Pico Iyer’s ‘Autumn Light’ woos you to believe and yet, to let go eventually

Each event, the writer is telling us, must be savoured for what it is, for nothing can bring it back.

John Butler

· Jul 08, 2019 · 05:30 pm

‘In the days of war, the sun does not rise, it is always night’: Two poems on what war brings us

One poet was from India and one, from Pakistan, and their poetry is the same.

Zeeshan Sahil

 & 

Balraj Komal

· Mar 11, 2019 · 12:30 pm

‘Imagine a world where tanks can be libraries’ (as John Lennon might have): Two poems by Nabina Das

‘Nations are not made up of women who cry / nations are made up of men who sound a war cry.’

Nabina Das

· Mar 09, 2019 · 12:30 pm

‘This border that drinks blood and spits sparks’: Voices of Urdu poets on war and peace

How Urdu poetry travelled through the battleground of hope and despair.

Rakhshanda Jalil

· Mar 08, 2019 · 12:30 pm

‘Can you tell me the race of the blood-stained clothes?’: Three poems by Hindi poet Kumar Vikal

The poems have been translated from the Hindi by Nirupama Dutt.

Kumar Vikal

· Mar 07, 2019 · 12:30 pm

‘How were we done for in this war?’: Three poems by women poets from Sri Lanka ask the same question

Written in Tamil, the poems have been translated by N Kalyan Raman.

Sivaramani

, 

Paamathi

 & 

Anar

· Mar 06, 2019 · 12:30 pm

War and death: Two poems by WB Yeats and Rudyard Kipling that remind us of the futility

WB Yeats and Rudyard Kipling on the fate of individual soldiers.

WB Yeats

 & 

Rudyard Kipling

· Mar 05, 2019 · 10:30 am

‘Why are you fighting this war?’: Satyajit Ray’s famous anti-war song from ‘Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne’

‘For whom then are you fighting this war?’

Satyajit Ray

· Mar 04, 2019 · 10:30 am

‘Why did we fight at all? asked the Pandavas’: Three poems mourning war by K Satchidanandan

‘We will weep together / sharing the same impossible dream / of a world without borders.’

K Satchidanandan

· Mar 03, 2019 · 12:30 pm

‘The Last Salute’: Saadat Hasan Manto’s story of a battle in Kashmir asks again why wars are fought

‘As he took aim to shoot and a familiar face appeared on the opposite side, he forgot for a moment why they were fighting, why he had lifted his gun and aimed.’

Saadat Hasan Manto

· Mar 02, 2019 · 06:30 pm

‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’: A soldier-poet’s cry against the cruelties of war

Wilfred Owen served and died in World War I at the age of 25. His poems refute the glory of wars and explore their harshness for those who actually fight them.

Wilfred Owen

· Mar 01, 2019 · 12:30 pm

‘Words from the Depth of Truth’: Rabindranath Tagore’s poem on war and destruction

Tagore wrote this poem after the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

Rabindranath Tagore

· Feb 28, 2019 · 07:30 pm