Full Description
Persaud enriches Caribbean poetry by bringing to it new dimensions of imagery and philosophical tradition from his Indian ancestry. The imagery of cobra and Kundalini from Tantric Yoga mesh with a political and personal engagement with both Guyana and more recently Canada. He draws on the vast repertory of stories and characters from the Puranas, the Ramayana and the Mahabarata as pertinently as other Caribbean poets have drawn on archetypes drawn from ancient Greek or Biblical sources. His passage from Guyana to Canada and contact with the wider South Asian diaspora both draws him towards a broader sense of 'Indianness' and leads him to reflect on the unique Indo-Guyaneseness of his formative years.
This is a meeting of a thoroughly modern sensibility with the riches of an ancient tradition. Persaud is a poet who, in the words of Howard Fergus in The Caribbean Writer, has to be taken seriously as an 'architect of the subconscious'.
Sasenarine Persaud was born in Guyana. He has published two novels, a collection of stories and four collections of poetry. He currently lives and works in the USA.
