For wounded soldiers rarely feel, Of throbbing hearts and broken skin.

Not even the asters accepting your gaze.

Incontestable.

I would remember a face like this if I had seen it around.

I am a photo of a person, printed in black and white, in a newspaper.

The sound of your voice is a song.

Where could they live happily for the rest of their childhood?

The creatures of the dark feed on fear. And hot sauce.

To love a country as if you’ve lost one  Is to feel the freezing sun on your body Form icicles on your cheeks as you train your feet To dance hopscotch on rough asphalt;

A book may look like a house or a coffin But a maker of books cannot be contained between ordinary covers. Between the Muses’ minions, stodgy academics, Smarmy marketing men and discount-hungry retailers He waves a baton to conduct a chorus That threatens to collapse any moment into cacophony, Yet keeps the show going,

Amitav Ghosh’s passionate engagement with the Sundarbans has brought out his best as a socially conscious fashioner of narrative in The Hungry Tide (HarperCollins, 2004) and Gun Island (John Murray, 2019); enriched his intervention in the discourse on ecology, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (Penguin, 2016); and perhaps most felicitously, has brought to light the poet hiding behind his voluminous prose.

Yes, you have no reason to trust me: I am not your elder, I am not from your tribe;

 A hood of iron thread Drawn over face,

the first time i saw a tiger was in someone’s house all tall and lifeless; yet a tiger --

The book, Knowledge Management, Governance and Sustainable Development: Lessons and Insights from Developing Countries (Routledge, 2020), edited by M Aslam Alam, Fakrul Alam, and Dilara Begum, is indeed a timely endeavour.

Earlier this week, in a break from work-related correspondence, I sent author Tahmima Anam a personal email. I told her I was writing to her “as a reader” this time, because after months of scarfing down books for the sole purpose of writing reviews, The Startup Wife (Penguin India, 2021) made me forget that I was reading it for work.

The Nazrul Institute yesterday launched two Portuguese and Spanish translations of literary works of National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam at its auditorium in the capital.

The readership of poetry is declining, and people do not have the passion for verses like before, observe a few publishers and sales persons at the ongoing Ekushey book fair.

The 30th National Poetry Festival concluded yesterday with the call for peace and justice and awarding of two poets.

At least one person is killed and three others are injured in a bomb attack at a mosque of Ahmadiyya Muslim community during Juma prayer in Rajshahi.