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Atlas, at last!

Atlas, a `bookzine' of poetry, art, fiction and non-fiction, is on the stands

PHOTO: ANU PUSHKARNA

remarksREADY WITH MORE Sudeep Sen, editor of Atlas, launched recently in New Delhi

The name evokes resonance. And so perhaps it should, as the title of a magazine devoted to poetry and other literary and visual arts. An atlas presents pictures of the world. And poet Sudeep Sen's Atlas, the magazine launched at the British Council in New Delhi this past Friday, does the same, except that it negotiates "the terrain and texture of language."

But Atlas was also the mighty mountain whose duty, according to Greek mythology, was to hold up the sky. A heavy burden, an onerous responsibility. Almost as onerous as Sen's, now that he has put together the first volume after working on it for nearly four years. Now he has to repeat the feat on a bi-annual basis. However, he assures us, material for the next few editions is already with him.

His aim was to produce a world-class magazine that showcased the work of Indian writers as well as those of other countries. Atlas, a collaboration between Sen's Aark Arts and Crossword, has an imposing board of contributing editors, including Shashi Tharoor, Peter Bradshaw, Kwame Dawes, Girish Karnad, John Hartley Williams and others. "What gives me pleasure is the kind of people on the editorial board," remarks Sen. "When they are vetting, it's obviously going to be very high quality."

Contributions

The contributions include poetry, fiction and non-fiction. There are excerpts from novels, like Peter Bradshaw's "Lucky Baby Jesus", Tom Alter's "The Longest Race" and Sharmishtha Mohanty's "New Life". There is also an extract from a novel in progress by Amal Chatterjee. A mix of old and new writing, the collection naturally contains lots of poetry. There is Tagore, translated by Radha Chakravarty. There is the contemporary poet Keki N. Daruwalla. And there is Arundhati Subramaniam, to name three very different writers. Sen has refrained from including his own poetry though. He reserves his expertise for the review section, "Editor's Choice". Significantly, the works are not only originally in English but include translations from Indian and foreign languages. Sen points out that he did not want the magazine to be "a ghetto thing" and was therefore keen to avoid presenting only Indian writers. Then there are drawings by Abdus Shakoor and photographic portraits by Rafeeq Ellias.

It is not quite fair to describe Atlas as a magazine, though, since Sen, its chief editor, has designed it as a `bookzine', one that looks like a book but behaves like a magazine. And priced at Rs.295, it seems to be a steal of a collector's item.

ANJANA RAJAN

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