Carolyn Brown’s first translations from Bengali were of poems by Mohammad Rafiq, a participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1993, the year she began working as an editor of translations of the work of writers from around the world. She was inspired by his poetry to learn Bengali and to translate more widely. Her translations of Bengali poetry have appeared in such journals as Modern Poetry in Translation, The Iowa Review, Missouri Review, and Zoland Poetry. Additional translations of poems by Mohammad Rafiq appear in the May 2005 issue of 91st Meridian, the online journal of the International Writing Program, and can also be found in Parabaas: The Complete Bengali Webzine. In 2001, Another Shore, a volume of poems by Amiya Chakravarty, translated by Carolyn Brown and Sarat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, was published by the Sahitya Akademi in Kolkata.
Mohammad Rafiq is not mentioned as frequently as some of his peers in literary discussions or addas. But critics and poets alike regard him as one of our best poets who, in a career spanning more than five decades, has kept carving for himself newer paths. Sanatkumar Saha, a renowned critic, has said Rafiq continues to grow as a poet even in his 70s, and stunningly so, as he is rarely found to have repeated himself.
