Mohan Rana’s vivid and accessible poems probe profound philosophical questions through the simple, everyday imagery of stars, birds, rain and shirts. These deceptively understated, haunting poems, have been beautifully rendered into English by the distinguished Irish poet, Bernard O’Donoghue, working closely with the translator, Lucy Rosenstein and Mohan himself.’

Mohan Rana, who was born in Delhi in 1964, graduated in Humanities from Delhi University. He has published six poetry collections in Hindi, most recently Dhoop Ke Andhere Mein (In the Darkness of the Sun, 2008). Some of his poems were included in Modern Poetry in Translation special issue no 17, ‘Mother Tongues’. A bilingual collection With Eyes Closed (Suryastra; Delhi), with translations by Lucy Rosenstein, was published in 2008. Mohan Rana now lives in Bath.

Bernard O’Donoghue was born in Cullen, Co Cork in 1945. One of the outstanding Irish poets of his generation, Bernard has published five volumes of poetry of which the most recent is Outliving (Chatto 2003); his collection, Gunpowder, won the Whitbread Poetry Prize in 1995; and his Selected Poems was published by Faber in 2008.

Download this Recording for Free

Subscribe to this Podcast on iTunes

Buy an introduction to Mohan Rana’s poetry