January 14, 2011
Almost Island is pleased to announce the publication of its first book, Adil Jussawalla’s new collection of poems, Trying to Say Goodbye. In the future we will continue to publish one or two books a year, of poetry and prose.
Available on Flipkart
“Forty years on,
with the forest gone,
my sight’s improved...”
--from “Snakeskin”
This is the long anticipated third collection of poems by Adil Jussawalla, who continues to be a seminal figure in post-independence Indian poetry. Jussawalla’s is an intimate but still-sharp voice, fearless but melancholic, marked by a darting, wily syntax, bristling rhymes, and an original prosody. Here, he moves across time to address an array of histories, both personal and public. He lifts and pays homage to poets, artists, drunks, vagabonds, and eccentrics on the one hand, and to the deep inner life of objects and materials—a wristwatch, a radio, clay, wood, marble, a cloud, a fly—on the other.