One Man Two Executions

In his latest poetry collection Arjun Rajendran begins by resurrecting voices and stories from 18th century Pondicherry: of a French * that must change its flag to render itself invisible to the English fleet of blind men contemplating a lunar eclipse or an unfortunate condemned to the absurdity of a second execution.Then jumping across centuries the other two sections in this book explore intimacy travel hauntings and generational angst.Arjun Rajendran's new poems have a huge appetite and a magnificent ambition. Here the spectres of the past are given flesh and blood and begin to live again. They are not marionettes against a backdrop but living people and like living people they infiltrate your memory and stain your consciousness leaving strange odours: durian gunpowder and hypocrisy in your nose.- Jerry PintoArjun Rajendran writes a poetry of genuine surprise and reinvention soldering together the most far-flung elements of experience into a compelling lyric unity. The historical fragment the topically political the shared cultural and the minutely personal -- all of these are transformed by his acute metaphorical vision. - Anjum HasanExperimental and inquisitive these are poems that demand an imagination where ‘Dravidian’ is struck out for ‘Darwinian’ and ‘whale’ replaced by ‘while’ time becoming space like it does on a clockface. - Sumana RoyIn his latest poetry collection Arjun Rajendran begins by resurrecting voices and stories from 18th century Pondicherry: of a French * that must change its flag to render itself invisible to the English fleet of blind men contemplating a lunar eclipse or an unfortunate condemned to the absurdity of a second execution.Then jumping across centuries the other two sections in this book explore intimacy travel hauntings and generational angst.Arjun Rajendran's new poems have a huge appetite and a magnificent ambition. Here the spectres of the past are given flesh and blood and begin to live again. They are not marionettes against a backdrop but living people and like living people they infiltrate your memory and stain your consciousness leaving strange odours: durian gunpowder and hypocrisy in your nose.- Jerry PintoArjun Rajendran writes a poetry of genuine surprise and reinvention soldering together the most far-flung elements of experience into a compelling lyric unity. The historical fragment the topically political the shared cultural and the minutely personal -- all of these are transformed by his acute metaphorical vision. - Anjum HasanExperimental and inquisitive these are poems that demand an imagination where ‘Dravidian’ is struck out for ‘Darwinian’ and ‘whale’ replaced by ‘while’ time becoming space like it does on a clockface. - Sumana Roy