Today’s New Verse News: CLEAR DEMANDS
by Indran Amirthanayagam
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Police ran an armored carrier into the gate of San Marcos University, then charged by the hundreds to rouse students from sleep and hound them into courtyards arresting dozens upon dozens. For what? For allowing peasants to sleep on the grounds while in the city, to express their right to protest, to say no to the hard and clumsy- handed, new, unelected leader, to ask for the dictator Fujimori constitution to be discarded then rewritten, to ask for jobs and seeds after the ravages of the pandemic.
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Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.