Basmati Brown

Written mainly during the poet’s travels through India, Basmati Brown represents a spiritual and social journey through Punjabi cultural roots while retaining a clear connection to a home in British Columbia. Phinder Dulai’s poems have the ability to seduce with liquid words, caressing the reader with Punjabi rhythm and speech pattern in harmony with English voice. Basmati Brown is beautifully illustrated with evocative black-and-white photographs from both India and Canada. Dulai is a poet to watch, receiving high praise from talented Canadian writers such as Michael Turner and George Bowering. With just his second book of poetry, Dulai is already carving a name for himself in the Canadian literary scene.

AUTHOR

Phinder Dulai

Phinder Dulai has given readings and talks on Canadian literature, with an emphasis on migrant voices, for schools, colleges and universities both in and outside of Canada. He has worked in print journalism in Vancouver’s South Asian media and as an associate producer for Gabereau Live. His poetry has been published in Ankur, Rungh, The Canadian Ethnic Studies Review, and the Toronto South Asian Review. Excerpts of his poetry have been featured in the Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail.

He published his first book of poetry, Ragas from the Periphery, in 1995. Basmati Brown was published by Nightwood in 2000. He currently works for the BC government and lives in Burnaby with his wife and two daughters.

Reviews

I’ve travelled this book very closely — from the “then-and-now” of India and the West, via anger and compassion, through caste and kin and state — all the while convinced that I am in the hands of a skilled writer/musician, one whose plausible geometry speaks to the contemporary experience that is being of two (or more) places at once.–Michael Turner
Here is a real made book … performance poetry, rich nouns, a montage of material for a world you probably haven’t seen yet. With puns and jabs, Dulai memorializes his heritage — and wrestles it to the ground. –George Bowering