Exile is Not a Foreign Word

“I’m gratified, after reading Pramila Venkateswaran’s Exile is Not a Foreign Word, to praise and charge her for the poet she’s been and surely will continue to be.”
William Heyen, author of Nature: Selected & New Poems, 1970-2020

“Throughout these poems of deep care and witness, Venkateswaran affirms the resiliency of community despite the boundaries that separate us.”
Christine Kitano, author of Sky Country

“Pramila’s poetry invites us to listen and keep listening.”
Seni Seneviratne, author of Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin

“Pramila Venkateswaran’s emotionally charged poems are an urgent call to embrace our common humanity.”
Bessy Reyna, author of The Battlefield of Your Body

“Pramila Venkateswaran’s book of poems Exile is not a Foreign Word is suggestive of how ‘exile’ is not ominous, if it accommodates the idea of ‘homing’.”
Sukrita Paul Kumar, editor of Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English

“Venkateswaran’s poetry is the warning, courageous, and wise voice that rises above the chaos: we, as readers, are blessed to hear it, to be reminded not only of the experience, but also the innocence.”
Carmen Bugan, George Orwell Prize Fellow & author of Time Being

“An erudite voice, Venkateswaran offers a peace manifesto.”
Shadab Zeest Hashmi, author of Ghazal Cosmopolitan

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Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15), is the author of Thirtha (Yuganta, 2002), Behind Dark Waters (Plain View, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line, 2011), Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich, 2015), Slow Ripening (Local Gems, 2016), The Singer of Alleppey (Shanti Arts, 2018), and more recently, We Are Not a Museum (Finishing Line, 2022), which won the New York Book Festival Award. She has performed her poetry internationally, has authored numerous essays on poetics, and was the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Long Island Poet of the Year. Her critical essays on Dalit poetry appear in journals such as The Journal of International Women’s Studies, and her forthcoming book is Tamil Dalit Feminist Poetics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024). She leads writing workshops at many writing and holistic health organizations. She is the co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Collective, and teaches at SUNY Nassau.