Dear Reader

If you enjoyed a translation or two or ten, please considering showing your appreciation in one or all of the following ways. Thank you.

1. By leaving a comment to indicate you were here. Feel free to offer feedback, both complimentary and critical. I speak from experience when I say that nothing encourages a writer as much as having their audience engage with their work.

2. By signing up to “follow” this website. Please note that you do not need to have a blog account to do so. You can sign up using your email address. I assure you that you will not receive any spam.

3. By following the (official) Instagram account of this website. www.instagram.com/darabendreinenglish

Nota bene:

When I began this website more than for years ago, I deliberately chose not to offer the original Kannada text of the poem. My decision may have had to do with the attitude of Da Ra Bendre’s son, Dr. Vamana Bendre, towards what he considered the “correct” distribution of his father’s poetry as well as a natural inclination not to violate copyright. Encouraging the purchase of Bendre’s poetry collections – however shoddily printed they might have been – was another factor.

Be that as it may, I compensated for not publishing the original poem by offering an audio recording (as song or recitation) of the poem. So far, I have seen no reason to change this policy of mine. (While a few people have asked for the text of the original’s lyrics, the visiting public has by and large seemed content with the audio recordings.)

Another resolution I made then was to publish only full translations. In effect, my decision limited what I could publish: for instance, I would not be able to publish a (translatable) stanza of an otherwise untranslatable poem. While I have abided by my decision, I did choose the month of January, 2020, to create a series of translated excerpts (to share on Facebook) from a number of different poems by Bendre. Many of these excerpts came from poems simply beyond the scope of any sort of “full” translation or transcreation. With this in mind, I have relaxed my own “rules” to accommodate those excerpts on this blog-website. You can find them here.

However, there is so much Bendre wrote (including prose) that deserves a larger audience through translation. The instagram page offers me the opportunity to create such an audience. I hope you’ll be a part of it and join me there to enjoy lots more of the magic that poured from Bendre’s pen!