Sujata Bhatt, geboren in Ahmedabad, ist in Indien und den USA aufgewachsen. Sie studierte im berühmten Writers’ Workshop an der University of Iowa und lebt heute als Schriftstellerin und Übersetzerin in Bremen. Ihre Lyrik wurde vielfach ausgezeichnet und in mehr als 20 Sprachen übersetzt. Unter anderem erhielt sie den Commonwealth Poetry Prize, den Cholmondeley Award, den italienischen Tratti Poetry Prize, den Literaturpreis ‘Das neue Buch’ des VS Bremen/Niedersachsen und zuletzt, in Mexico City, den Premio Internacional de Poesía Nuevo Siglo de Oro 1914-2014. An den Universitäten von Victoria in Kanada, Nottingham Trent in England und dem Dickinson College in den USA war sie als Gastprofessorin tätig und war zweimal Writer in Residence im Heinrich Böll Cottage auf Achill Island in Irland. 2020 gastierte sie als Writer in Residence am Bauhaus in Dessau. Sie hat auf zahlreichen Literaturfestivals in aller Welt gelesen, u.a. in Medellín, Mexico City, Singapur, Seoul, Bali, Neu-Delhi, Johannesburg, Durban, Toronto, New York, Rotterdam, Stockholm, London, St. Andrews, Edinburgh, Dublin, Vilnius, Tallinn, Madrid, Athen, Rom, Florenz, München und in Barcelona. Ihre neun Lyrikbände sind erschienen bei Carcanet in England, zuletzt Collected Poems (2013) und Poppies in Translation (2015). 2020 veröffentlichte der Hanser Verlag im München in seiner Edition Lyrik Kabinett Die Stinkrose, eine von Jan Wagner ins Deutsche übersetzte Auswahl ihrer Gedichte (eine der Lyrikempfehlungen 2021 auf der Liste der Deutschen Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung).
Preise und Stipendien:
2008 Literaturpreis Das neue Buch des VS Bremen/Niedersachsen
Weitere Informationen zu Leben und Werk
Hörproben und einen Interview: www.poetryarchive.org
Die Stinkrose
Gedichte, 2020
Hanser Verlag, ISBN: 978-3-446-26556-1
160 Seiten, €20,00
Übersetzt von Jan Wagner.
„Was würdest du tun / wären in deinem Mund zwei Zungen?“, fragt sich Sujata Bhatt in einem ihrer schönsten Gedichte. Sie, die aus Nordindien stammt, lange Zeit in den USA lebte und heute in Bremen wohnt, hat ihre Muttersprache aufgegeben, um auf Englisch zu schreiben. Kaum eine zeitgenössische Dichterin hat eindringlicher über den Verlust von Sprache und Heimat nachgedacht, über die Schönheit und den Schmerz, andersartig zu sein. Ihre weltumspannende Poesie sprengt die Grenzen von Sprachen und Ländern, verbindet die Weite der nordfriesischen Landschaft mit der Sehnsucht nach dem blauen Mohn des Himalaja.
Collected Poems
2013
Carcanet Press, ISBN: 978 1 857549 97 3
320 Seiten, €23,99
Sujata Bhatt’s poems, ‘Search for my Tongue’, ‘Muliebrity’, ‘A Different History’ and other works, are familiar to many British readers, who study them at school. Ever since the publication of her first collection, Brunizem, in 1988, her poetry has been a favourite with those excited by new geographies and forms, and by issues of language and gender.
Her Collected Poems trace a fascinating development. In the early work her imagination stays close to Pune, India, and its languages (including Gujarati, her mother tongue), landscapes, people and customs. After her family’s exile she had to re-invent Pune in her writing. As the poet moves to Europe following her education in the United States, her poems continue in their vocation of reinvention. Elegies, ekphrastic work, travel and landscape pieces make up a complex world which is always lyrical in impulse. In Bhatt’s work, poetry is a place where nothing is certain and there are surprises with each reading.
Pure Lizard
Poems, 2008
Carcanet, ISBN: 978-1857548334
96 Seiten, €13,99
In this new collection of poetry that juxtaposes images such as organic sunflowers in Pennsylvania with sunflowers grown out of the toxic soil of Chernobyl, transformation and the natural world are central themes. Poems that respond to the work of composers Telemann, Bob Zieff, and Philip Glass are included, as is a poetic correspondence with the Welsh writer Gillian Clarke on the writer’s sense of home and place.
Brunizem
Poems, 2008
Carcanet Press, ISBN: 978 1 857549 81 2
110 Seiten, €10,99
‚Brunizem‘ is a dark prairie soil found in Asia, Europe and North America, the three worlds of Sujata Bhatt’s imagination. Born in India, her mother tongue Gujarati, Bhatt was educated in the United States and now lives in Germany. In Brunizem, her acclaimed first collection, she explores the richness and the conflicts of moving between cultures and languages, in poems that are passionate, direct and eloquent. Brunizem was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award. In 1994 ‚Search for My Tongue‘ was choreographed by Daksha Sheth and performed by the UK-based South Asian Dance Youth Company in nine cities in England and Scotland, under the title ‚Tongues Untied‘.’Brunizem‘ is a dark prairie soil found in Asia, Europe and North America, the three worlds of Sujata Bhatt’s imagination. Born in India, her mother tongue Gujarati, Bhatt was educated in the United States and now lives in Germany. In Brunizem, her acclaimed first collection, she explores the richness and the conflicts of moving between cultures and languages, in poems that are passionate, direct and eloquent. Brunizem was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award. In 1994 ‚Search for My Tongue‘ was choreographed by Daksha Sheth and performed by the UK-based South Asian Dance Youth Company in nine cities in England and Scotland, under the title ‚Tongues Untied‘.
A Colour For Solitude
Poems, 2002
Carcanet Press, ISBN: 978-1857545890
112 Seiten, €12,99
Revolving around the public and private lives of the great modern painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, this collection explores the artist’s relationship with her craft and her friendship with poet Rainer Maria Rilke and his wife, sculptor Clara Westhoff. Inspired by the artist’s numerous self-portraits, Bhatt transports the image of Modersohn-Becker to present-day Germany. This book-length sequence of poems presents a rich and fully conceived history of the inner and outer worlds of one of the century’s great modern painters.
Augatora
Poems, 2000
Carcanet Press, ISBN: 978 1 857543 81 0
96 Seiten, €11,99
‚Augatora‘ is not a new word: it is a word lost from language a millennium ago. In Old High German it meant, more or less, ‚eye gate‘ (‚window‘ with an inbuilt etymology).
The windows in this book open on real and imagined land- and cityscapes. India, past and present, remains ‚a necessary obsession‘. Here also we see Durban, Riga, New Orleans, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Barcelona, and the small island of Juist off the German North Sea coast, site of her long poem ‚The Hole in the Wind‘, broadcast by BBC Radio Drama. Memory, science, language, history and love remain Bhatt’s themes; she amply justifies the New Statesman claim that she is ‚one of the finest poets alive‘ – alive in many different ways.
Point No Point
Poems, 1997
Carcanet Press, ISBN: 978 1 857543 06 3
144 Seiten, €12,99
Sujata Bhatt’s first book of poems, the award-winning Brunizem, appeared in 1988. In a very short time she has gained recognition as one of the distinct and reckonable new voices. She has things to say about her native India and her native tongue (Gujarati), about America and Britain, and about Germany where she now lives. She is, the New Statesman declared, ‚one of the finest poets alive‘, and alive in a unique way to language, to issues of politics and gender, to place and history. Hers is a remarkable complete imagination, generous and at the same time unsparingly severe in its quest for the difficult truths of experience.