5 spoken word artists and a jazz musician come together from across India to bring you a unique dramatized poetry set that brings to life the lusciously twisted world of ‘Circus Folk & Village Freaks’.
With BHARATH DIVAKAR DANIEL SUKUMAR SHANTANU ANAND NANDINI VARMA SHANKAR IYER and APARNA UPADHYAYA SANYAL
About the Book
Meet the beautiful people of the Circus, and the freaks who live in the Village next to them. Mangled, jangled, misunderstood, all find place in the rich tapestry of this book. Siamese twins separate to lose half a heart each, and find snake-man and tiger-taming lovers. A man bitten by a crocodile becomes a God, and a Devadasi woos the entire countryside with her culinary artistry. Fates intertwined lead sometimes to tragedy, sometimes happy summits of fame. A clown finds his place in Hollywood and mute animals break unspeakable chains. A twisted man falls in love with a mirror and a white man is unmade by the Indian sun. In this book are tales for every season and every reason. Tales of human depravity that take innocent lives, and of a murderers’ insanity that follows, a fitting revenge by nature, red in tooth and claw. These stories are told in the form of narrative poems in rhyming couplets. Look inside and you will find, you have been to this Village. Surely, you have been to this Circus too.
REVIEWS
In such tales of carnivalesque genius, Aparna has managed to explore the themes of casteism, classism, feminism, mental illness and homophobia.”
~ The Asian Age, Sept 26, 2018
"Aparna Sanyal Upadhyaya is one of those rare people who are just as funny on the page and in a poem as they are in person. I laughed aloud many times reading about the shenanigans in these charming and quirky twisted tales."
~ Chandrahas Chaudhary, Author of ‘Arzee the Dwarf’ and ‘Clouds’
“Sanyal explores the absurd and the bizarre with witty undertones through tales of transmogrification of men to monsters, animals to women, speaking truths of various lives and their travesties. A texture of swift worldly-wisdom underscores the focus on freaks, but often leaves an invisible message of a reverse lens on the rest of the world.”
~Rochelle Potkar, poet and Author of ‘Paper Asylum’ and others
About the Author
Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal holds an MA from Kings College, London. She is a recipient of the 14th Beullah Rose Poetry Prize by Smartish Pace. She was shortlisted for the 2018 Third Coast Fiction Prize. A popular Spoken Word poet, she performs at events across venues in India. Her page poetry is featured in reputed international literary journals such as Smartish Pace, Dunes Review, Typehouse Literary Review, SOFTBLOW, Broad River Review, Gyroscope Review and many more. She is featured on the Masthead of the Songs of Eretz Poetry Review as a Frequent Contributor. Her poetry will be anthologised in a collection alongside the work of renowned poets such as Gulzar and Piyush Mishra in 2019. She is passionate about the performing arts and dabbles in theatre production in her spare time. She lives with her 4-year-old son, husband and two dog babies in Pune, India.
Circus Folk & Village Freaks is her debut book, out now with Vishwakarma Publications.
Find links to her work here: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aparnasanyalwrites/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aparnasanyalwrites/ Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/sanyal_aparna
Where: Monalisa Kalagram, KP, Pune
When: SundayOct 14, 2018
Time: 6:30 pm
Entry: Open to all
