You Cannot Turn Away

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Tamil by Chelva Kanaganayakam. This book provides, for the first time, a bilingual edition of forty poems by R Cheran. Written over a period of three decades, the poems cover a range of experiences, including love, war, despair, hope, and diaspora. Cheran is considered one of the finest contemporary poets in Tamil, and his poetry is read widely in North America, Europe, and South Asia. Both modernist and unfailingly lyrical, his work is a remarkable blend of tradition and innovation.

R Cheran is currently an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology at the University of Windsor. His publications include History and Imagination: Tamil Culture in the Global Context (2007), New Demarcations: Essays in Tamil Studies (2009), Pathways of Dissent: Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka (2010), and Empowering Diasporas: Dynamics of Post War Tamil Transnational Politics (2011). Chelva Kanaganayakam is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto and is also the Director for the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. His major publications include Moveable Margins: The Shifting Spaces of Canadian Literature (2005), Counterrealism and Indo Anglian Fiction (2002), Lutesong and Lament: Tamil Writing from Sri Lanka (2001), Dark Antonyms and Paradise: The Poetry of Rienzi Crusz (1997), Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and Their World (1995), and Structures of Negation: The Writings of Zulfikar Ghose (1993).