A Child Even In Arms Of Stone

Child Even in Arms of Stone is an anthology of poems on and about children, poems that sing of lover for this "unattainable earth" as Milosz puts it. There are as many as 30 well-known poets of the world ranging from JoJo T. Boskovsky to Rabindranath Tagore, Kabir to Pablo Neruda and Li Po to W.B. Yeats besides a few tribal songmakers of India. Deep within every sensitive poet, every artist, a child is alive and we hear his voice, we see him play with words, colours and images. The poets speak about their own children or about children and childhood in general. In these poems celebrating the ineluctable childhood, children speaks of their dreams and their aspirations as in Tagore's poems. A child sends a loving invitation to a butterfly as in the Wordsworth poem. Children look at the world with their sense of wonder and awe. So do the poets look at childhood as do Lorca, Tanikawa or Lzet.

The poems presented in this anthology compel us to sit back and consider once again as to how to make this planet safe for children and hand it over to him.

Abut the Author:

Dr. Sitakant Mahapatra (b. 1937) an eminent Oriya poet of the modern times, had his M.A. in Political Science from the University of Allahabad and later Ph.D. from Utkal University. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1961 and held several positions as Secretary to the Government of Orissa, Secretary, Government of India and President, UNESCO's World Decade for Cultural Development. His poems have been published in translations in all Indian and several foreign languages including French, German, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Romanian, Danish, Hebrew and Macedonian. Dr. Mahapatra is also an insightful essayist and an excellent translator. His publications in English include Death of Krishna and Other poems, Morning Rain and Other Poems, Unending Rhythm (Oral Poetry of Indian Tribals), Endless Weaves (Tribal Song and Tales of Orissa) and Tuined Temples and Other Poems. Some of his essays and scholarly works are Gesters of Intimacy, Tradition and the Modern Artist, and The Mahabharata, Modern Indian Literature.

Among the awards he has received are Bharatiya Jnanpith Award, Sahitya Akademi Award, Soviet Land Nehru Award, and he is also Fellow-International Academy of Poets, Cambridge, Senior Fellow, Harvard University, Homi Bhabha Fellow etc. He is presently the Chairman of National Book Trust.