brouhahas of cocks by Mustansir Dalvi

Paperback: 106 pages

Publisher: Poetrywala

 1st edition (2013)

ISBN-10: 9382749012

ISBN-13: 978-9382749011

Now available on Amazon and Flipkart 
Also at Kitab Khana, Flora Fountain, Mumbai and Yodakin, Delhi.

merry morning locals

yellowbrown slugs grind

steel teeth. clucketycluck sparks.

brouhahas of cocks.

'fresh, wise, luminous.'
— Ranjit Hoskote

'These poems are compact, carefully crafted, affectionate inter-continental sagas, far superior to the saggy-baggy international sagas written by some of our novelists, and acclaimed by our clueless media. They confirm my belief that our poets are by and large far superior to our novelists, though it is the novelists who get all the attention, and, of course, the hefty advances.'
— Eunice De Souza

‘When reading Mustansir Dalvi’s poetry you must do several things: You must pay attention, for in his poems one word follows another in a slow accretion of meaning, while soundscapes and timezones change swiftly. must be prepared to duel, as he does, with all manner of concepts,emotions, situations, complexities, absurdities, personages, mythologies, geographies and fantasies. You must laugh out loud at the wit, the humour, sometimes even the bawdiness that takes you off-guard, unsettles and delights. And you must not flinch, as the poet doesn’t, from encountering the everyday violences of roadkills and sexual assaults, the terrors of madness, brutality, carnage and conflagration.’
—Sampurna Chattarji

‘In a series of precise images, a montage of people and historic moments, roadkill and mangoes, Mustansir Dalvi brings us his version of the city. But this is no jerrybuilt dystopia of despair; instead it is the vision of someone who will not look away, who will look at and then look beneath at the architectonics of the human endeavour to be human. This is poetry of commitment and compassion and one comes away all the richer for having read it.’
—Jerry Pinto


INTERVIEW

'Meet Navi Mumbai's Bard', an interview with Reza Noorani in the Times of India.


REVIEWS

A review of 'Brouhahas of cocks' by Eunice De Souza in Mumbai Mirror.

A review of 'brouhahas of cocks' by Lindsay Pereira in Mid-day.

'Free Verse', a short review by Vilasini Roy in Time Out Delhi.



Contents
Click on links for selected poems.

I 
Geography 
the last dinosaur roams Matheran
Goodbye, Gondwanaland
Rama’s bridge: 26.12.2004, dawn

II 
Urbs Secunda 
6.15, Takka
the horse is a centaur
pushing fruit
Friday mosque in New Bombay
effigy maker
never came down after all
edge
bird, upside down
hardback awakening
Happy Diwali
apple
Terna Circle

III 
brouhahas of cocks 
merry morning locals
choosing trains
Peabody
the Ladies Only
lines for an infant who fell off a train

IV 
Kokanpatti
forest fires over Khopoli
South Africa’s first Kokani wicket-keeper
Elijah’s feast
caterwaul
Elvis Presley Blvd
sunset at Bardem

V Vembanad 
Backwater Bongo
faith on the Vembanad
Leech 101
Danaë
kingfisher at Nileshwaram

VI 
Mar Thom 
Mar Thom crosses the oceans
anywhere but Hind
King Gudnaphar’s tirade
Didymos
Teo’ma
Sweet Bird of Mylapore

VII 
Denizens
Haven
da boys of Yankee Stadium
hunchback of the World Trade Centre
Khan Murjan
a real, live Parsee
the perfumer’s woman
a saint prays for rain


BIO
Mustansir Dalvi was born in Bombay.
He teaches architecture in Mumbai.

His poem 'Peabody' was awarded 1st Place in the December 2002 Inter Board Poetry Competition (IBPC). 'Choosing Trains' was awarded First Prize in the Indian national daily Asian Age's Poetry Contest in 2001.

He has been Associate Editor at the online poetry workshop Desert Moon Review and the editor of their bi-annual e-zine The Crescent Moon Journal.

Mustansir Dalvi's poems are published in the e-zines Bakery of the Poets, Can We Have Our Ball Back, The Crescent Moon Journal, MiPo Best of Head Quarters 2003, MiPo Digital magazine, Octavo: Poetry Quarterly of the Alsop Review, Pierian Springs, PK Poetry List- Anthology, Poetic Inspirations, Poets Against the War, Slow Trains, Snakeskin, Worm, and the Writer's Hood.

His poems have appeared in print in The Brown Critique, Poetry India: voices of silence, Poiesis: A Journal of the Poetry Circle Bombay, Poetry India: emerging voices, Time Out Mumbai and International Gallerie.

His poems are included in the anthologies:
These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry (Eunice de Souza and Melanie Silgardo, editors),
Mind Mutations (Sirrus Poe, editor),
The Bigbridge Online Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry (Menka Shivdasani, editor),
The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India (Vivekanand Jha, editor)
and
To Catch a Poem: An Anthology of Poetry for Young People (Jane Bhandari and Anju Makhija, editors), Sahitya Akademi, Delhi.

His translations of poetry from Urdu and Marathi have been published in Poetry at Sangam, The Caravan magazine and The Dhauli Review.

Mustansir Dalvi's 2012 English translation of Muhammad Iqbal’s influential Shikwa and Jawaab-e-Shikwa from the Urdu as ‘Taking Issue and Allah’s Answer’ (Penguin Classics) has been described as ‘insolent and heretical’ and makes Iqbal’s verse accessible to the modern reader.

''Brouhahas of Cocks' is his first book of poems in English published by Poetrywala in 2013.

His most recent book is 'struggles with imagined gods'- selected translations of the poems of Hemant Divate from the Marathi, published by Poetrywala in 2014.



Cover painting:
Detail from 'The Incredulity of Saint Thomas'
by Caravaggio (c. 1601–1602),
Sans souci, Potsdam, Germany