The Well-Earned: poems
🇮🇳 Amidst the August company of the finest Indian poets in this off-beat anthology when India celebrates its 75th Year of Independence. 🇮🇳
The Well-Earned is the brainchild of the Kiriti Sengupta, Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize (2018) awardee and the co-founder of Hawakal Prokashana. The Well-Earned showcases 65 poets of Indian origin who explore their perceptions of freedom.
I’m extremely grateful and humbled to be sharing space alongside eminent poets who I look up to and aspire to be like in this offbeat anthology: Kala Ramesh, Rochelle Potkar, Nabina Das, Sukrita Paul Kumar, Anu Majumdar, Taseer Gujral, Vinita Agrawal and more.
Thank you, Hawakal Prokashana for the impeccable work you do and truly being the “flag-bearers of verse” in the Indian subcontinent.
The Well-Earned is an outstanding work of art. Folks, get your copy now.
The Sisyphean angst shapes the daily passivity we cling closely to. Continued struggle dampens us with the mist of melancholy, leading to a state where we’re completely bereft of freedom. Celebrating the 75th Independence Day, Hawakal presents an evocatively offbeat anthology, distinctly observing how poets perceive the very idea of freedom and consequently voice them.
In times when hate-mongering is the ethos of the day, love should spread like a contagion. In the telling, this collection translates into snapshots of stories, where memories have been dislocated yet find tranquility in bits and pieces. The Well-Earned doesn’t aim to combat or prove anything but to discover the long-lost hope vis-à -vis freedom. While toiling around the monotonous schedule, one often forgets what they had once known or loved and falls prey to anonymity. Anonymity is an endless crowd to which one is trapped, yet one tries to find their near-dear ones. Some end up losing their identities, whereas others are born anew.
Editor and poet Kiriti Sengupta puts in his distinctive style—”Can names lead me / to the anonymous?” In such broken memories, some seek a story, some seek a voice they’d call their own, some the nirvana, while some their mother’s touch. In seeking, one begins a quest, which leads to the search for the seed of compassion. It is a calmness that one should plunge into this cacophony. This is what The Well-Earned does.
