Prerna Bakshi
Writer | Poet | Social Scientist
About
Dr. Prerna Bakshi is the author of Burnt Rotis, With Love (Les Éditions du Zaporogue, Denmark, 2016), which was long-listed for the 2015 Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in the UK and cited as one of the '9 Poetry Collections That Will Change The Way You See The World' by Bustle Magazine in the US. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and her poetry has been widely published in numerous literary journals and magazines, most recently in Chiron Magazine, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Blue Heron Review, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Red Wedge Magazine, Peril magazine: Asian-Australian Arts & Culture and Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, as well as anthologized in several collections, including America Is Not The World by Pankhearst (2016) and A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault by Civil Coping Mechanisms (2017). In 2016, another one of her manuscripts was long-listed for the Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in the UK. Her political essays have been published in The Huffington Post, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Wire, The Friday Times, Countercurrents, Newslaundry, India Resists, Amar Ujala, and Deshbandhu, among others. Her work explores issues of class, gender, and identity. She holds a degree in Master of Arts by Research (Sociolinguistics) from the University of Sydney, a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Linguistics from Monash University, and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of New England, Australia.
Burnt rotis, with love
"If you think that political poetry is out-of-date, well, think again. Prerna Bakshi's first collection, "Burnt rotis, with love" is an amazing shout of freedom that will leave no one unaffected, and prove that yes, poetry can and will make a difference."
Praise for Burnt rotis, with love
“Burnt Rotis, With Love is an extraordinary work. It is both a clenched fist held up to patriarchy and the exploitation of human labor, and a lilting call for a renewed spirit of resistance and struggle, animated by a revolutionary love.”
Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, Chapman University, and author of Pedagogy of Insurrection.
"Prerna Bakshi's Burnt Rotis, With Love is a dreamer's book of poems: a dreamer who loves the world and so wants to change it, standing it on its head. The poet does not fight shy of partisanship and empathy with the suffering, the oppressed and the marginalized. A deep humanitarian impulse runs beneath these poems, defining their choice of themes as well as forms. This book is a scream of pain, anger and hope in a world fast succumbing to despair."
K. Satchidanandan, poet and critic, Sahitya Akademi Award Winner
"Prerna Bakshi’s debut volume of poetry captures the essential feminist experience of third world women today. It explores women’s experience, their multi-faceted ghettoization, redefines identities that have been solidified in patriarchal construction, and confronts the horrors of state based sexual violence. It also marks the passage of generations, and joyously celebrates the resistance. All power to you, Prerna."
Ilina Sen, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and author of Inside Chhattisgarh: A Political Memoir
"Prerna Bakshi is an electrifying poet of Indian heritage and global consciousness. She represents a new generation of social movement poets working in the tradition of Margaret Randall, Audre Lorde and Marge Piercy. Burnt Rotis, With Love blends rage, politics, desire and hope. May we look forward to many more years of her work."
Budd Hall, University of Victoria, Canada
"Prerna Bakshi's poetry collection, Burnt Rotis, With Love, is an unusual book. It is exciting to read work that deals with the gendered politics of language, and about a part of the world of which I know little. Women in so many different cultures come together these days demanding to be seen, heard, and taken into account. Bakshi's poems speak eloquently.”
Margaret Randall, author of Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression
"Prerna Bakshi is not only a poet, but an activist for democratic struggles of exploited peoples be they are workers, peasants, Indigenous Peoples, displaced people or women. She has not only participated in their actual struggles, she has created poetry depicting their lives and struggles as well. The poem – ‘The Fight for our Rivers, Mountains and Forests’ is depiction of most recent and ongoing Indigenous struggles against corporate greed. One feels happy reading Prerna Bakshi’s youthful and refreshing poems, which cover a wide variety of human situations with sensitivity. These poems are highly subversive of servile Indian middle class values and argue for new democratic values. These poems have a revolutionary spirit and focus on class struggles, they are not middle class romantic tales. The poems depict the hard fought struggles of workers, peasants, Indigenous Peoples and women.
This is a poetry which is most needed in contemporary India, and indeed in a world going through the most violent struggles and where the struggling masses face a state of oppression. A poem in pre-industrial period England changed the lives of workers there whose struggles forced the system to adopt the eight-hour working day. If a poem had that much power then, perhaps Prerna Bakshi’s poems will one day help create a better society. A society which she has herself expressed in a dream prose poem - ‘Another World’. The poems in this collection are not only pleasing in an aesthetic sense but also alert readers to their surrounding social reality, forcing them to take a side."
Prof. Chaman Lal, author of Understanding Bhagat Singh (an extract from the Foreword)
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