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Awards
About the Author
Panna Naik is an established Indian feminist poet writing in Gujarati. She has published eleven volumes of poetry and a volume of short stories. An emeritus librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Panna Naik holds three Masters Degrees (MA in Gujarati and Sanskrit literature from University of Bombay, MS in Library Science from Drexel University in Philadelphia, and MS in South Asian Studies from University of Pennsylvania). She also taught two courses in Gujarati at the University of Pennsylvania to second generation Indian Americans who were curious about their cultural heritage and roots. She presently divides her time between Philadelphia and Washington, DC.
THE ASTROLOGER’S SPARROW: Poems
Panna NaikScarith, 2018
104 Pages
ISBN 978-1-7326988-1-9 Paperback
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About the Author
Panna Naik is an established Indian feminist poet writing in Gujarati. She has published eleven volumes of poetry and a volume of short stories. An emeritus librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Panna Naik holds three Masters Degrees (MA in Gujarati and Sanskrit literature from University of Bombay, MS in Library Science from Drexel University in Philadelphia, and MS in South Asian Studies from University of Pennsylvania). She also taught two courses in Gujarati at the University of Pennsylvania to second generation Indian Americans who were curious about their cultural heritage and roots. She presently divides her time between Philadelphia and Washington, DC.
About the book
Poetry in the Americas: A Poet’s Voice from India in the United States of America.
In an interview, Panna Naik writes:
“… while my life in the United States seemed to be full of activity, my life within was terribly lonely. When I met and heard Anne Sexton…the sincerity and transparency in her poems did magic to my inner world. She inspired me to write about myself and give a voice to women around me.”
As she interweaves her experiences and the experiences of women around her in India and the USA, Panna Naik uses imagery and symbols from the world of nature that she remembers from India as well as the imagery and symbols from the world of nature, which she encounters in the United States. Panna’s poetic expressions of nature as well as of human experiences from both worlds work extremely well within the intellectual and emotional poetic traditions of both worlds, of India and of the United States of America.
In the classical and still very much alive literary traditions of India that Panna Naik carries to the Americas, the creation as well as the reception and appreciation of the arts is explicitly equated with the cooking, the enjoyment and the life-giving nourishment of perfectly prepared food. It is within this framework of art, of poetry as created, crafted not only for entertainment and education but more importantly as nourishment that Panna Naik offers us her poetry which entertains us, educates us and sustains us.
—Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, Professor Emerita of India Studies and the Hutchins School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Sonoma State University, CA.
Praise
“This volume exhibits the growth in the scope and in the depth of Ms. Naik’s poetic vision over a period of more than three decades, dominated by themes of love, loss, memory, survival, identity and alienation.”
—Carlo Coppola, Professor Emeritus, Modern Languages and Literatures, Oakland University; Editor Emeritus, Journal of South Asian Literature.
“Naik’s poetic expressions of nature as well as of human experiences work extremely well within the intellectual and emotional poetic traditions of two worlds, India and the United States.”
— Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, Professor Emerita of India Studies and the Hutchins School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Sonoma State University, CA.
“Naik’s is the language of courage: as one who left home and family in search of a wider view of the world. Hers is the language of the explorer. It is a ‘rare-dear’ shape of language and acute emotion that readers are not likely to find elsewhere.”
— Pamela Sutton, MSJ, MFA.