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Annapurna Poems: New and collected

ISBN: 9788182500921
Binding: Paperback
Author: Yuyustu Sharma
Pages: 122
Trim: 8 x 5 inches
Published: 11/1/2017

This is a major anthology by world-renowned Himalayan Poet who has made Annapurna region his home for last two decades. Yuyutsu's devotion for the mountains and the people living there is unparalleled. Though his work was interrupted with the rise of insurgency and the consequent political turmoil in the Himalayan nation, the poet continued to long for the hidden valleys and mule paths where, as the scriptures say, the soul of the Gods lives. Even in his dreams he conjures the treks to the remote Himalayan regions, searching for life on the bleeding mule paths of human struggle, listening to the chorus of cicadas and dramas of hunger and strife in the hushed grounds of Little Paradise Lodge, chartering history of human attempts to invade the realm of eternal snow with moving cameras, frozen spaghetti and plastic bags.Like exquisite fields of Himalayan flowers, these are poems of high artistic integrity about harsh truths of mystery, history and humanity. Sensual, sharp and stunning, these concrete images will leave the readers breathless. A huge achievement, bringing alive the unsung agony of the people of the high Himalaya.




Yuyutsu Sharma is one of the few poets in the world who make their living with poetry.

Named as "The world-renowned Himalayan poet," (The Guardian) "One-Man Academy" (The Kathmandu Post) and "Himalayan Neruda" (Michael Graves, Brand Called You), Punjab-born, Indian poet Yuyutsu is a vibrant force on the world poetry stage.

He is also recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature.

Author of eleven poetry collections, most recently, Lost Horoscope, he has read his works at several prestigious places and held workshops in creative writing and translation at Heidelberg University, University of Ottawa, Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University, Belfast, The Irish Writers' Centre, Dublin, Rubin Museum, New York, Beijing Open University, New York University and Columbia University, New York.

Yuyutsu was at the Poetry Parnassus Festival organized to celebrate the London Olympics 2012 where he represented Nepal and India. In 2020, his work was showcased at Royal Kew Gardens in an Exhibit, "Travel the World at Kew."

Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world and conducts creative writing workshops at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home.

Yuyutsu's memoir, Not of Flesh and Bones is forthcoming in 2026. Currently, he edits Pratik: A Quarterly Magazine of Contemporary Writing.

"The 'blinding snows of the Annapurnas ridge' inspire a poetry that confronts natural magnificence with exuberant humanity. Yuyutsu R D Sharma's generous vision embraces not only the landscape and its people but the lesser fauna, like the pigeons that speak 'a kind of hushed speech that robbers might use' and the mules on the Tibetan salt route, exhausted and bow-legged from hauling 'cartons of Iceberg, mineral water bottles,/ solar heaters, Chinese tiles, tin cans…' These vividly coloured, muscular and energetic poems have an atmosphere of freshness, as though the snow itself had rinsed and brightened them. Like the 'waterfall beds that/ smelled of the birth of fresh fish', they have the tangy, dust-free odour of language born of lived experience." — Carol Rumens, British Poet and reviewer at The Guardian

"A fiercely sublime poet …the book confirms an enormous talent, as well as purity of purpose with which he approaches his calling. Lines jump out, burning themselves into your consciousness." — Eddie Woods, Amsterdam Weekly

"Formed by 20th century South Asian and North American poetry movements and himself a verbal renewer of his country's literature, Yuyutsu indefatigably writes along rivers and paths, mountains, valleys and villages, verse after verse..." — Dr. Christoph Emmrich, Professor, Heidelberg University

"Yuyutsu RD Sharma brings the bracing airs of the Himalayas to any city. His vigorous, expansive and elemental poems leave Yeti tracks on the streets and mule trails on the Tube. They are packed with rapturous couplings of the urban and the feral." — Pascale Petit, Poet and Editor

"Yuyutsu RD Sharma's face is like a mountain terrain, when the earth emerges in the gods' peaks after a flash flood or when a river has receded after the monsoon's regal fury… Indeed, Yuyutsu's poetic tenor is pretty much that of a bard, his voice that treks higher and higher into the wild beautiful upper Himalaya bringing alive the smile of the Buddha and the semiotics of the region's everlasting gods and goddesses, the Yeti and other resident animals, the soulful rivers, and the ice-kissed rain." — Nabina Das, Danse Macabre literary journal

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