After Death Comes Water

'Allow yourself to be outraged and furious, allow yourself to be swept into Joy Goswami's intimate world of passion. His poems are breathtaking. They will momentarily remind you of the time you were resting your head on the chest of a lover, and by the turn of a page remind you of the bloodbath which exists in the world outside. Sampurna Chattarji's translations breathes life and fire into his words.' -- Meena Kandasamy. An essential collection of prose poetry from Joy Goswami, the most important poet writing in Bengali since Jibanananda Das. Selected and translated by Sampurna Chattarji, this book showcases the extraordinary range of the writer's genius and inventiveness.

‰Û÷In this book, Joy Goswami performs, with truly Baudelaireanwildness and poise, what he calls ‰Û÷a nyashastraon what is poetry, on why metre should be thrown away‰۪. His tragicomic poeticprose is an explosive plasma, full of fire and irony, frequently leaving thebody, sometimes the earth itself. Now, Sampurna Chattarji recreates each ofthese twenty-first-century visions ‰ÛÓ including the extraordinary sequence ofone-paragraph outbursts on life and death, No shame in bathing before yourmother (2012) ‰ÛÓ in a livingvoice, as inventive and vivid as the English of Joyce. It‰۪s almost more thanink can hold.‰۪‰ÛÓJeremy Noel-Tod, editor of ThePenguin Book of the Prose Poem