Nazrul’slyrics ofMor Ghumogore Elo Monohor (In my Sleep, Came the Enchanting One) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Four of his ownMalay poems have been translated by Isa Kamari. Click here to read.
The Heartless, a Balochi story by AbdulQayum Sarbazi, has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Dragonfly 2 has been composed and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.
Tagore’s poem, Amra Choli Somukhpane(We Look Forward and March), has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Clickhere to read.
Pandies Corner
Songs of Freedom: Pink Dreams is an autobiographical narrative by Priyanka, written and compiled by Deeksha Vats. These stories highlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms, with the support from organisations like Shaktishalini and Pandies. Clickhere to read.
Larry S Su, who migrated from a mud cave in Shaanxi province to America, shares his story of the changes he sees during three visits to his home and muses on the gaps he has observed between these two places. Clickhere to read.
Summer, Dune in Zeeland by Piet Mondrain (1872 – 1944)
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.
‘Burnt Norton’, Four Quartets (1941) by TS Eliot
If we look back in time, we have a better life than that of our ancestors. Though conflicts rage and climate change is a reality that we all dread, it can safely be said, we have progressed beyond the imagination of those who lived a hundred years ago. The fact that some books from the past still reverberate with echoes of what the present holds says much for the outliers or authors who could think out of the box. Despite this complex intermingling of ideas and times, perhaps the world will change more now than before. We do not know anything for sure though experts are always predicting a future that for most of us remains unknown. What we can present is our own estimate of what can be and a definite assertion of what is. Truth as such is a matter of perception. That complicates it further. However, one of the changes that is definitely here to stay is climate change and our changing environment. Given that this is the month that homes World Environment Day, we have a smattering of writings that revolve around nature and also the human spirit that defies age.
We have featured a writer who revels in nature and is an ageless voice that bridges multiple cultures, Ruskin Bond. As he turned ninety-two last month, he published multiple new books. We have an excerpt from one of them, Scenes from the Magic Mountain: Five Seasons in the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond, a brilliant collection of snapshots of his interactions with nature over time — be it frogs, snakes or just trees. Some of the vignettes are humorous and some, as all classics are, thought provoking. Bond puts into words how he chose to work in Landour (a small town in Himalayas) and continued to write from there for sixty years. He talks of the spell the mountains cast on him, “I like to think that I have become a part of this Magic Mountain; that by living here for so long, I can claim a relationship with the trees, wild flowers, even the rocks that are an integral part of this landscape.” The other book excerpt is a contrast to Bond’s, a non-fiction called Burnout Highway by Anmol Diddan. It explores the collective suffering of stress at work where achievements distance humans from nature and a fulfilling life and urges readers to be open to changes.
In keeping with the theme of environment, Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed Stephen Alter’s The Fragrance of Rain: A Brief History of the Monsoon. He tells us: “The Fragrance of Rain is much more than a history of weather. It is a meditation on nature, culture, memory, and belonging… Like the season it celebrates, the book is refreshing, nourishing, and lingering in its impact…” While Rakhi Dalal expresses her delight with Shyam Manohar’s The Cold War of Sadanand Borse, a novella translated from Marathi by Jerry Pinto, Meenakshi Malhotra revels in Giti Chandra’s debut book of poems, Setting Traps for Light.
In translations, Professor Fakrul Alam has captured the flavours of Nazrul’s Bengali lyrics, which also echo of the rainy season or monsoons. Isa Kamari brings to us more of his Malay poems in English and Ihlwha Choi shares a rendering of his Korean poem, ‘Dragonfly 2’, into English. One of Tagore’s poems from Balaka (Flight of the Cranes, 1916) has found its way into this issue after being translated. We also have a touching Balochi story around social gaps from the late Abdul Qayum Sarbazi, brought to us in English by Fazal Baloch.
Hughes has continued sharing his short fables, which are absurd but also, comical! A sensitive story about the natural world mingled with Maori concepts by Keiran Martin seems so much in sync with the oceans while Jeena R Papaadi has woven a strange narrative located in a land that only one man could visit. Plamen Vasilev shares a human-interest story set in Europe and Rabiya Rehman takes us to Lahore in quest of a missing destination! Naramsetti Umamaheswararao’s narrative takes us back to a village that opted for trees, thus enriching the environmental lore in this issue.
We have a real life heart rending story from a young girl in our Pandies Corner, written and related by Deeksha Vats, based on the story told by a victim of familial violations and violence.
Our non-fiction section homes Larry Su’s essay on how his life took him from a rural mud cave in Shaanxi province to the glamour of Chicago. Reflecting on the changes he has experienced on his rare visits to his original homeland, Su muses on the cultural and socio-economic gaps he has observed between the two places. Charudutta Panigrahi – as if in direct opposition — shares similarities between two diverse geographies.
Suzanne Kamata explores a custom which may not be that eco-friendly in her column from Japan. Jun A. Alindogan brings home the impact of climate disasters while dwelling on blessings with his narrative about a narrow escape from the Typhoon Ondoy (2009). While Meredith Stephen writes of sailing to Timor Sea with photographs by Alan Noble, Farouk Gulsara takes us on a cycling adventure around the mountains of Titiwangsa. In another musing, he also explores the idea of good and evil in a sardonic tone while Sai Abhinay Penna dwells on the grandeur and vastness of the universe over his morning jog. Gowher Bhat writes of a man for whom age seems to be just a number as he publishes his debut book at 93! One wonders at the frequency of such occurrences — we have writings about two authors above ninety in the June issue. In contrast, Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in mortal fears while writing of visiting doctors with a soupçon of humour – some of it directed at himself.
Perhaps, laughter is really the best medicine to keep well! Ruskin Bond makes us laugh and writes of nature in a way that touches hearts and makes us forget the contrasting glitzy world, where we suffer stress and burnout. Our environment makes a difference, doesn’t it?
With that we wrap up our June issue. Huge thanks to our fabulous team, especially Sohana Manzoor for her wonderful artwork. To all our contributors, heartfelt thanks — we are because you are. And gratitude to our readers who make it worth our while to write and publish here.
We will next meet you during the monsoon months of South Asia though, near the equator, it rains almost every day and, in the Southern Hemisphere, it will be peak winter!
I Like Rich People, but I Couldn’t Eat a Whole One Myself
Never tell yourself that the megarich aren’t like you and me. Billionaires are just ordinary people who throw away their electric toothbrushes every night.
Believe it or not, genetically speaking, you have more in common with an oligarch than with an aardvark or a sea turtle or a red-collared lorikeet.
I know this is bitter news, but that’s what news is— an acrid, tacky sap that sticks together the days. Whoever invented knowledge was on some sort of sick power trip.
The point is we all throb with worry about something. We all hum on common frequencies of dread and guilt and superficial decency.
It’s worth bearing this in mind next time you read about some cute little plutocrats who will be ensconced safely, post apocalypse, in a secret alpine bolthole:
remember the commandment to love them as you track down their bunkers and overrun them.
How a Year Ends
A year is a road that ends at the sea in an afterthought of a town, just a few weatherbeaten houses, some indifferent trees, a small picnic area, and a one-eyed cat wandering around proprietorially. You drove here because it is here.
The sky is orange and purple, like a burning vineyard. And you put your foot down and plunge off the road. You drive through the spinifex, down the shifting dune slope, across the tide line, and into the surf, gunning it into the waves.
The footwell fills up, the seawater pours in, the engine is flooding, the cabin is all foam and confusion, you’re losing consciousness, you’re losing consciousness, and you wake up parked at the kerb where you started last year, soaking wet.
(These poems have been excerpted from Sick Power Trip )
Erik Kennedy is a poet, critic, editor, and performer in Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand. His three books are There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), and Sick Power Trip (2025), all with Te Herenga Waka University. His first and third books were shortlisted for best book of poetry in New Zealand’s national book awards, the Ockhams. He also co-edited an anthology of climate change poetry from Aotearoa and the Pacific called No Other Place to Stand (Auckland University Press, 2022).
What does it mean to write poetry in an age of climate crisis, internet overload, and late-stage capitalism? Few writers tackle those questions with as much intelligence, humour, and urgency as Erik Kennedy. The acclaimed contemporary poet talks about finding his voice, life in another hemisphere, the pleasures of performance, and why writing remains central to how he makes sense of the world.
For readers who may be discovering your work for the first time, could you tell us a little about yourself and the kinds of writing you write?
I’m Erik Kennedy, a poet, critic, editor, and performer in Ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand. I’m originally from New Jersey, but everything good I’ve ever written was produced here. My three books are There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), and Sick Power Trip (2025), all with Te Herenga Waka University Press. My first and third books were shortlisted for best book of poetry in New Zealand’s national book awards, the Ockhams. I also co-edited an anthology of climate change poetry from Aotearoa and the Pacific called No Other Place to Stand (Auckland University Press, 2022).
How do you describe your poetry?
In a recent fellowship application, I wrote that with my style I am ‘intense, wry, and willing to seem unhinged if it makes the writing real’. That seems fair. The adjectives ‘political’ and ‘funny’ are often thrown around in discussions of my poems. I think I have taken a more solemn turn with my recent work, especially in Sick Power Trip and in the manuscript I’m working on now. Subjects I return to over and over include climate collapse, the internet, labour, illness, warfare, addiction, and dysfunctional late capitalism. I try to use every tool in the poet’s toolbox: free verse, rhyme, collage, prose and hybrid forms, personas, etc. As a poet you get to shapeshift; I try not to forget that.
I also enjoy writing criticism, and I think I’m good at it, but it’s not something I’m driven to do unless I’m asked by an editor. (Hit me up, editors.)
When did writing first become important to you, and do you remember the moment you thought, ‘I’d like to do this for a living’?
I have never thought that I can write for a living! I do various kinds of work, including as an editor in book publishing, but I don’t expect the kind of writing I do to buy me truffles and Audis.
When did I first realise that I wanted writing to be a central part of my life? I was about thirteen when I started to write really seriously, autodidact-ing myself into a position where I started to have a style and ambitions. I was the classic teen poet filling notebooks with poems that, mercifully, remain in what Thomas Gray would call ‘dark, unfathomed caves’. I have never really looked back. Writing is a vital part of how I live. Of how I process the world and the things that happen in it. I have always produced new writing, except in periods of personal turmoil, and in those circumstances I think the not-writing made things even worse.
What kind of work have you done in this space, and how has it shaped your writing?
In an earlier period of my life I was doing a PhD in English at Princeton, and while I didn’t complete it (by writing what surely would have been a tragically uninspired dissertation), the many years I spent at the coalface of literature and history at universities were not wasted. There is a part of me that still thinks that The Poet Who Knows Lots of Stuff is the ideal artist.
Being a copyeditor is an underrated literature-adjacent job. I know loads of writers who teach creative writing (it’s not for me), and that obviously makes you think constantly about how texts work, but there is something about the technical, competence-driven, problem-solving nature of copyediting that I have always found appealing. I like coming up with answers! Every book you work on upskills you in one way or another. That’s so valuable. I’d like to point out that AI is not coming for copyeditors any time soon. The sheer amount of random facts, hunches, preferences, and human judgements involved in copyediting a book definitely makes it a craft for flesh-and-blood knowledge workers.
Also, I have edited poetry for litmags for years. There is simply no better way of seeing what writers are actually doing than by reading hundreds or thousands of real-life examples of contemporary writing. Editing offers you examples of writing to emulate and to react against. It’s also a crucial part of a writer’s moral education; people are entrusting you with important parts of themselves, and as an editor you have a responsibility to treat their work with care and respect.
What readers/listeners do you most like writing for?
I feel really fortunate to have a thriving literary scene on my doorstep, quite a lot of it grounded in performance. I have gained so much by trying to make my work resonate with live audiences, who of course only get to experience the text once, via my voice and expressions. (Also, I was a theatre kid, and I just really like performing.) Page versus stage is a false dichotomy, but page plus stage is a great way of thinking about making work that draws people in. Publication is always my goal with my poems, but I also want to entertain, to commune with real people I can see and chat with. So in some ways the reader I have in my head when I write is a punter at a reading series. These people have been wonderful barometers for me over the years.
You grew up in the US and now live in New Zealand. How has this influenced your outlook?
I can imagine my answer to a question like this being shown to me by agents in some dismal room at Newark Airport. Let’s just say that I am glad that I am where I am. Also, I have published work that probably makes the points I wish to make better than I can make them here.
Where does your writing usually begin: with a character, a situation, a question, or something else entirely?
A line. I am a compulsive notes app user. I raid my poem ideas document all the time.
What does your writing routine look like, and what conditions help you do your best work?
‘Routine’, lol. As is the case with many poets, I would say that there are certain aspects of executive function that I don’t excel at. So my process can look a little chaotic. I try to set myself up for success with my note-making habits. And I work on things when the moment feels right. I am opportunistic, a jackal who doesn’t miss a trick if a corpse is nearby. I only occasionally sit down with the intent to write. (It does work sometimes, though, which feels like finding $50 on the ground.) Walking is a great imaginative stimulant for me; we could call that an important part of my routine. I’m like a moustached twenty-first-century Wordsworth.
Every writer faces difficult days. What helps you keep writing when inspiration is absent or a manuscript feels stuck?
If I haven’t produced anything vaguely satisfactory for a fortnight or so I start to feel so inadequate and despondent that not writing doesn’t even feel like an option. I suppose if, despite my best efforts, I ever get full-on writer’s block, I will dissolve into a dejected slime. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
What aspect of the writing craft took you the longest to master, and what did that journey teach you?
The dark art of ordering a poetry manuscript—of making disparate elements into a coherent whole—is something I will always want to get better at. It is hard. My most recent book, Sick Power Trip, feels of-a-piece in a way that neither of my first two books did, because I set out to make it that way and because I allowed my preoccupations to come through. Maybe what I’ve learned is that artists need preoccupations. I am thinking about artistic unity earlier in the process now. Is this good? Maybe. Do I feel I’ve cracked the case? No.
What role does reading play in your life as a writer, and are there particular authors or books you return to for inspiration?
I don’t like the name-your-influences game because 1) my influences change all the time and 2) I am terrified of offending someone by not mentioning them.
Anyway, it all starts with reading. Sure, living is useful too, but I’ve always found that an encounter with the right text at the right time is transformative, alarming (in a good way). It’s like a nineteenth-century galvanist is jolting me with electricity.
I do a lot of reading for professional purposes (keeping up with what’s coming out), so I sometimes must remind myself to let my fancy wander and read . . . whatever the hell I want. Another thing I need to remind myself to do is to read things on my TBR pile! You bought these books, you idiot, maybe you should look at them. A constant problem.
What has surprised you most about the experience of being a published author?
I’m always amazed that people take the time to write to me out of the blue. I can only imagine what it’s like if you’re, you know, actually a big deal writer.
How do you navigate self-doubt, rejection, or the inevitable setbacks that come with a creative career?
I am a world-class user of defence mechanisms.
What is the most valuable piece of writing advice you have ever received?
I find that the example set by other writers I admire, especially peers, is more motivating to me than maxims. It’s more valuable to me to observe the ups and downs of other people’s careers than to hear, like, ‘the brain is a muscle—exercise it’.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Make sure you like writing, not just having written. I think there are some truly terrible temptations available to writers who want to get to the end product too quickly. (Yes, I am talking about generative AI.) But if you really do like writing, then probably nothing will stop you. I believe in you. We are so lucky to work in an artform that requires very few material inputs. I don’t need a tuba or big canvases or a theatre to do what I do. Life presents obstacles—of course it does—but in theory literature can be such a democratic artform.
If you could go back and have a conversation with the writer you were before your first book was published, what would you tell them?
You were a ‘real writer’ then, even if you barely felt like one. Having books doesn’t make you a writer. Writing does.
You can read two poems from Sick Power Trip by clicking here.
Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless Journal’sEditorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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