In this book, Madhu Kailas presents the poet’s engagement with art and creative liberation through startling imagery and innovative verse. In the title poem, ‘The Boatman of Murshidabad’, the eponymous boatman becomes a metaphor for torpor, loneliness, and the remorseless passing of time; in ‘The Day a Song Dared to Soar’, travellers return and pick new faces for rebirth; in ‘Keys Made of Sunshine’, a child grows up and learns to listen to silence; in ‘Silence of Butterflies’, golden silk strands cascade on to the green forest floor; and in ‘The Forest Sings’, the breeze preserves an arrangement of leaves and flowers in a secret language. Deeply felt and packed with original insights into the human condition, The Boatman of Murshidabad is a dazzling collection of poems by an accomplished poet.
Madhu Kailas is the pen name of Kingshuk Basu. He is a native of Kolkata and has lived in various places in India and the USA. He is the author of The Birds Fly in Silence. His poems have been published in journals like the Gateway Review, Marathon Literary Review, Literary Voyage, Indian Literature, The Amistad, Slippery Elm, Dragon Poet Review, New Mexico Review, Acumen, and Langlit. He studied Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and Business Management at Michigan State University. He lives with wife and children in Mumbai.
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