The publication of So Much Things To Say reminds fans that Calabash is the gathering place each year for some of the best poets writing today. This year is no exception. Sudeep Sen and Matthew Shenoda are just two of the eight poets who will be reading at Calabash this year at Treasure Beach where the tenth anniversary celebrations will take place this weekend.

“With Sen, one of the most gifted and acclaimed young poets in India, and Matthew Shenoda, an Egyptian-American poet, we have the perfect bashical writers-sophisticated, ambitious, committed and just plain good,” says festival programmer Kwame Dawes.

Sudeep Sen, who lives in New Delhi, India and Matthew Shenoda who is based in California, are visiting Jamaica for the first time. “Our audiences know poetry and enjoy sincere writers, so these two poets certainly be increasingly the fan base in Jamaica,” says festival producing director, Justine Henzell.

Matthew Shenoda will join Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchison and Bahamian poet Christian Campbell in a session titled “Men at Work” on Saturday afternoon, and Sudeep Sen will read with former US Poet Laureate, Billy Collins on Sunday afternoon.

Sudeep Sen is widely acknowledged as a leading poet of the younger generation. He read English Literature at the University of Delhi & as an Inlaks Scholar received an MS from the journalism school at Columbia University (New York). His awards, fellowships and residencies include: Hawthornden Fellowship (UK), Pushcart Prize nomination (USA), BreadLoaf (USA), Pleiades (Macedonia), NLPVF Dutch Foundation for Literature (Amsterdam), Ledig House (New York), and Sanskriti (New Delhi). He was international writer-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library (Edinburgh) & visiting scholar at Harvard University.

Sen’s dozen books include: Postmarked India: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Distracted Geographies, Prayer Flag, Rain, Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), and Blue Nude: Poems & Translations 1977-2012 (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Award) is forthcoming. His poetry and literary prose have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Financial Times, London Magazine, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Telegraph, Hindu, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast on BBC, CNN-IBN, NDTV & AIR. He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS and editor of Atlas

Question: What was your first poem ever about?

About a ‘Rose’ way back in the late 70s — not quite in the Romantic tradition — but more as a response to a particular act of defilement. My father was a keen gardener and in particular he loved growing and training roses of many varieties — but the poem was not about horticulture in any direct sense though. I remember the poem having aspects of both the spoken word rhythm and formalism in terms of structure and form — but that was over three decades ago.

Two years in the Himalayas-no contacts, one ipod, five albums, what are they?

Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Police/Sting, Bob Marley, Shakti

When was the last time you thought, “See, poetry is what we need”?

I think that all the time — it is the only way one can bring sanity and peace in this world, both individually and collectively — through mediation, prayer, song, comment, urging (all best done through various forms of poetry).

Do you write first drafts straight onto a computer or onto a typewriter, or long hand? Does it matter?

Long-hand, always. Only after the fourth or fifth draft do I transfer the poem onto the computer. I use the computer more as a convenient editing and storage device.

Ten words that come to mind when you hear Jamaica.

If I think of the Caribbean more generally, it has to be

Cricket (Sobers, Lara and the great era of world-dominating Test match teams from the islands),

Reggae (Marley, Burning Spears,),

Poets/writers (Walcott, Braithwaite, Naipaul, and others),

my East Indian “brothers/sisters”,

Tropical canvas (beach, palm tress, coconut, sunsets, rain),

Food,

Rum, but also

Colonial history,

Sugar plantations,

Jahagees, …