I Will Not Go

Playful and celebratory, yet also mourning the loss of language, this poetry anthology revives the fading tradition of Caribbean Hindustani songs

In a new groundbreaking anthology, award-winning poet, memoirist and translator Rajiv Mohabir (born 1981) engages with Indo-Caribbean language and culture, this time by inviting 17 diasporic writers to experiment with their own personal interpretations of two famous Chutney songs. Chutney music is a syncretic, Caribbean music born out of North Indian tunes and African beats. Caribbean Hindustani songs and poems, the basis for Chutney music, are no longer spoken with the frequency that they were two generations ago. To this end, Mohabir asked some of the most exciting Caribbean writers and poets working today to “translate” two popular Chutney songs. A Caribbean diasporic response in the manner of Eliot Weinberger’s Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, this book expands on the idea of that translation classic with reimaginings, reinterpretations and compelling treatises on Chutney music. I Will Not Go collects poetry inherited by the descendants of indenture and, through its innovative reimagining, celebrates the poetry of survival.

Contributors include: Anita Baksh, Divya Persaud, Eddie Bruce-Jones, Miranda Rachel Deebrah, Will Depoo, Anu Lakhan, Simone Devi Jhingoor, Natasha Ramoutar and more.