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Sumita Chakraborty

@notsumatra.bsky.social

1.7K followers 464 following 21 posts

www.sumitachakraborty.com • poet, scholar, general doer of things with words, faculty at the University of Virginia • wherever I am, I'm not Sumatra • opinions mine, including that nobody’s free until everybody’s free

Posts Replies Media

Sumita Chakraborty @notsumatra.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Thank you to Kaveh Akbar, Weije Wang, & Kevin Lozano for publishing this poem from my B-Sides of the Golden Record ms in @thenation.com * it's in the April print issue and online here www.thenation.com/article/cult...

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Sumita Chakraborty @notsumatra.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

made it! I’ll be talking in session 215 at 8:30 (Life after Life: Visualizing Life and Death Worlds), & especially excited to attend these 3 later today #mla2025

Shows three MLA panels: Poetry as Object of Literary Studies, Making Our Work Visible, and Witnessing War and Genocide

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Sumita Chakraborty @notsumatra.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

This is one of my favorite poems and it is in the talk I’m still trying to get to NOLA to give. The point isn’t me or a conference or the charms of now knowing where the nicest bathroom at DFW is. The point is Langston Hughes’s knife.

The poem “Tired” by Langston Hughes, which reads, “I am so tired of waiting, / Aren’t you, / For the world to become good / And beautiful and kind? / Let us take a knife / And cut the world in two— / And see what worms are eating / At the rind.”

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Sumita Chakraborty @notsumatra.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

“And the despicable world asks me: / All this … for what, and what of it?” — Ibrahim Nasrallah trans. Huda J. Fakhreddine from PALESTINIAN, worldpoetrybooks.com/books/palest...

Arabic text of the poem excerpt which is in English on the subsequent photograph.

“When my roof was suddenly blown off into the sky and with it a wall, a window, and my youngest, / I gathered myself in the G and the A and the Z and the A / I became GAZA. / A thousand warplanes circled and struck me. / I collapsed and collapsed again, and then rose with a scream. / I called out, but nothing came of it. // I lost faith and believed, lost faith and believed again, / and lost faith and believed and … / nothing came of it, / nothing. // And the despicable world asks me: / All this … for what, and what of it?”

Lonely Olive Tree by Silman Mansour, affixed to the frontispiece

The cover of this book—oranges, yellows, an olive tree. The title text and the author’s name are embossed.

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Sumita Chakraborty @notsumatra.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

well, okay, hi y’all, this image encompasses both my interests and my philosophy, good to see you here 💚

Image shows Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla and power forward Jayson Tatum, and there’s a quote from Mazzulla in response to whether he feels any pressure after last season: “We’re all gonna be dead soon”

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Sumita Chakraborty @notsumatra.bsky.social · 06/09/2023

Except, of course, for my nom de plume:

A screencap of a Wikipedia article for the brown thrasher, which is a species of bird

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Sumita Chakraborty @notsumatra.bsky.social · 06/09/2023

From now on I will only respond to my full, formal name:

A screencap of a Wikipedia article for the brown creeper, which is a species of bird

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