Review

By Navamalati Neog Chakravarti The Crossings are a collection of Chaitali Sengupta’s deeply sensitive poems. The fifty poems sorted into three groups dwell beautifully on the reality of war and the problems that come up after wars end. Wars are not the thought of magical talisman that ends problems. They are the beginning with no end. This is the writer, translator, reviewer, and journalist Sengupta’s second poetry collection. With wars abounding in our twenty-first-century world, and men grossly bent on killing each other, one is reminded of Oscar Wilde’s saying, “To live is the rarest thing in the world.” Indeed, we have not moved away from our blood-soaked earth, where the bewildering battle of Kurukshetra was fought. Read the full review at: Different Truths  

Poems that map the complex historical, mythical, and ideological trajectory of power and powerlessness A review by Aparna Singh in the literary journal MUSE INDIA Chaitali Sengupta writes and translates fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. The Crossings, her second poetry collection, envisions a world around war, migration and survival—the three sections into which these poems are neatly divided. Bashabi Fraser, in her insightful foreword to the collection, writes, “The impact of conflicts on individual lives is powerfully captured in poem after poem […]” Sengupta’s stark bristling anger strikes us at the very onset, “And then, one day they left. Castrating our future with sterilized guns”. Judith Butler in a recent article on violence and the condemnation of violence, says “The matters most in need of public discussion are those that are difficult to discuss within the frameworks available to us.” The trauma of war and displacement far supersedes the existing linguistic templates. The Crossings reflects Sengupta’s deep awareness and negotiation of this very lack. It also creates a much-needed space—an intergenerational one—shared and collective, for such experiences to be articulated.  Read the full review at: The Muse India

Winner of Runners-Up award at the London Book Festival 2024 Reviewed by Anjana Basu Chaitali Sengupta’s The Crossings covers therelated worlds of war. Migration andsurvival – the sections into which the poemsare divided. These are world that shetraverses through her imagination andexperience some of them experiencedthrough the memories of relatives duringthe Partition, others from the stories of warand the constant interaction in the papersthat highlights the problems of those whowander from space to space with nowhereto turn.War and migration have gradually becomedeepening concerns for the world – Russia’sattack on Ukraine launched the firstEuropean war in decades, a conflict that stillpersists with the addition now of Gaza andIran’s entry. In a world strung taut, the poetexpresses her concerns through vividmetaphors. Not that all the wars describedare modern – with Partition as a backdrop itwould not be. She writes about the JaggedLine that divided her family and the nation:“The strong white fingers pencilled a jaggedline on our map. The Radcliffe line. Read the whole review at: The Confluence magazine, UK https://confluence.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/May-June-2024-issue-.pdf Book Event at the Eindhoven Library-The Crossings.