KATHMANDU: Serpents won’t Listen to Your Songs, a poetry collection including twenty poems written by prominent Nepali poet Shailendra Sakar, has been launched in Kathmandu.
The book has been translated into English by world-renowned Himalayan poets Yuyutsu Sharma, Manjushree Thapa, Padam P Devkota and several others.
Sakar wrote these poems during the autocratic Panchayati regime. The book has been published by Sakar’s wife Manjushree Shrestha. This is Sakar’s first collection in English translation.
In a program organized by People SAARC Forum Nepal, the twenties poet Dwarika Shrestha said that Sakar was a rebel from the beginning and many of his poems have the same spirit.
Translator and poet, Sharma recollected his times with Sakar during the Panchayat times when both of them launched a literary movement, Kathya Kayakalpa (Content Metamorphosis).
Sharma pointed out how inheriting the intensity and biting rhetoric of great Nepali poets, Gopal Prasad Rimal and Bhupi Sherchan, Sakar stands as a significant figure in the current Nepali poetry and has produced a large body of work compared to his contemporaries.
Poet Sakar said that a poet-writer should not seek political shelter and a book is similar to the rebirth of a writer.
In the program presided by social activist and political leader, Taranath Luintel, former ambassadors Bhim Udas and Padam Sundas, Sriom Shrestha Rodan and others also spoke on the poet’s life and works.
The program was organized by Dindayal Rijal of SAARC Forum, Kathmandu.
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