The authors at the reading at Crossword. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Our vision was and is to showcase the multi ethnic literary culture of American literature in India, to start dialogue and walk on the bridge that Sunil Gangopadhyay and Allen Ginsberg built in 1962 between Bengali and American literature,” writes Gautam Datta in his foreword to A Mingling Of Waters. The anthology of poetry, fiction and non-fiction by American and Indian writers is a project undertaken by the United States Kolkata Literary Exchange (USKLE).

Slated for launch at the Book Fair, the venue shifted to Crossword. The readings and performances by the poets reflected the range of cultural influences and styles in the compilation — the blues-influenced work of Pulitzer Prize-winner Yusef Komunyakaa, the song-poems by Joy Harjo whose work is influenced by her Native American heritage and rhythms of jazz, the spoken-word poetry of Bob Holman who uses cadences of rap, hip hop and other styles to help the poem “explode out of the page”….

“The aim is to showcase the diversity as well as the multicultural nature of contemporary American poetry and also introduce these writers through a short representative selection of their work,” explained Catherine Fletcher, writer and editor of the volume. “We also hope to make this a fruitful collaboration between poets from Bengal and America.” The participating Bengali poets included Sunil Gangopadhyay, Gautam Datta, Jyotirmoy Datta, Subodh Sarkar and novelist Bharati Mukherjee.

The non-starter fair, where the US was to be theme country, left the writers a little disgruntled. “Not only would the book fair have given people a chance to get an idea of contemporary American literature, it would have also opened up possibilities for translations of Indian works. We are all very disappointed,” said Bharati Mukherjee.

The delegation will showcase its work through a series of performances and interactive reading sessions till February 9 at various venues across the city. For more details check out their website www.uskle.org