XXL

by Aditya Shankar

In XXL, Aditya Shankar explores the trails of contemporary relations, fractured across layers of being: metals, human, animals, and memory. He explores the love between waterfall and the electric bulb, cafe and the cycle, chair and orgasm, explorer and fruit boring worm, jeans and dying rivers. If the poems in this collection are imagined as a singular narrative, an eye at the urban balcony opening to wilderness is the midpoint. It cannot spot either the hooting owl or the factory sounding the siren, but together they construct the voice of a new urban god residing in a designer city beneath a designer sky. The voice we encounter in Aditya Shankar's XXL is direct, zany, and angry. The longing for anonymity renders it loud in the reader's mind: "I'm the seed of the fruit, the bug saves for the last.

116 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2018

About the author

Aditya Shankar is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated Indian poet, flash fiction author and translator. His poems have appeared in journals from 20 or more nations, and translated into Arabic and Malayalam. His poetry collections include After Seeing (2006), Party Poopers (2014), and XXL (Dhauli Books, 2018). He edited Tiny Judges Shall Arrive (AHRC, Hong Kong), a selection of KG Sankara Pillai's poems translated into English. His short films have participated in International Film Festivals and nominated for awards. He lives in Bangalore, India.