There are literally hundreds of poets in all the five generations writing today in Malayalam using different registers and tones and rhythms and articulating a range of attitudes and world views. The present of poetry in the language (Malayalam) is marked by this diversity, a politics of difference, a disbelief in the existing simplistic ideas of progress and development, a suspicion of universalizing ideologies, an overlapping of the ‘high’ and the ‘popular’ modes, a preoccupation with ontological questions, as well as by a polyphonic vitality that springs from poetry’s organic links with the people and the creative traditions of the land. This anthology, ‘How to Translate an Earthworm’ edited by Ra Sh mainly represents the youngest of the Malayalam poets (with a few exceptions) who have seldom appeared in English translation in journals or anthologies.
