev Sen In Conversation with Chandana Chakrabrati (online - video starts at 2hr 30mins)
Hyderabad Literary Festival
January 28, 2022
Launch of Acrobat (India)
Kolkata Literary Meet (Facebook and YouTube Channel)
January 13, 2022
Events 2021
Deepta Mehta In Conversation with Nandana Dev Sen
Toronto International Festival of Authors, Toronto, Canada (online)
October 30, 2021
Nandana Dev Sen in conversation with Sanjoy K. Roy
Jaipur Literature Festival, New York (online)
October 20, 2021
In Conversation with Nandana Dev Sen
Word Up Community Bookstore, New York, USA (in person)
October 9, 2021
UK Launch event of Acrobat on International Translation Day
The Nehru Centre, London, UK (online)
September 30, 2021
Brooklyn Book Festival - Bookends: Nandana Dev Sen In Conversation with Anselm Berrigan and Catherine Barnett
McNally Jackson Books, Seaport, New York, USA (in person)
September 27, 2021
Acrobat Reading and In Conversation with Suketu Mehta
Brazos Bookstore, Texas, USA (online)
September 13, 2021
Acrobat Poetry Reading and Conversation
Maldon Books, Maldon, Essex, UK (in person)
September 3, 2021
International Poets & Writers CONCLAVE
Poetry Reading and Discussion (online)
August 10th, 2021
Watch it here:
Poetry Reading on stage with Edwin Frank and Mona Kareen
Governor’s Island, New York, USA (in person)
July 24, 2021
Reading and In Conversation with Megha Majumdar
Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, New York, USA (online)
July 21, 2021
Watch it here:
Reading and In Conversation with David Ouimet
Community Bookstore, Brooklyn, New York, USA (online)
July 13, 2021
Book Launch and In Conversation Event hosted by the North America Bengali Conference (online)
July 3, 2021
Life & Works of Nabaneeta Dev Sen. In Conversation with Nandana Sen hosted by Alochana Group and moderated by Debali Mookerjea- Leonard
(online)
June 25, 2021
In Conversation with Karthika Naïr
Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, Washington, USA (online)
June 12, 2021
Watch it here:
Nabanna Earth Weekend : A Festival of Arts and Ideas. Nandana Dev Sen and her sister, Antara Dev Sen reading of translations of Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s poetry (online)
May 30, 2021
Watch it here:
In Conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye
57th Street Books, Chicago, USA (online)
May 13, 2021
Watch it here …..