Atlantic to publish radical poetry collection by Meena Kandasamy

Joanna Lee, Editor at Atlantic Books, has acquired World English rights, excl. Indian subcontinent, in Meena Kandasamy’s new poetry collection, Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You, from David Godwin at David Godwin Associates. Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You will be published as a flapped paperback in May 2023.

Described by the Independent as a ‘one-woman, agit-prop literary-political movement’, Meena Kandasamy is a poet, writer, translator, anti-caste activist and academic based in India. Her extensive corpus includes two poetry collections, Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy (2010), as well as three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), When I Hit You (2017) and Exquisite Cadavers (2019).

Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You cements Meena Kandasamy as one of the most exciting, radical thinkers at work today. These poems chronicle wanting, art-making, and the practising of resistance and solidarity in the face of a hostile state. Here, the personal is political, and Kandasamy moves between sex, desire, family and wider societal issues of caste, the refugee crisis, and freedom of expression with grace and defiance. This is a bold, unforgettable collection by a poet who compels us to sit up and listen.

Meena Kandasamy says,

‘I am overcome with happiness and excitement that Atlantic Books is publishing my latest book of poetry. Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You is a very special collection for me. I started my career as a poet, but the overwhelming attention from my debut collection, Ms Militancy meant I took to writing fiction as a way to ground myself, and to explore and commit to my political work in a different art form. As the years passed, and as India slipped into the hands of a tyrannous right-wing regime, I turned once again to poetry – as a response to the times, as a statement against the oppression, as a rallying cry. What is collected here are the love poems and the political poems written in these tumultuous times.

Over the last decade, the UK audience has only read my work as a novelist, whereas in India, it is my radical poetry which readers are most familiar with. I feel extremely special that I will be able to connect with people in the UK through my work as a poet as well. I am thankful to Atlantic who have championed my work across all genres, and I’m proud to be published by them once again.’

Joanna Lee, Editor, says,

‘Meena is already widely celebrated as a poet in India, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to bring this important facet of her incredibly impressive body of work to Atlantic. This is a vital collection, full of hope and love and rage, and Meena is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious, blazing. political writers of our time. I can’t wait to introduce her poetry to readers over here, and to see it garner all the acclaim that it so richly deserves.’