Dr Work's Leopard
Life with Appa
For several years Sujata Bhatt has been working on two parallel projects, a new collection of poems to be called "Habitat" (her most recent book was "Poppies in Translation" in 2015) and her Appa stories, a move into prose. Appa is a physician, a father; he is wise, witty, always imaginative, making sure his children understand the connections between things, how blood flows, cures work, and how unpredictable life is, though patterns underlie even the most unexpected experiences. He speaks differently from his children, with an accent that delights and amuses them. He wants his children to be wise. He helps them imagine their way through their expanding worlds.
Bhatt tells the stories in no particular order. They're not building a novel. They come like lyric poems. There are unifying themes but no connected narrative. This is a treasury of stories that recur to the poet in response to something seen, heard or dreamt. They come as living memory.
Bhatt tells the stories in no particular order. They're not building a novel. They come like lyric poems. There are unifying themes but no connected narrative. This is a treasury of stories that recur to the poet in response to something seen, heard or dreamt. They come as living memory.
About the author
Sujata Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad, India. She grew up in Pune (India) and in the United States. She received her MFA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. To date, she has published eight collections of poetry with Carcanet Press. She received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award for her first collection, "Brunizem" (1988). Subsequent collections include "Monkey Shadows" (PBS Recommendation, 1991), "The Stinking Rose" (shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize, 1995), "Point No Point" (1997), "Augatora" (PBS Recommendation, 2000), "A Colour for Solitude" (2002), "Pure Lizard" (shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize, 2008), and "Collected Poems" (PBS Special Commendation, 2013). She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1991, the Italian Tratti Poetry Prize in 2000, and the German Literature Award, Das neue Buch, in 2008. In 2014 she was the first recipient of the Mexican International Poetry Prize, Premio Internacional de Poesia Nuevo Siglo de Oro 1914-2014. She has translated poetry from Gujarati and German into English. She has been a Lansdowne Visiting Writer at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, a Visiting Fellow at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and more recently was Poet-in-Residence at the Poetry Archive in London and at the Heinrich Boll Cottage on Achill Island, Ireland. Her work has been widely anthologised, broadcast on radio and television, and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Currently, she divides her time between Germany and elsewhere.