Overview

This is a collection for our times - from four women poets who have taken on Shakespeare, and their love, during the pandemic. The fact that they were in conversation with each other about a literary figure and his works, and worked towards this anthology is evidence that we humans (at least the women) can work together during the toughest of times, times that push us and lock us into our own individual resources. We have the capacity to overcome anything. They show too that we the former colonized can also overcome our own colonization, read the texts the colonizers were excessively proud of, read our own resistances and appropriations, think through it all, and come up with an anthology of poems that demonstrate that we can critique that we love, accept the love even as we can read the contexts that gave us that love, celebrate the love with joy and irony and humor and clear-sighted acceptance. The four Shakespeare Walis, Shweta Garg, Shashikala Assella, Sureshika Piyasena, and Ipsita Sengupta, from two different countries (India and Sri Lanka), united by their education at the same university (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), and their love for Shakespeare (which they must have developed earlier!), have their voices even if they write on the same topics. They write on women characters (with interesting twists - one making the boy actor 'come out' as Juliet), write on the 'twisted' men (of course), write (very appealing) appropriations, and in a final section called ""Shakespearewalis to Shakespeare,"" in a series of very funny poems, they comment on his plays, his characters, his writing, and him! But then all the poems in this anthology work as a commentary on Shakespeare's works by four feisty subcontinental women who can see the humor in their readings and display it in verse and make you part of their literary journey. This is good poetry and good criticism. Shakespeare is in their good books and this book will be a good addition to the Shakespearean library, to read in good times and bad.-Prof. GJV Prasad

Full Product Details

9781963245066

Table of Contents

Reviews

William Shakespeare stripped human beings of dissembling masks, and put them on as well, on stage, in the play and in the play-within-the play. He dug into the psychology of kings, queens, soldiers, merchants and peasants. He was not divine. He did not have twenty-twenty vision and he treated some women characters as slaves, possessions, prizes to be won. But he allowed the women to have their say in some scenes and always in the round. This irreverent, saucy, ribald, and yet honest response to the overarching Will by four contemporary Indian and Sri Lankan women is a romp of a book, a joy ride in a stolen car with the sunroof down. Shakespeare gave us the car to drive to the end of experience. This time the drivers are women who have benefited from many centuries of tussling for power and influence between the male and female sexes. Will the warring finally stop? Will, I ask you, will we accept each other according to our bond/no more no less? -Indran Amirthanayagam, author of Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant

Author Information

Shweta Rao Garg is a poet, artist and academic from India recently relocated to Baltimore. A former Fulbrighter, her poems havebeen published in journals and magazines like Indian Literature, Coldnoon, Everyday Poems, Alimentum Journal, Postcolonial Text, Transnational Literature, Muse India etc. Her debut collection of poems Of Goddesses and Women was published by SahityaAkademi in 2021. Her graphic novel, The Tales from Campus: A Misguide to College was published in 2023. She engages withShakespeare her paintings as well. Her series, 'Bard in Acrylic' is a reinterpretation of Shakespeare. Her artwork can be viewed atwww.shwetaraogarg.com. An accomplished poet, Sureshika Piyasena read for her PhD in English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Shehas taught English Language and Literature at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Sri Lanka, City University of Hong Kong, and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her poems have been published in the following poetry anthologies: Skeletons, The Black Rose of Winter, Bridge of Fates, Greek Fire, Temptation, Shout it Out, Jeans: A Memorial, and, This House We Live In as well as in Misfit Quill (e-zine), and Primrose Road Poetry, an online forum for poetry. Her debut collection of poems titled Little LostLoves was published in May 2021 which is a chapbook on the theme of miscarriages and infant loss. Her second collection ofpoems is titled Palimpsest (2023). Shashikala Assella completed her PhD from the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK and currently works as a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of English, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. Shehas published her academic work on diasporic women's literature in many reputed collections and her debut poetry collection(manuscript) was long-listed for the Gratiaen Award 2019. This co-authored collection is her first contribution to an anthologywhile her other creative work (in prose) have been published in local dailies.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available