Slow Startle

Book excerpt: Poetry. The Emerging Poets Prize was founded in 2015 with a simple premise: to discover and nurture the best new poets coming out of India and the diaspora. Rohan Chhetri's SLOW STARTLE, the inaugural winner, is a shining testament to what this award can realize. Selected by Jeet Thayil, these are dangerous poems with everything at stake, and the only relief comes at a sudden awakening into the clarity of human suffering. Vibrant and haunting, these poems leave the reader in a still and shimmering wake. "Rohan Chhetri's unforgettable book of poems stops time and accelerates it. With language as bracing as it is smart, he has carved work that marks him as a powerful new citizen in poetry's kingdom." Mary Karr "Rohan Chhetri's poems excite and surprise. They excite admiration and the surprises echo in my skin long after the reading. Everything is at stake here, in sentences that dazzle and console. I don't know how else to say it read this book." Jeet Thayil "At the heart of the beautifully controlled flow of Rohan Chhetri's words is a still centre. A wise calmness survives times of turbulence and, sometimes, of shocking violence. It is cautious, guarded, yet open to the startlingly luminous revelation a passing moment can bring. For the stilling glow at the heart of such moments and for much else, I'll return to this book again and again." Adil Jussawalla "