Burning Roses in My Garden

Have I not, having kept a man for years, learnt that it’s/ like raising a snake?/ So many animals on this earth, why keep a man of all things?’ writes one of the world’s most celebrated writers, Taslima Nasrin, in her first-ever comprehensive collection of poetry translated from the original Bangla into English.

The poems get to the heart of being the other in exile, justifying one’s place in a terrifying world. They praise the comfort and critique the cruelty of a loved one. In these are loneliness, sorrow, and at times, exaltation.

Relying almost entirely upon the free verse form, these poems carry a diction which is at once both gentle and fierce, revealing the experiences of one woman while defining the existence of so many generations of women throughout time, and around the world.

Living in exile, Taslima Nasrin is a writer and a secular humanist who has been subjected to forced banishment and multiple fatwas. Her writings have been deemed controversial time and again because of their unflinching preoccupation with gender, community and identity. Her widely celebrated books include Lajja, Split: A Life, My Girlhood, Exile and French Lover and others.

Jesse Waters is director, Bowers Writers House, Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania. His poetry as well as fiction and non-fiction work have been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and have appeared nationally and internationally in such journals as 88, The Adirondack Review, Coal Hill Review, The Cortland Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Review, River Styx, Slide, Story Quarterly, Southeast Review, Sycamore Review. His books include Human Resources as well as So Let Me Get This Straight.