Stories have their own quiet revolutions.

Some are whispered in small rooms, some are sculpted in solitude — and a few are nurtured into existence by those who believe that words, even when silenced, find their way back to light.

My guest in this episode is one such believer — writer, editor, and literary catalyst Sucharita Dutta-Asane.

Her stories, from 'Cast Out' to 'These Tongues That Grow Roots', travel through the unmapped territories of memory, exile, and belonging.

As an editor at Red River Story, she’s also helping a new generation of writers find their voice — and their courage.

In this episode, we talk about sculpting stories rather than butchering them, about the delicate art of editing, and about the quiet wars that shape her fiction.This podcast series is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry and stories, and Uncut Poetry, which is the immensely popular poetry podcast of original poetry.

You can hear Uncut Poetry on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, Gaana, or anywhere you get your podcasts. You can find books published by Red River online at  redriverpress.in , on amazon and in select bookstores.

If you enjoyed this episode, talk about it, write about it, and subscribe to Red River Sessions, so you don't miss even a single episode.

I spoke to Priya Sarukkai Chabria for more than an hour. Time literally flew. And though my cache of questions was largely over, when do we ever want a good conversation to end.

So this is where we ended - we have decided that I will visit her in Pune, with the proviso that I will tell her my favorite drink from before. And we will pick up the thread of the conversation from exactly where we left it and simply carry on....

Priya is brimming with stories and ideas and projects. And her love for cinema and art and environment and poetry and fiction give her the ability to examine things from multiple perspectives. It is sheer joy spending time with her.

She is, of course,  a poet, writer, translator and literary curator. Her publications include five poetry collections, two SF novels, translations from Classical Tamil, and literary nonfiction. She founded Poetry at Sangam, an online literary community, and along with poet and novelist Mrinalini Harchandrai, edited the anthology The Dragon’s Heart: World Poetry in Translation.

Priya has performed in multidisciplinary collaborations across India. Her engagement with Sanskrit aesthetics and Tamil Sangam poetics has been widely published in literary platforms.

Her latest book is EARTHRISE STORIES, published by the inimitable Dibyajyoti Sarma of Red River Story.

Catch her reflect, muse and wonder in this brilliant episode of Red River Sessions,.

This podcast series is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books and ⁠Uncut Poetry⁠, a much-loved poetry podcast. You can hear Uncut Poetry on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, Gaana, or anywhere you get your podcasts. You can find books published by Red River online at  redriverpress.in , on amazon and in select bookstores.

If you enjoyed this episode, talk about it, write about it, share it. And subscribe to  Red River Sessions so you never miss an episode.

How often would you meet a poet who stays in a town steeped in the calm of spirituality but whose shoreline is sprayed with the spume of a restless sea? Well, Gayatri stays in Pondicherry, an absolute favorite place of mine. And I have been wanting to speak to her for ever and more!

And when we finally did get to it, the conversation just flowed. For an hour we spoke of cities, books, poets, Sri Aurobindo, Agha Shahid Ali, Auroville - and pretty much everything in-between.

Her latest book 'A Warm Place with No Memory', published by Red River is a veritable journey of possibilities. Her poetry remembers not by holding on, but by allowing things to pass through; she chisels the abstract into form, making the ineffable quietly useful in the rhythms of ordinary life. She finds poetry in the practical.

As editor, publisher and founder of critically acclaimed Indian literary journal, The Brown Critique, for over two decades, Gayatri has published hundreds of established and emerging poets from India and other countries. She began her career as a journalist in Press Trust of India and The Independent (India) in Mumbai. Her career also encompasses leadership in the publishing industry and work in NGOs.

Gayatri’s books include A Song for Bela (a novel); poetry collections Shout, I Know You are Here, The Dream Pod; non-fiction The lotus of the heart, and Brown Critique Home anthology.

Her poems and prose have been published in major journals and anthologies. She is currently working on her next non-fiction title.

As co-founder of ‘Pondicherry Poets’, Gayatri has been curating the annual Pondicherry/Auroville Poetry Festival.  ‘The Brown Critique-Gayatri Majumdar' YouTube channel features poets and musicians regularly. While Brown Critique Books has published a handful of mostly non-fiction titles over the past few years.

Gayatri is associated with Sri Aurobindo Society, specifically handling the publication of books, eBooks and audiobooks through AuroPublications.

Catch her reflect and recite in this second episode of the second season of 'Uncut Poetry presents Red River Sessions'.

In Red River Sessions, we  talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books and Uncut Poetry, a much-loved poetry podcast.

Buy Gayatri's books and those of other fabulous poets at redriverpress.in.

Basudhara and I finished our conversation at 10 pm. One hour forty-three minutes. And my heart was full. We'd started off thinking we should aim for a thirty to forty five minutes talk. I'm just glad it wasn't to be.

There is something reassuring about Basudhara. Because she speaks with conviction, of being completely honest to the moment. Thoughts, images, opinions, all, take shape like a building which is linear, with stark lines, but a place you know is warm and welcoming.

Her latest book 'A Blur of a Woman' is the one I will be gifting the most this year, and possibly beyond. The poems are tender and hard, heartbreaking and life-affirming, as she bleeds her heart to open our souls.

In this fabulous conversation, which I wished hadn't ended, she talks, amongst a million other things, of her provincial life, of how poetry improves on marination, how a poem can be obstinate to change, how illnesses define trajectories, and how Keki Daruwalla showed her why greatness is nothing but grace in ordinary things.

Basudhara says writing is "a struggle to keep affirming life's movement, its open-endedness, its journey of becoming as well as its right and necessity to become".

Basudhara teaches English at Karim City College in Jamshedpur. Creatively and academically drawn to themes of gender, mythology and ecology, her five published books include a monograph and three collections of poems - Moon in My Teacup, Stitching a Home and Inhabiting. Her work has featured widely in anthologies and magazines, including Chandrabhaga, The Punch MAgazine, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, Helter Skelter Anthology of New Writing, The Dhaka Tribune, EPW, and Madras Courier, among others. Co-editor of two poetry anthologies and a firm believer in the therapeutic power of verse, she writes, reviews, and sporadically curates adn translates poetry from Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India.

Catch her muse, reflect, recite in this first episode of the second season of 'Uncut Poetry presents Red River Sessions'.

In Red River Sessions, we talk to published poets about their poetry, their craft, and what haunts them.

It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry and curated prose, and Uncut Poetry, which is a much-loved weekly podcast of original poetry.

Buy Basudhara's books and those of other fabulous poets at redriverpress.in

This is the second part of the conversation with Sophia Naz.

Sophia Naz is a bilingual poet, artist, author, editor and translator. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize; in 2016 for creative nonfiction and in 2018 for poetry. Her work features in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets, The Night Heron Barks, Singing in the Dark: A Global Anthology of Poetry Under Lockdown, Berfrois, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Rattle, The Punch Magazine, Poetry At Sangam, Poetry International Rotterdam, The Adirondack Review,  The Wire, Chicago Quarterly Review, Blaze Vox, Scroll, The Daily O, Cafe Dissensus, RAIOT, Ideas And Futures, Chapati Mystery, Guftugu, Pratik, Gallerie International, Coldnoon, VAYAVYA, The Bangalore Review, Papercuts, Madras Courier, The Yearbook of Indian Poetry and many others. She has authored the poetry collections — Peripheries (Cyberhex, 2015), Pointillism (Copper Coin, 2017) Date Palms (City Press, 2017) Open Zero (Yoda Press, 2021), and Shehnaz, a biography (Penguin Random House, 2019).

Bark Archipelago is her fifth collection of poetry. 

I first met Sophia at the Delhi Poetry Festival last year. We were both in the same session, reading our poetry, and the session got delayed. We had a good time furiously cribbing about the delay. Of course, we finally got to our poetry, and I was completely floored by what she read.

Her poetry was cerebral, fun, layered - it was like an intellectual puzzle that needed to be uncovered, layer by layer.

So when Dibyajyoti Sarma, the heart and soul of Red River Publications, asked me to have her as my first guest to begin the Second Season of Red River sessions, I was completely delighted.

Before we started this conversation, we promised each other that it would be no longer than 20 minutes. You can see where we ended finally. I decided not to edit much of the conversation because it was so delightful and stimulating - and there were so many interesting things which Sophia had to talk about.

Her latest collection of poetry, Bark Archipelago, published in March 2023 from Red River in India and Weavers Press San Francisco in USA.

Sukrita says - "Literary success lies in the joy I get while in the very process of writing and then the glee in actually being able to finish a poem. The rest of it is rather superficial and temporary."

Welcome to Red River Sessions, which is a collaboration between Red River, the premier independent house for poetry and Uncut Poetry, the much loved poetry podcast. I am your host Sunil Bhandari, and in this episode we are speaking to the renowned poet Sukrita Paul Kumar.

Sukrita  was born in Nairobi, Kenya and emigrated to India when Kenya obtained its freedom from the British. As director of a UNESCO project on 'The Culture of Peace', she edited Mapping Memories - a volume of Urdu short stories from India and Pakistan. She has published several collections of poetry as well as academic books and critical writing. She's recently edited the The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2020-21 along with Vinita Agarwal.

And with Red River she has published the sparkling and incandescent Country Drive, co-written with Yasmin Ladha.

Get the book on Amazon. 

So Sukrita and I had discussed the general drift of questions for the interview. Instead what transpired was a completely freewheeling conversation - and what a talk it turned out to be!

We talked about Plath, death, influence of talented fathers, the blessing and curse of poetry, the meaning of life, her first book, about maintaining innocence in fractured times, Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s teaching on focus, the criticality of independent publishing houses, the thrill of holding onto a tree, and a hundred other things!

This is a peerless episode from Red Rivers Sessions presented to you by Uncut Poetry. In Red River Sessions, we  talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books and Uncut Poetry, a much-loved poetry podcast.

Following are the details of the music used in this episode -

Music: 1000 Lichter by Sascha Ende

Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3161-1000-lichter

License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Artist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de

Music: Adventure by Alexander Nakarada

Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6092-adventure

License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Artist website: https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/

Music: Sentimental Travel by MusicLFiles

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6968-sentimental-travel

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

To know Shobhana is to know the essence of grace and gratefulness which suffuses her work. I have time and again, on reading her poems, kept the book down and held back my emotions. She gets to the heart of the matter with quick acuity, but an understanding, which is gentle, kind. She holds the reader close to her heart, as she leads him through her hurting poetry.

Shobhana Kumar has two collections of poetry: The Voices Never Stop (2012) and *Conditions Apply (2014), from Writers Workshop, Kolkata. Her work has been anthologized in journals and books of poetry and Japanese short forms. Her poem, ‘Just Married’ was selected and translated by Gulzar in his monumental work, A Poem a Day, published by HarperCollins. She has authored six books of non-fiction covering biographies, corporate, industrial, and educational histories. Her short stories have been published or are forthcoming in a few anthologies. Kumar is Poetry Editor of Sonic Boom Journal and its imprint, Yavanika Press. She is also part of The Quarantine Train, a poetry workshop founded by Arjun Rajendran. She works in the spaces of corporate communication, branding and advertising, and education. Along with a group of friends, she runs Small Differences, an NGO working with elderly, abandoned people and the transgender community.

Her latest book “A Sky Full of Bucket Lists” is published by the finest independent publisher of poetry Red River. It was chosen by the redoubtable Arundhathi Subramanian as one of the finest books of 2021. 

It can be purchased on Amazon or Papyrus

She spoke to me at length about her poetry, her growing up in Lovedale, the work she does in her NGO and why Mary Oliver is such an inspiration.

This is a peerless episode from Red Rivers Sessions presented to you by Uncut Poetry. In Red River Sessions, we  talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books and Uncut Poetry, a much-loved poetry podcast.

Following are the details of the music used in this episode-

From my Heart With Love by MusicLFiles

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6267-from-my-heart-with-love

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Sentimental Travel by MusicLFiles

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6968-sentimental-travel

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Adventure by Alexander Nakarada

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6092-adventure

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Midnight Tale by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/4710-midnight-tale

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Bina stole my heart from the time I met her, a few years back, in a poetry extravaganza where I was the Master of Ceremonies and Bina headlined a stellar galaxy of poets. She was there with her husband, the renowned photographer Rafique Ellias, and I knew I was in the presence of two wonderful souls from the first hello. Her poetry had a power which her slender frame and gentle voice belied. And as I came to know the breadth of her interests and the depth of her commitments to causes, I became a lifelong fan. Bina is the very definition of a Renaissance woman, if there ever was one.

Bina is a poet, of course, but also an editor, designer and publisher of International Gallerie, a global arts and ideas journal (www.gallerie.net) founded by her in 1997. She is also an art curator, having curated several important exhibits of renowned artists. She taught herself graphic design and has been invited by artists, galleries, photographers, poets to design their books and catalogues.

Her books of poetry include The Room, Fuse, When Seeing is Believing and the latest Song of a Rebel and Other Selected Poems brought to you by Red River Publishers. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Urdu, French, Greek and Chinese.  And FUSE has been taught at the Towson University in Maryland, USA.

In this engaging and story-filled episode of Red River Sessions, Bina talks how the rebel in her governed her choices as a child, in marriage, in starting her own magazine - and how a life well lived is the one in which you back your own choices. 

Her latest book, Song of a Rebel and Other Selected Poems, published by Red River, can be purchased at -

https://www.amazon.com/Song-Rebel-Other-Selected-Poems/dp/8194816432

https://papyrus.catalog.to/s/gallery/papyrus---the-book-store/red-river-poetry/brf/product/-MgKpqKzd-kWu8aQ2RP2

This is a peerless episode from Red Rivers Sessions presented to you by Uncut Poetry. In Red River Sessions, we  talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books and Uncut Poetry, a much-loved poetry podcast.

Following are the details of the music used in this episode-

Sentimental Travel by MusicLFiles

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6968-sentimental-travel

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Melodic Interlude Two by Alexander Nakarada

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6394-melodic-interlude-two

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Sadness Background Piano And Cello by MusicLFiles

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/8315-sadness-background-piano-and-cello

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Flucht (Romeos Erbe) by Sascha Ende®

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/3146-flucht-romeos-erbe-

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Imagefilm 002 by Sascha Ende®

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/46-imagefilm-002

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Publish by Sascha Ende®

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/25-publish

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

"Ishq, the word reverberates

Mizaaj, the mood

If desire has a leitmotif

The freshwater dramas

Intezaar…"

("One Indian City, Two Indian Lovers" from Siddharth Dasgupta's The Moveable East)

When I read Siddharth Dasgupta's latest book of poetry, I had a sense of light bursting out of the pages - even when he delved into darknesses. He writes of places with an intimacy which brings with it an overwhelming sense of desire, loss and loneliness. He says "Poetry is a daily prayer" and every poem of his is a testimony to that.

Siddharth Dasgupta is a writer of poetry & fiction. A Moveable East is his fourth book; others include Letters From an Indian Summer (Fingerprint) and The Sacred Sorrow of Sparrows (Niyogi). His words have appeared in literary journals across the world, while he has read in places like Mandalay, Bombay, Galle and Istanbul. Occasionally, Siddharth explores fragments of travel and culture for a smattering of publications. He lives within the swirling nostalgias of the city of Poona.

He can be reached at -

Instagram - @citizen.bliss 

https://citizenbliss.squarespace.com/

His latest book, A Moveable East, published by Red River, can be purchased at -

https://www.amazon.in/dp/8194509386

and

https://papyrus.catalog.to/s/papyrus---the-book-store/red-river-poetry/brf

This is a peerless episode from Red Rivers Sessions presented to you by Uncut Poetry. In Red River Sessions, we  talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books and Uncut Poetry, a much-loved poetry podcast.

Following are the details of the music used in this episode - 

Melodic Interlude Two by Alexander Nakarada

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6394-melodic-interlude-two

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Flucht (Romeos Erbe) by Sascha Ende®

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/3146-flucht-romeos-erbe-

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Tranquil Fields Peaceful by Alexander Nakarada

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5769-tranquil-fields-peaceful

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Cinematic Background Sad by MusicLFiles

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/8181-cinematic-background-sad

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Sentimental Travel by MusicLFiles

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6968-sentimental-travel

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license