Resonance

About the book

Contents

• What one sees in this era of late postcolonialism is an intense concern with a non-nativist take on local traditions. There is a search for roots, but there is a refusal to give up on the gains of a global language. And within this ‘glocal’ frame, the effort has been to recover voices that do not get heard or that echo distantly and feebly in the mainstream or the metropolitan tradition.
• In Odisha the concept has caught on late, but has given rise to some brisk and hectic canon or rather counter-canon formations since the first sapling was planted in 2013. Wings Over the Mahanadi , the first anthology, led the way with its culling of eight Odia-English poets. Not satisfied with its small and rather elitist reach, the next volume, And The Rhythm Continues took the tally to fifty-five, moving in the process to the other extreme of populism. The present collection with its archiving of poems by twenty Odia-English poets situates itself in the responsible middle space between elitism and populism. It showcases some of the ‘resonant’ voices from Odisha, thereby helping to construct a regional strand of Indian English poetic tradition.
• Resonance brings together voices seasoned and new, established and aspiring. There is more or less an even distribution of male and female voices. The themes are varied, ranging from self-making to the evocation of Odisha’s scenic coastline and forests and its history burdened with a sense of loss. Overall, the volume succeeds in speaking of the small triumphs and the quiet tragedies that resonate with every Odia-English heart
• - Dr. Himansu S. Mohapatra
• Professor of English (Retd)
• Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha

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