Description

At a time when Libraries are losing their identities, the poet has engaged in a deep and intimate interaction with them through these poems. Libraries transcend themselves, coloured by the poet’s sensitive imagination. The readers embark on an interesting journey, finding a hidden door to a library or metamorphosing the self into a book upon a shelf. The poems in this book speak of their loneliness as a whiff of nostalgia for a more active past wraps the readers’ consciousness. The poems celebrate the library, mourn its slow death, caress its existence and look towards an optimistic future. The poems are also a form of protest against the dying of an affirmative culture. They revel in the idea of books and reading, blurring identities of the readers, library and books in a magic realist way.

Open Your Door, Library is a unique compendium of love poems written in the voice of an ardent lover whose beloved is the ‘Library’. Enwrapped in the poet’s universe of books, the translator triumphs in locating a matching urgency of expression of love in translation. The library develops as a metaphor of life that has termites as well as a thousand universes on its shelves. The dying moments of the library are mourned intensely and its white death woefully witnessed. It’s the birth of a new book and the thirst of a reader that keep the hope of a library alive. A compelling read, undoubtedly! — Sukrita Paul Kumar

TRISHNA BASAK is a Kolkata-based poet, story writer, novelist and essayist of modern Bengali Literature. An MTech from Jadavpur University, Trishna left her lucrative career to pursue her passion for literature. Her five-year stint with Sahitya Akademi enabled her to get in close touch with various aspects of Indian literature. At present, she is a full-time writer, editor and translator. She is also the secretary of Kolkata Translators Forum. She has more than 60 books of poems, short stories, novels, science fiction, essays and translated works to her credit.

NABANITA SENGUPTA is an Assistant Professor of English in Sarsuna College, Kolkata, Beyond the college hours, she enjoys dabbling in creative and critical pursuits. An academic, translator and creative writer, she has been variously published in India and abroad. Her latest publication is Bandaged Moments, a co-edited volume of translated stories on mental health by women authors across India.  She has two books of translation and a volume of poetry to her credit and several edited volumes.