In a tattered sari, she stands

Among the contemporary poetic voices, the name of Ilya Kaminsky shines bright. An American-Ukranian poet, Kaminsky has already earned name and critical acclaim, publishing two collections of poetry, which have received rave reviews in front-ranking literary journals and newspapers. His latest collection is Deaf Republic (2019), whereas the first collection is titled Dancing in Odessa (2004).

He knew everything

Macaws swooped around the jaguar as it climbed the tree, trying to sniff the sloth lazily perched on a branch almost falling in its sleep. The air was filled with the critters of long tailed monkeys jumping in the vast canopy of trees while the croak of frogs could be heard clearly, amidst the river rushing below.

The Gulmohar tree was tall and wide glowing with blossoms and green leaves. It gave a shelter as good as a home for some. The old woman sat under the tree from morning till evening with a bundle of clothes and beddings she needed. She slept under the tree using the bundles as her pillow. People and passers by would leave some food and fruit for her.

Each year from November 25 to December 10, women around the world unite and raise their voice in support of the UN’s 16 Days of Activism Campaign against gender-based violence.

Amitabha Bagchi’s brilliant novel Half the Night Is Gone has won the prestigious DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2019.

In poetry’s kaleidoscope the clichés are sentiments, philosophy.

The universe is an hourglass

In an abyss devoid of rules,

“Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent,” said Dionysius of Halicarnassus. While realizing the essence of this sagacious saying, we can readily conclude that good English speaker is rarer than hens’ teeth in these regions of the world where there is an outlandish, preternatural and almost spurious cultural supposition that having a kingly command of the English language is rather an odious pageantry of colonial aggrandizement.

I was a student of ninth grade when I first discovered Emily Brontë.

The bus was scheduled to depart at 2 pm. It was already ten past two! Everywhere there is a competition of breaking schedule.

We emerged victorious in a burning city of chaos,

Majid kept sniffing the air as he walked. He slowed down when he heard someone’s footsteps behind him.

The title of the story could have been “Tiger,” just “Tiger,” as, for a few days in 1971, a tiger had been the cause of a massive terror to us.

Leaders big and small set no good

I was so excited when my first story – “My American Dream”–appeared in The Daily Star back in 2007 that I quickly emailed the web link to all my friends. And they promptly responded with “What is Tohon?” as if the name was more important than the story itself.

“What’s in a name?” asked Shakespeare. We often say that too as if names do not matter. Yet how else can we introduce ourselves if we do not have names?

I hate my name, particularly my nick name: Shuman. It’s so common that some of my classmates at Jahangirnagar University used to call me “common.”