Kalagora

In this dazzling debut collection by Indian-born poet Siddhartha Bose, the cities of Kolkata, Mumbai, New York and London are transformed into sites of fractured vision. Bose has created a volatile, dynamic poetics in which love and longing compete with the hybrid, multicultural cityscape. A five-part structure reflects this multiplicity: 'Prolectric' and 'Epilepsis' book-end sequences on childhood and initiation ('Sunya'), love ('Maya') and the city ('Nagri'). Kalagora is a Hindi neologism meaning black man / white man; this book tells his story. Reviews "Emerging fully formed with this exquisitely crafted debut, Siddhartha Bose intrigues, surprises, shocks and seduces the reader, pushing the text to the edges of truth. This is a guttural, painfully honest text, yet at times tender and emotive, the sound of the poems creating a form of sculpture for the ear. The book spans continents and cities: Calcutta, Bombay, London, New York. A truly contemporary work which does what good poetry does best: to make the personal universal and the international local." Anthony Joseph "Forget the usual flimflam about the 'potential' of the debut collection; Kalagora introduces Bose as a poet well into his stride. These emanations from the author's token cities tentacle back to a kind of electrolife that sustains the entire collection. Here, amid filmic precision, extraordinary dare and constant ingenuity, Bose directs a vaudevillian array of seemingly apocryphal characters that come and go with metamorphic freedom. This is rampantly active and radioactive poetry; crammed with shock visions and a siege of narratives. The cumulative effect is powerful and intense; Kalagora is a vital book of poems for the 21st century." James Byrne "One of the most exciting first collections I've come across in a long time ... Kalagora bestrides continents and celebrates cities as engines of creativity where dogs talk in hieroglyphs and where a man can be a moth." Ian McMillan, The Verb on BBC Radio 3