Bloom Again: A translation of Dr Parwati Tirkey’s Sahitya Akademi Award Winning Book by Dr Pragya Shukla

Bibliographic Details

• Publisher: ‎ Rupkatha Books (Imprint), Aesthetix Media Services (OPC) Private Limited; First edition (21 September 2025), under Rupkatha Translation Project 2025
• Language: ‎ English
• Ebook: ‎ 154 pages
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-81-975130-9-1
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.21659/rtp02
• PDF Link: Free Access
• License: CCNC
• Dimensions: ‎ 17.6 cm x 25 cm
• Country of Origin: ‎ India

About the Book

True poetry leaves a permanent intellectual impact on the mind of a dedicated reader. This is true about the first collection of poems by Dr Parwati Tirkey, Phir Ugna (2023), published by Rajkamal Prakashan, which has earned her the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2025. She has emerged as one of the evocative poetic voices in Hindi from the Indigenous communities of Jharkhand. Born on 16 January 1994 in Gumla district, Jharkhand, Parvati Tirkey received early education at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Gumla. She pursued graduation and post-graduation in Hindi literature at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, where she later earned a PhD from the Hindi Department on the topic “Kudukh Adivasi Songs: Life Raga and Life Struggle in Hindi.” During her time at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), she remained deeply connected to her tribal culture, supported by peers who upheld their traditions, while observing some of them becoming detached from their roots. She ascribes this disconnection to several reasons: the urban upbringing, the erosion of village structures, and the lack of access to Indigenous knowledge systems. So, she saw many being swept into a competitive societal race without ever experiencing the depth of tribal life. Her university years, however, deepened her connection to village life and her tribal identity. She described village life as embodying love, warmth, empathy, and a sense of egalitarianism that stood in contrast to hierarchical norms. For Tirkey, literature was deeply ingrained in her family and the tribal community: her parents have always been deeply connected to their communal literary traditions, where ancestral literature is preserved through performance.

Tirkey’s collection draws inspiration from the rhythms of the forest, the sounds of birds and rivers, the wisdom of ancestors, and a living cosmology. Writing in a voice that is both intimate and expansive, her poetry invites readers to witness the sacred in everyday affairs and to renegotiate relationships with the land, its members, and the invisible threads of heritage. What sets Tirkey apart is her ability to translate Indigenous cosmology into contemporary poetic form without losing its spirit. She builds her art on a vision that explores contemporary times through the lens of ecological crisis and cultural amnesia.

Translating such a textured and spiritually resonant body of work is no small feat, and Dr Pragya Shukla has undertaken this task with both reverence and rigour. For Dr Shukla, the act of translation as a linguistic endeavour becomes a voyage into the core of an Indigenous worldview. She exerted every effort to maintain the original rhythm and breath of the poems so that readers might feel the heartbeat of the land, hear the voices of its people, and experience the sacred textures of a culture that is often overlooked yet profoundly alive.