Verse, ablaze: Excerpts from ‘Varavara Rao: A Life in Poetry’

16/07/2023

The Week / by Varavara Rao | Sajeesh Sankar

It is a collection of poems in English by the Telugu poet and activist
My first memory of encountering the name ‘Varavara Rao’ was in the newspapers. This was in the early 2000s, when warring guerrilla groups came to peace-talks tables. As a young Tamil woman, I consistently followed the Norway-brokered talks between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Government of Sri Lanka. Likewise, I was fascinated by what was happening on home ground: the talks between People’s War and the Indian government. Perhaps because of the way in which the print media at that time both valorised and demonised the guerrilla fighters, I was fascinated that three people had dared to be emissaries between the governments and the fighters. One of the interlocutors was Varavara Rao, the other two were Gaddar and Kalyan Rao.
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Varavara Rao: A Life In Poetry

15/07/2023

The New Indian Express / by Shrimansi Kaushik

The book, ‘Varavara Rao: A Life In Poetry’ is a collection of English translations of poems of the eminent Telugu poet edited by N Venugopal and Meena Kandasamy.
Varavara Rao: A Life In Poetry, a collection of English translations of poems of the eminent Telugu poet was released yesterday at Lamakaan. The editors, N Venugopal and Meena Kandasamy highlighted the revolutionary and transformative potential of his poems Lamakaan reverberated with revolutionary, thought-provoking poetry as the English translations of the eminent Telugu poet Varavara Rao were released yesterday.
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‘Tomorrow there won’t be any classes’: Activist Varavara Rao’s poems get an English translation

05/07/2023

Scroll.in / by Varavara Rao, N Venugopal & Rohith

An excerpt from ‘Varavara Rao: A Life in Poetry’, edited by Meena Kandasamy and N Venugopal. Translated from the Telugu.
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