Shrikant Verma's 'Magadh' reissued in English translation, reviewed in ArtReview Asia

Shrikant Verma's 1984 Hindi poetry collection 'Magadh' has been reissued in Rahul Soni's 2013 English translation, published by And Other Stories for £14.99. The work comprises around 50 poems exploring the ancient kingdom of Magadha through narrators depicting human life, death, time, and loss. Verma's minimalist style employs precise syntax and structural gaps, with poems like 'Invocation' (1984) and 'Pataliputra' (1979) featuring sparse language rich in allusion. The collection serves as a totemic text for the 'Nayi Kavita' movement, which blended formal innovation with everyday language in Hindi literature. Verma's political role as a senior Congress party spokesman during the late 1970s and early 1980s crisis period provides crucial context, suggesting parallels between ancient state crises and contemporary instability. Soni's translation faced challenges due to the original's sparseness, with Mantra Mukim noting in the afterword that it 'speaks for itself as much as the original.' Specific poems reference locations like Kapilavastu and Pataliputra, while characters include Shaktar and 'doms' (Dalits). The review appears in ArtReview Asia's Autumn 2025 issue, comparing Verma's suffocating poetics to Italo Calvino's lexically embellished 'Invisible Cities' (1972).