Pure Lizard

by Sujata Bhatt

Born in India, her mother tongue Gujurati, educated in America and now living in Germany, Sujata Bhatt in her writing bridges continents, languages and identities. In Pure Lizard she further explores the dislocations and transformations first encountered in her acclaimed first collection Brunizem (1988). A being with 'pure lizard' skin appears as a Sibyl; Jane Eyre haunts a laboratory in Baltimore; monkeys inhabit new spaces; a field of sunflowers in Pennsylvania is set beside sunflowers grown in Chernobyl to remove toxic waste from the soil... Pure Lizard continues Bhatt's dialogue with other art the etchings of Paula Rego, the music of Telemann and Philip Glass. Grounded in a world of science, history and minute observation, Bhatt's inventinos are made palpable and moving by her profound sympathy, her distinctive vision through language.

145 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Sujata Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad, India. She grew up in Pune (India) and in the United States. She received her MFA from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. To date, she has published six collections of poetry with Carcanet Press. She received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award for her first collection, Brunizem (1988). Subsequent collections include Monkey Shadows (PBS recommendation, 1991), The Stinking Rose (shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize, 1995), Point No Point (1997), Augatora (PBS Recommendation, 2000), and A Colour for Solitude (2002). She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1991 and the Italian Tratti Poetry Prize in 2000. She has translated Gujarati poetry into English for the Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Indian Women’s Poetry, and has translated poems by Gunter Grass and Gunter Kunert. Her translations from the German include Mickle Makes Muckle: poems, mini plays and short prose by Michael Augustin (Dedalus Press, 2007). She has been a Lansdowne Visiting Writer at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, a Visiting Fellow at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and more recently was Poet-in-Residence at the Poetry Archive in London. Her work has been widely anthologised, broadcast on radio and television, and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Currently, Sujata Bhatt lives in Germany with her husband and daughter.