Description
All discipline
a deception to hide the wildness, all symmetry
an excuse for keeping count.
Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You cements Meena Kandasamy as one of the most exciting, radical thinkers at work today. These poems chronicle wanting, art-making, and the practising of resistance and solidarity in the face of a hostile state. Here, the personal is political, and Kandasamy moves between sex, desire, family and wider societal issues of caste, the refugee crisis, and freedom of expression with grace and defiance. This is a bold, unforgettable collection by a poet who compels us to sit up and listen.
About the Author
Described by the Independent as a 'one-woman, agit-prop literary-political movement', Meena Kandasamy is a poet, writer, translator, anti-caste activist and academic based in India. Her extensive corpus includes two poetry collections, Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy (2010), as well as three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), When I Hit You (2017) and Exquisite Cadavers (2019).
Reviews
This impassioned, compelling collection moves between rhythmically rich evocations of friendship, motherhood, love and sex. and urgent political topics: caste prejudice, freedom of expression, racism and the oppression of women and LGBTQ+ people. In the title poem, addressing the arrests of two human-rights activists in India in 2015, we see the violence of the corrupt state revealed: "Tomorrow someone will arrest you. The day after that, you / will be considered a 'terrorist' for life ... Long Live Silence." Kandasamy's writing is fierce and direct in its criticism of this deadening, suffocating silence, and those in power who perpetuate it. These vital, beautiful poems burn with a radically illuminating rage. * Rebecca Tamas, Guardian *
Meena Kandasamy's lines of poetry cascade in an unstoppable poetic-surging into a rallying cry that denounces the injustices of caste and gender and right-wing state terror to reinvigorate those who "struggle & think & love together with THE POET". * Poetry Book Society *
Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You is an extraordinary exploration into a deep vulnerability and truth; Meena Kandasamy is an incredibly beautiful poet, prophetic, powerful and empowering. * Salena Godden, author of MRS DEATH MISSES DEATH *
Thank god for writing like this. For books like this. * Max Porter, author of Lanny on Exquisite Cadavers *
Slyly funny and profoundly thoughtful... a work of brilliance. * Financial Times on Exquisite Cadavers *
There is nothing Kandasamy can't do. * Zeba Talkhani, author of My Past is A Foreign Country *
A brilliant but brutal punch to the guts. * Monisha Rajesh, author of Around the World in 80 Trains, on When I Hit You *
Book Information
ISBN 9781838959029
Author Meena Kandasamy
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Atlantic Books
Publisher Atlantic Books
Weight(grams) 165g
Dimensions(mm) 10mm * 140mm * 215mm