In a recent conversation, someone asked, “What do you mean by tropical poetry?” What I understood by the term is poetry that lives and breathes the seasons, smells, and colours of the Indian subcontinent. But it is also about the angst, seeds of revolution, and spirit of resilience that has strengthened and shaped our collective consciousness.

My initiation to Indian language poetry read in English was through a volume of translated poems of Rabindranath Tagore’s. Countless afternoons were spent on the coir swing of the elor mango tree, reading “I won’t let you go”. The name of the translator may have receded into oblivion, but the poems changed the way a child looked at the world, instilling a deep and lifelong love for poetry.

It is in this spirit that Perennial: The Red River Book o

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