Monday, March 11, 2019

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
UCLA

Kaya Press and the UCLA Center for India and South Asia are pleased to invite you to a lunchtime talk by poet and translator Rajiv Mohabir to celebrate the publication of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara by Lalbihari Sharma.

A groundbreaking work, Holi Songs was originally published in India in 1916, and is the only known literary work written by an indentured servant in the Anglophone Caribbean.

On Monday March 11th, Rajiv Mohabir will be giving a lunchtime talk on the book and the powerful process of translation--including his own personal connections to Guyana, and the very place where the book was originally written--at UCLA.

Presented by the Center for India and South Asia, Mohabir will speak and be in discussion about I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara from 12 - 1:30 p.m. in Bunche Hall Room 10383. Refreshments will be provided.

This event is generously co-sponsored by the UCLA Asian American Studies Department, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and the UCLA English Department

Lalbihari Sharma was born in Chapra village in the United Provinces of India (now Bihar, India). Sharma was indentured by the British East India Company to work the sugarcane fields and published his chautal folksongs in 1916. A musician and singer, he is the first Indo-Caribbean writer to write and publish one of the only books written in the dialect of his village. Not much is known about his life other than the autobiographical information included in his work.

Rajiv Mohabir is the award-winning author of the poetry collections The Taxidermist’s Cut (Four Way Books, 2016) and The Cowherd’s Son (Tupelo Press, 2017). His awards include the Kundiman Poetry Prize the 2015 AWP Intro Journal award, and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant. His poetry and translations appear internationally in Best American Poetry 2015, Quarterly West, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Drunken Boat, Poetry Magazine and many other places. He received his MFA in Poetry and Translation from Queens College, CUNY, a PhD in English from the University of Hawai`i, and works as an Assistant Professor at Auburn University in Alabama.

Sponsor(s): Asian American Studies Center, Asian American Studies Department , English, Kaya Press