The Writer’s Center and Poet Lore welcome the editors and contributors of Singing In The Dark: A Global Anthology of Poetry Under Lockdown for a reading of selections from the book and a discussion of the writing life during pandemic. Hosted by editor Nishi Chawla, featuring international contributors Usha Akella, Ann Bracken, Grace Cavalieri, Geoffrey Himes, Raj Nair, Sabine Pascarelli, George Szirtes, and Diane Wilbon Parks.
RSVP below, and you’ll receive an email on or before January 31 with instructions for joining the chat via our video conferencing platform, Zoom. FREE and open to the public, all times Eastern. Limited space.
We encourage you to order a copy of the book.
About the Book
Singing in the Dark is an intercontinental collection of poetic responses at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered the world. More than a hundred of the world’s most esteemed poets reflect upon a crisis that has impacted the entire human world and laid bare all our vulnerabilities. The poems capture all its dimensions: the trauma of solitude, the unexpected transformation in the expression of interpersonal relationships, the even sharper visibility of the class divide, the marvelous revival of nature and the profound realization of the transience of human existence. The moods vary from quiet contemplation and choking anguish to suppressed rage and cautiousce lebration in an anthology that serves as an aesthetic archive of a strange era in human history.
About the Editors
Nishi Chawla is an academician and a writer. She has six collections of poetry, ten plays, and two novels, two screenplays and one independent movie, to her credit. Nishi Chawla holds a Ph. D. in English from The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. USA. After teaching for nearly twenty years as a tenured Professor of English at Delhi University, India, she had migrated with her family to a suburb of Washington D.C. She has taught at the University of Maryland from 1999 until 2014. She is now on the faculty of Thomas Edison State University, New Jersey, USA. Nishi Chawla’s plays get staged both in USA and in India.
K. Satchidanandan is a leading Indian poet. He is also perhaps the 255 most translated of contemporary Indian poets, with thirty-two collections of translation in nineteen languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, English, Irish, French, German and Italian, besides all the major Indian languages. He has authored twenty-four collections of poetry, four books of travel, a full-length play and a collection of one-act plays, two books for children and several collections of critical essays, including five books in English on Indian literature besides several collections of world poetry in translation. He has been a professor of English, and also the chief executive of the Sahitya Akademi, director of the School of Translation Studies, Indira Gandhi Open University, Delhi, and national fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is a fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and has won fifty-two literary awards from different states and countries, including the Sahitya Akademi award, India-Poland Friendship Medal from the Government of Poland, knighthood from the Government of Italy and World Prize for Poetry for Peace from the Government of the UAE.
About the Readers
Usha Akella has authored nine books that include poetry, one chapbook and two musical dramas. Her latest poetry volume is due for publication by the noted feminist press Spinifex, Australia in April 2021. She earned an MSt. In Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her last poetry book, The Waiting was published by Sahitya Akademi, (India’s highest Literary authority) in 2019 followed by a bilingual edition published by Mantis Editores, and translated by the reputed Mexican poet Elsa Cross. She is the founder of ‘Matwaala’ the first South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival in the USA (www.matwaala.com) and www.the-pov.com, a website of curated interviews along with David Kopacz. She has been invited to prestigious international poetry festivals and was invited as a keynote speaker to TLAN’s Power of Words conference 2019. She was selected as a Creative Ambassador for the City of Austin for 2019 & 2015. She has read in numerous international poetry festivals all over the world.
Ann Bracken has authored two poetry collections, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom and The Altar of Innocence, serves as a contributing editor for Little Patuxent Review, and co-facilitates the Wilde Readings Poetry Series. Her poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in anthologies and journals, including Women Write Resistance, Mad in America, Fledgling Rag, Lummox, Awakenings Review, and Gargoyle. Ann’s poetry has garnered two Pushcart Prize nominations and her advocacy work centers around arts-based interventions for mental health, education, and prison reform. Website: annbrackenauthor.com
Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s Tenth Poet Laureate. She has written 22 books and chapbooks of poetry; and 26 produced short-form and full-length plays. Her newest poetry publications are What The Psychic Said (2020,) and Showboat,(2019.) Her latest play was “Quilting The Sun,” Theatre for The New City, NYC, 2019. Grace founded and still produces “The Poet and the Poem” on public radio, celebrating 44 years on-air in 2021. The show’s recorded at the Library of Congress and transmitted via Pacifica Network.
Geoffrey Himes’s poetry has been published by December, Gianthology, the Delaware Poetry Review, Survision, January Review, Salt Lick, the Baltimore City Paper and other publications. His song lyrics have been set to music by Si Kahn, Walter Egan, Billy Kemp, Fred Koller and others. His book on Bruce Springsteen, “Born in the U.S.A.,” was published by Continuum Books in 2005. He has written about popular music and theater for the Washington Post, New York Times, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian Magazine, Paste, Downbeat, Sing Out and the Nashville Scene since 1977. He has been honored for Music Feature Writing by the Deems Taylor/ASCAP Awards (2003, 2005, 2014 and 2015), the New Orleans Press Awards, the Abell Foundation Awards and the Music Journalism Awards. His stage musical, “A Baltimore Christmas Carol,” broke box office records at the Patterson Theatre in Baltimore in 2004.
Raj Nair published his first poem at the age of eleven years. He has written poems, short-stories and novels in his native language Malayalam and English. He is also a writer-director of feature and documentary films. He was educated at the universities of London, Harvard and Hong Kong. Raj is a professoriate and senior clinician, who lives in Australia.
Sabine Pascarelli is an Italian poet from Tuscany, near Florence. She grew up in Germany where she earned a degree in German language and literature at Dortmund University. She is a published poet, an author of children’s literature and a translator of English, German and Italian. Her recent books of translated poems include The Alchemy of Grief by Emily Ferrara, winner of the Bordighera Poetry Award 2007, Repubblica by Dr J.H. Beall and Cosa farei per amore by Grace Cavalieri.
George Szirtes’s twelfth book of poem, Reel (2004) won the T S Eliot Prize for which he has been twice shortlisted since. His latest is Mapping the Delta (2016). His memoir The Photographer at Sixteen was awarded the James Tait Black Prize in 2020. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has written for children, for radio and various composers.
Diane Wilbon Parks is a poet, visual artist, and author; she has two collections of poems and a Children’s Book. Diane is the founder of The Write Blend, a culturally diverse poetry ensemble, and a member of the Voices of Woodlawn Poetry Collective. She has been recognized as a 2020 Prince George’s County Poet of Excellence; Diane celebrated the permanent installation of one of her poems and artwork at the Patuxent Research Refuge – North Tract. Diane’s poetry has been featured widely and included in National and International Anthologies. Diane is also included in the 43rd and 44th Anniversary of Grace Cavalieri’s, “The Poet and The Poem” at the Library of Congress. She is a USAF Veteran, Sr. IT Program Manager, wife and mother.