Acrobat by Nabaneeta Dev Sen

A deeply humane new collection by a luminary of Bengali literature

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 drawn 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.

Nabaneeta Dev Sen was a renowned Bengali writer who published her first book of poems at the age of 18, and grew to be immensely popular through her fiction, literary criticism, travelogues, plays, political humour columns, and children's literature. She was also an acclaimed international scholar and feminist, and professor of comparative literature. Her many literary honors include the Padmashri, Sahitya Akademi Award, Bangla Academy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Publishers' and Booksellers' Guild. Dev Sen was a mentor to innumerable students and young writers, and she was the Founder and President of the Women Writers' Association, Soi. She died in November of 2019.