# Poets Highlighted in Annual Article on Indian Writing in English in ‘Literature, Critique, and Empire Today’ (2025)

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2026/01/20/poets-highlighted-in-annual-article-on-indian-writing-in-english-in-literature-critique-and-empire-today-2025/
- Published: 2026-01-20T23:18:26+00:00
- Author: shuktara

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Seven of our poets have received special mention in the short introductory article
compiled by **Payal Nagpal** and **Shyamala A. Narayan** for ‘**Literature, Critique,
and Empire Today**’. An annual undertaking, each installment provides an overview
of published writing from India in, or translated into, English with this issue 
spotlighting publications in 2024. The comments on our books are shared below.

‘In her debut work _Patchwork Quilt_ Sunaina Jain chooses her own path rather than
follow the goal posts set by the world — “You looked for precision and detailing;/
I longed for creative freedom…”’

‘Poems in _Lola in Belfast_ by Pallavi Padma-Uday, document her experience as a 
lonely immigrant moving from New Delhi to Belfast and her near-fatal experience 
due to Covid — “It’s not berries, but the colour of blood clotting/ on my tongue,
so pungent I must be dead/ to lick the wound but I do.”’

‘In Arun and Sunitha’s _Harbour Eyes_ most poems are, in the words of the poets,“
Insta length, Tweet breadth”.’

‘In Vyshnavee Diwakar’s _Delphic Diatribes_ each poem is an experiment in form. 
The book includes ballad, triolet, senryu, lanterne, couplet, concrete poetry, rispetto,
tyburn, a collum lune or the American haiku and many others. In the tyburn poem,“
Shelling,/ stilling,/ swelling,/ spelling,/ sent out just for spelling “stilling”
wrong,/ sadness sobs a swelling, shelling song.”’

‘In _Renditions_, Subhakar Das, poet from Assam, expresses the conflict and violence
in the North-east — “Spare a thought for/ the wife waiting at home,/ the children
crying for their father./ What of those/ who shot him dead?”’

‘Sritama Sen’s debut _There Used to be a Lake Here Once_, subtitled, “Chapbook of
a Bengali Queer” is written from the point of view of a trans non-binary poet and
the poems are deeply personal. One poem written as an “Ode to Katrina Kaif” — “I
lie in bed/ sinful and diseased./ in class, I lie about having a crush/ on your 
boyfriend instead.”’