2017: Long Island/NYC, NY, USA

City: New York City/Long Island.
Poet of Honor: Saleem Peeradina.
Participating organizations/universities: Nassau Community College, Gallery North (Setauket), Asian American Writers Center.
Funded by: Nassau Foundation and Poets and Writers.
Featured poets: 17 poets. Usha Akella, Pramila Venkateswaran, Ralph Nazareth, Vivek Sharma, Kirun Kapur, Rohan Chhetri, Vijay Seshadri, Meena Alexander, Nandini Dhar, Sasha Parmasad, Varsha Saraiya Shah, Ravi Shankar, Vikas Menon, Saleem Peeradina.
Cultural Segment: None.

Organized by Pramila Venkateswaran in 2017, the poets read at Nassau Community College, Long Island, at Gallery North in Setauket, and at the AAWW (Asian American Writers Workshop) in NYC to a packed audience. Creative writing students read poems by South Asian poets and participated in a panel discussion with SA poets, Ravi Shankar, Saleem Peeradina, Sasha Parmasad, Usha Akella, Varsha Saraiya-Shah and Pramila Venkateswaran.

2017 participating poets are Usha Akella, Pramila Venkateswaran, Ralph Nazareth, Vivek Sharma, Kirun Kapur, Rohan Chhetri, Vijay Seshadri, Meena Alexander, Nandini Dhar, Sasha Parmasad, Varsha Saraiya Shah, Ravi Shankar, Vikas Menon, Saleem Peeradina

Poet-of-Honor: Saleem Peeradina

THE BODY IN QUESTION

Glorified at the hands
Of artists, feasted upon by poets,
Its praises sung by music-makers.
Dissected by physicians,
Its machinery exposed in
Anatomy textbooks.

In repose, its beauty drunk
In stillness. Desire awakened
In languor, the flesh animated,
Transported in slow motion
To bliss. From the bud of infancy
To maternal bloom. Pushing its limits

To perform daring feats. Body painted,
Perfumed, jeweled, and tattooed.
Wet skin in wet clothes. The veiled body
Kept in the dark. Body married
To Christ. Paraded on stage, dressed up
Or stripped down. Sold and humbled

Into submission. Bodies in whose soil
Is grown cotton, cane, corn, and tobacco
To make nations rich. Those bodies still
Slogging on, impoverished. Bodies from
Which coal is mined and gold is extracted.
Body rewarded, eroding with disease.

Migrating bodies washed ashore.
The body detached, its primal urges
Mastered by yogis; its potential sunk
In self-indulgence. Body behind bars.
In solitary. Body effaced in suicide. Body
Stopping bullets, blown to cinders by bombs.

In genocide, counted in numbers.
Body in pain, suffering blows, coming
To understand its frailty. Eventually
Betrayed by its own failure, losing muscle,
Bone, attaining stasis, shutting down.
The body home at last, laid out cold.

Saleem Peeradina

Interview with Saleem

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