Where The Creature Is, There Is The Creator: Poems By Akho And Vasto
- ISBN: 9789363367821
- Author: Arundhati Subramaniam
- Publisher: Speaking Tiber
- Pages: 108
- Format: Paperback
Book Description
Akho, the Gujarati poet-saint of the seventeenth century, and Vasto Vishwambhar, whose dates are less certain, stand among the great voices of India’s nirguna bhakti tradition. Akho, a goldsmith by profession, was known for his chhappas—pithy, sharp-edged verses that cut through spiritual pretension to reveal lived truths. Vasto, his successor in spirit, celebrated the ecstatic union of the human and the divine in a voice at once sensual and transcendental.
This remarkable volume brings together Gieve Patel’s translations of Akho and Vasto, presented not only in their final English form but also through the earlier drafts and variations that reveal Patel’s evolving engagement with their verse. The result is both a work of translation and a record of a translator’s inner dialogue. It is a testament to the patience and humility that true transcreation demands.
With Patel’s passing, the book stands as a double homage: to Akho and Vasto, whose wisdom still speaks across languages and centuries, and to Gieve Patel himself—poet, painter and doctor—whose last labour of love illuminates the space between devotion and art.
About the Author
Gieve Patel (1940–2023) was a well-known poet, painter and playwright. He published three books of poetry: Poems (Nissim Ezekiel, Bombay, 1966); How Do You Withstand, Body (Clearing House, 1976); Mirrored, Mirroring (Oxford University Press, Madras, 1991). His poems have been included in anthologies in India and in other countries, and his Collected Poems was published in 2018 by Poetrywala.
He wrote three plays which were performed in Mumbai and in other Indian cities: Princes (1970, which won a Sultan Padamsee Playwrighting Award; produced by Theatre Group), Savaksa (1982), and Mister Behram (1988). Mister Behram and Other Plays was published by Seagull Books in 2007.
He conducted an annual poetry workshop for school students at Rishi Valley School (KFI), Andhra Pradesh for more than two decades. Poetry with Young People (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 2007) is an anthology of poems written by his students, in the course of the workshop.
He was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at the Wilson Center, Washington, DC in 1984. He was also awarded the Rockefeller Fellowship at the University of Chicago, in 1992, and was the C.R. Parekh writer-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania in 2003.
His paintings are in public and private collections in India and in other countries, including The Kiran Nadar Museum of Modern Art and The National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal; The Nicholson Collection at The Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai; The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, USA.
Gieve also worked as a medical practitioner in rural and urban India.
Arundhathi Subramaniam is the author of fifteen books of poetry and prose. As poet, her most recent book is The Gallery of Upside Down Women. As anthologist, her recent work is a landmark anthology of Indian female mystic poetry, Wild Women. Her prose works include the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life, and a book of contemporary women on spiritual journeys, Women Who Wear Only Themselves. She was founder-editor of the India Domain of the Poetry International Web, an online journal that grew over
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