Carcanet book launch online: Sumita Chakraborty with Jane Yeh

Manchester-based Carcanet Press continues its online programme of book launches broadcast live via Zoom in October – first with Birdsong On Mars by Jon Glover, alongside fellow Carcanet poets John Whale and Rebecca Goss, on 7 October and, next up, Homunculus, a long poem from award-winning poet and translator James Womack, based around the Elegies of the Roman poet Maximian, on 21 October.

Sandwiched between is Sumita Chakraborty, with her debut collection of poetry, Arrow (released in September 2020 with Alice James Books in the United States and Carcanet Press in the United Kingdom), described as “extraordinary in ambition, range and achievement” that comprises invocations, verse essays and, at its centre, ‘Dear, beloved’, an elegy for her younger sister who died suddenly. Sumita Chakraborty is a poet, essayist and scholar. She is Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Poetry at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, where she teaches in literary studies and creative writing. Previously, she was Visiting Assistant Professor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, at Emory University.

Joining Sumita Chakraborty to discuss the new work will be fellow Carcanet poet Jane Yeh, whose own most recent collection, Discipline, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Her first scholarly book, tentatively titled Grave Danger: Death, Ethics, and Poetics in the Anthropocene, is in progress and her essays most recently appear in the Los Angeles Review of Books. In 2017, she received a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and, in 2018, her poem ‘And death demands a labor’ was shortlisted for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2019, and she was previously poetry editor of AGNI Magazine and art editor of At Length.

As is usual for Carcanet online events, extracts of the text will be shown during the reading so that audience members can read along, and they will also have the opportunity to put forward their own questions. Registration for this online event is £2, later redeemable against the cost of the book, available direct from Carcanet at a special price – attendees will receive the discount code and details of how to order during and after the event. Please note that there is a limited number of places for the reading, so do book early to avoid disappointment.