Book Discussion | Perennial Flows: The Poetics of Translation with Tuhin Bhowal & Sourav Roy

What happens when a poem crosses a language—and becomes, in the process, something reborn? This discussion brings together Tuhin Bhowal and Sourav Roy, the editors of Perennial (Red River, 2025), an anthology carrying the work of 40 poets from Hindi to English, for a conversation about the creative life of translation. The discussion will feature a reading of the poems alongside an exploration of translation as not merely a technique or aesthetic, but as an act of discovery, listening and re-creation. Where does the original end and the translator’s imagination begin? And can translation reveal possibilities the poem itself did not know it possessed? 

Join us for an engaging conversation moderated by poet Satya Dash about the curious half-lives of poetry as it flows between the languages of Hindi and English. This will be followed by an interactive Q&A with the audience.

Here are the details:

Date: 19th September 2026, Saturday

Time: 6:00 PM (seating begins at 5:45 PM)

Venue: Champaca Bookstore, Vasanth Nagar

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About the book: 

One may claim that Hindi is a relatively new language that emerged as a lingua franca in north and central India during the national movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Codified by journalists, activists, teachers and lawyers; Hindi is perhaps the only language where prose happened before poetry. One might also argue that Hindi has always been around; tracing its roots to the Rekhta era, the Bhakti movement, and the earlier works of Apbhransh, Prakrit and Sanskrit literature – inheriting their diction, forms, idioms, and myths; like a river that has always been flowing and yet is always brimming with new waters – a perennial river.

'Perennial' intends to introduce an English reader to contemporary Hindi poetry that has tradition seamlessly woven into it. This anthology covers 40 poets born across seven decades, who come from varied linguistic, economic, and geographical landscapes – some live isolated in India's hinterlands while others have travelled the world. And yet, they have reflected in their unique ways the various drifts that have come to define twenty-first century India – rising globalisation, communal politics, changing family systems and values, Dalit and Adivasi movements, gender struggles, farmer struggles, to name a few. While the dialects of their region weigh heavily on their expression and style, they are united by Hindi –  a language they live and share.

Meet the editors:

Tuhin Bhowal is a writer, translator, and editor working across Hindi, Bengali, and English. Recent books to his credit are Perennial: The Red River Book of 21st-Century Hindi Poetry (co-editor; part-translator) and The Body is the World: Selected Poems (1973–2025) by Hoshang Merchant (editor). Tuhin lives in Bangalore and tweets @tuhintranslates.

Sourav Roy is a bilingual writer, poet, journalist, and translator. He currently works as a Hindi teacher at Head Start Educational Academy, having previously served as a visiting faculty member at Azim Premji University and NIFT Bengaluru. With multiple books to his credit, his debut poetry collection, Kaal Baisakhi, was published by Vani Prakashan in 2022. Sourav Roy's second poetry collection is forthcoming.

About the moderator: 

Satya Dash is a recipient of the Vijay Nambisan Poetry Fellowship, the Osmosis Poetry Prize and the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, Ninth Letter, Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, and Cincinnati Review, among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator. He grew up in Cuttack and now lives in Bangalore.

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