Rochelle Potkar's Blog, page 60

Four Degrees of Separation now on Amazon India

So, besides Paperwall.in, you will find it here:

http://www.amazon.in/Four-Degrees-Separation-Rochelle-Potkar/dp/9382749365

 

Book launch ki tasveerey

 

Alright, now I’m tired, so not uploading the other 100 photos, but trust that this was my most fantastic time touring with the book, meeting wonderful people, having a gala!

http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/hyderabad/The-Write-Choice/2016/04/19/article3387114.ece

My Mumbai book launch was a smooth affair…

And I say smooth because of several reasons. We adhered to time, almost. We had a program flow in place. We had a good conversation. We viewed the book and all that it spoke of… shifting perspective like a rubix cube under yellow haze, or glaring like it as though through an iridescent specimen – transparent fish.

I liked pitching my trajectory from small town to city, from girl to woman, from pre-lib to post-lib, from delusion to disillusion, and back to real-illusion. We spoke about the journey poetry made from Theosophy hall, New Marine Lines to now in pubs like Barking deer and Pint room.

We read poems. We got some more poems read. My most beloved people who have been part of my path were in this easy room. The ones who couldn’t be there were in spirit or text or telephone. I could feel the strong pull in which they were remembering me. It was good. It was enough.

Contentment can sometimes come from just this much, or this little…

A few pics: (coming soon…)

 

‘Incubators of Creativity’ – what makes writer’s residencies work

If you were ever curious about writing residencies, here’s your chance to quench some of that thirst, besides -of course-going on one yourself.

You would need to RSVP for this event of 29th March 2016.

 

 

Mumbai book launch of ‘Four Degrees of Separation’ at Cuckoo Club, 1 Apr ’16

You are invited to the book launch of my first book of poetry, ‘Four Degrees of Separation’ on 1st April, 7 pm, at Cuckoo Club.

Here’s the FB event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/368884149902618/

For the Bombay launch of her first book of poetry ‘Four Degrees of Separation’ Rochelle invites you on 1st April 2016 at 7 pm to the Cuckoo Club, Bandra west. (Full address at the end of this post).

Rochelle Potkar

in conversation with

Mustansir Dalvi

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Rochelle Potkar’s book, ‘The Arithmetic of breasts and other stories’ was shortlisted for The Digital Book of the Year Award 2014, by Publishing Next. Widely anthologized, a few of her poems and short stories have won awards. She was a writer-in-residence at the UNESCO city of literature – Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP), Fall 2015. Her works were dramatically read and interpreted by veteran actors and dancers on stages in Iowa and Portland, Maine.

She has read poetry at several interfaces in Mumbai, Goa, Hyderabad, Chennai, Hong Kong, and Iowa. ‘Four Degrees of Separation’ (Paperwall, 2016) is her first book of poetry. She is working on a novel and two collections of short stories. She blogs at: www.rochellepotkar.com.

*

Mustansir Dalvi’s poems appear in: These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry, Mind Mutations, The Bigbridge Online Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry, The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India, and To Catch a Poem: An Anthology of Poetry for Young People, Sahitya Akademi, Delhi. His translations are in ‘Eating God: a Book of Bhakti Poetry’ and in Poetry at Sangam, The Caravan magazine and The Dhauli Review.

Dalvi’s 2012 English translation of Muhammad Iqbal’s influential Shikwa and Jawaab-e-Shikwa from the Urdu as ‘Taking Issue and Allah’s Answer’ (Penguin Classics) has been described as ‘insolent and heretical’ and makes Iqbal’s verse accessible to the modern reader. In 2014, his translations of the poems of Hemant Divate from the Marathi were published as ‘struggles with imagined gods’. (Poetrywala).’Brouhahas of Cocks’ is his first book of poems in English published (Poetrywala, 2013).

*

Publisher of ‘Four Degrees of Separation’: Paperwall Media & Publishing Pvt. Ltd.

https://www.paperwall.in/books/

 

Venue:

Cuckoo Club, Bandra west, Pali Hill Road,

In the lane going toward Gold Gym, Next to Learner’s Academy,

Next to Candies, (NOT the ONGC colony Candies,

BUT the Candies on St. Andrew Road)

Mike and mash

Besides the poetry readings I have begun to watch for fun – subtle popcorn-fun: like my complicated relationships with the microphone.

I have always had issues with the mike, in angel-and-whore ways.

Either I am too soft (like at Tall Tales) where I have to record the whole story again. Or now at David Sassoon Founder’s Day reading where I am fighting with the mike, my breath scratching over auditory perceptions, or then juxtaposed with the readings at Goa Arts and Literature Festival (GALF) where I am dating the mike as if in a cafe.

 

I have sought advice from friends who are ‘miking’ the moment.

Some said I should hold it as if I was about to suck it. Okay? Okay…

Some told me to note the presence of collar or pedestal mikes to gauge quality of recording. If it’s a professional AV set up, the recordings will be powerful. So the reading voice can be lowered. My race against limited-reading-time should not show!

Four Degrees of Separation is out! (Poetry Book)

These rains of March – unseasonal, but matched to the summers unreasonable

And my first book of poetry, ‘Four Degrees of Separation’ is out! Available via this link worldwide,

https://www.paperwall.in/books/78/Four-Degrees-Of-Separation

The blurbs say:

Potkar speaks with the cutting clarity of a woman wholly engaged with the world.  She writes from the gilded moment vulnerability becomes knowledge, and then when knowledge becomes wisdom. The result, in all cases, is the poem:  clever and crafted to a kind of broken perfection—the cracks show, but the shattered places are dusted with powdered gold.  “If a day is a life, a word is a story,” Potkar writes. Her poetry condenses life into a gilded day, a story into a single word, as only a masterful poet can do it, or a woman can feel it.

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

Four degrees of separation is a book to be opened like pulling down the covers of a lovers’ bed, pages of poems like sheets to be inhaled, scents that will invade dreams. Jaguars stalk through these poems; mangoes, the sweet, salty vinegar of bodies in love, bodies falling out of love–and the city  of Bombay too is omnipresent, ripe with cats and blossoms, heaps of saris, “anklets clinking to camel bells.” This book is a conversation, an invitation to heed the advice of a wise grandmother, who says, “Don’t love a man more than he knows what to do with it/like chocolate over a child’s face/or a small body in a large shirt….love him a little less/So he comes, wagging his desires.” This book is also a cry of lament to a grandmother who “cherished sons over daughters.” The tangles of lovers, of love lost, and of family relationships, all fuel these poems. We are all connected, for better and for worse, these poems insist, as an aunt “searched for zeros in every person/like ingredients in a soup.” “A grudge is a wound that never seeks healing,” writes Potkar in one of the many wise observations guiding this collection, where even amidst the chaos of life and love, “every tree holds the silence of the earth/under its armpits.”

Rachel Rose

Go BUY! As I hop and dance mad. Wanna join in the jive?

My first book of poetry – Four Degrees of Separation is due in March!!

Alright, and it’s that time of a good day, a good year, a good life, where I unveil the cover of my first poetry book to you. To say I am excited in an understatement. I am sentimental more than maternal. This book releases in March. The month of my birth. And I hope you are awaiting it as much as I am? [If not, why – just kidding :)]

Blurbs by two of the most riveting and thought-stirring poets I met in Iowa.

Rachel Rose (Canada), Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta (Philippines).

Thank you Hemant Divate and Smruti Divate for having faith in me.

On the map… at Iowa city

“My country is rich in terms of heritage… its 1.2 billion population gives never ending stories.” —Rochelle Potkar (IWP ’15)

“On the Map” is a series of interviews with writers while they are in Iowa City participating in the International Writing Program’s fall residency program. Watch the full interview with Potkar here:

http://iwp.uiowa.edu/archives/media/rochelle-potkar-indiaredone

‘Knotted inside me’ in Arabic

Glee!  My poem gets translated to Arabic, by friend, Raed Aljishi, (poet, translator; Saudi Arabia) who has penned one novel, seven volumes of poems in Arabic and one in English: Bleeding Gull: Look, Feel, Fly.

Now read the poem right away! Alright, it’s Knotted Inside me.

http://caffeineadab.blogspot.in/2016/02/blog-post_17.html?m=1

http://www.alkhat.net/download/khat61.pdf  (on page 37)

You can read the poem in English here:

Knotted inside me

At the time of my birth, my small town Kalyan, did not have a library.

It had no road rage, few beggars, one defunct traffic signal at Murbad Road,

and fewer cars.

Horizontal buildings silhouetting the sun in shanties, chawls and cottages

Its outline gianted and dwarfed

with self-sustaining jobs of: kiranawalas, primary school teachers, factory workers, dentists, general practitioners, cycle repair shops,

and a small bank (let’s not forget) on Rambaugh lane.

It was tone deaf to career ladders, six sigma, hierarchies,

MNCs, pecking orders.

Filled with pavwallas, mohmeddans, hindus, bavas,

north Indians, south Indians, non-catholics,

non-hindus, non-muslims, non-dalits, and non-brahmins.

The ice-factory owner, the mayor, a smuggler, a customs officer

were The Rich –

their bungalow gardens, terraces, compound walls

sprinted over by well-fed dogs

pressing against our imagination (mostly) during new year resolutions.

The Sindhis lived in a neighbour town

with plenty of gold and goods.

In the year of my sister’s birth

some of their buildings collapsed

like crumbling cake in blood and crust.

There was one gang-war in Kalyan

one Anglo-Indian killed,

by a Goan goon, on a night road

a gunshot running through his race, history, legacy.

And a schoolboy murdered

in cold gang-boy rage.

I, with the other girls were bottom-felt,

walking through the college corridors.

That was all we had,

before I left for the City.

But the town I had left behind –

like shoes outside a temple –

multiplied around me a thousand times.