The publication of So Much Things To Say reminds fans that Calabash is the gathering place each year for some of the best poets writing today. This year is no exception. Sudeep Sen and Matthew Shenoda are just two of the eight poets who will be reading at Calabash this year at Treasure Beach where the tenth anniversary celebrations will take place this weekend May 28-30.
“With Sen, one of the most gifted and acclaimed young poets in India, and Matthew Shenoda, an Egyptian-American poet, we have the perfect bashical writers-sophisticated, ambitious, committed and just plain good,” says festival programmer Kwame Dawes.
Sudeep Sen, who lives in New Delhi, India and Matthew Shenoda who is based in California, are visiting Jamaica for the first time. “Our audiences know poetry and enjoy sincere writers, so these two poets certainly be increasingly the fan base in Jamaica,” says festival producing director, Justine Henzell.
Matthew Shenoda will join Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchison and Bahamian poet Christian Campbell in a session titled “Men at Work” on Saturday afternoon, and Sudeep Sen will read with former US Poet Laureate, Billy Collins on Sunday afternoon.
Sudeep Sen is widely acknowledged as a leading poet of the younger generation. He read English Literature at the University of Delhi & as an Inlaks Scholar received an MS from the journalism school at Columbia University (New York). His awards, fellowships and residencies include: Hawthornden Fellowship (UK), Pushcart Prize nomination (USA), BreadLoaf (USA), Pleiades (Macedonia), NLPVF Dutch Foundation for Literature (Amsterdam), Ledig House (New York), and Sanskriti (New Delhi). He was international writer-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library (Edinburgh) & visiting scholar at Harvard University.
Sen’s dozen books include: Postmarked India: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Distracted Geographies, Prayer Flag, Rain, Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), and Blue Nude: Poems & Translations 1977-2012 (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Award) is forthcoming. His poetry and literary prose have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Financial Times, London Magazine, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Telegraph, Hindu, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast on BBC, CNN-IBN, NDTV & AIR. He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS and editor of Atlas
