Contemporary Tamil poet Perundevi’s distinctive body of poetry and antipoetry is now available to English-language readers in When You Whirl Round and Round, a collection translated by N. Kalyan Raman. The volume brings together poems selected from eight of Perundevi’s collections published in Tamil over the past two decades.
The collection moves away from conventional ideas of what poetry should look or sound like. Perundevi’s poems draw freely from everyday life, bringing together humans, animals, birds, fish and insects with objects and technologies such as smartphones, drones, luggage trolleys, wine glasses and flowerpots. Her writing uses humour, irony, colloquial speech, tonal shifts and the absurd to explore situations and emotions that can often be difficult to articulate.
At the heart of the collection is Perundevi’s distinctive practice of antipoetry, through which she challenges established literary conventions and expands the boundaries of what can enter a poem. Her poems move between the personal and the political, the ordinary and the philosophical, while engaging with contemporary urban life, technology, media and changing ideas of identity.
A recurring feature of her work is the refusal to place human experience at the centre of the poetic universe. Living and non-living things share the same space, often interacting in unexpected ways. A smartphone or a flowerpot can occupy the same poetic field as a person, bird or insect. This approach allows Perundevi to examine everyday experiences from unusual angles, often combining sharp observation with an irreverent sense of humour.
Perundevi describes writing as an immediate act rather than an attempt to secure a permanent place in literary history. For her, the poet recedes as the ‘I’ becomes something else, allowing language to open up possibilities that ordinary life may not offer.
The English edition also represents an important milestone for N. Kalyan Raman, one of the established translators of contemporary Tamil literature. Raman has spent more than 25 years translating Tamil fiction into English and has worked on books by writers including Ashokamitran, Poomani, Devibharathi, Perumal Murugan, Vaasanthi and Salma. Earlier in 2026, he also translated the memoir of freedom fighter T.S.S. Rajan. When You Whirl Round and Round is his first book-length translation of poetry.
Raman says what drew him to Perundevi’s work was her effort to bring poetry closer to the real world through language and imagination, along with her refusal to be restricted by convention. Translating the poems, he says, required him to be inventive and create a new expression that could find its own place in English.
The translation has received praise from several writers and poets. Arundhathi Subramaniam describes Perundevi as a “riveting voice”, while Akhil Katyal calls the translation “sharp and tensile”. Tejaswini Niranjana highlights the poems’ anti-serious, irreverent and playful character, while Pratik Kanjilal describes the collection as an important body of contemporary Tamil poetry and antipoetry.
Paromita Vohra describes the poems as “sexy, brainy, unrelenting”, while Mani Rao calls the book a significant collection of contemporary Tamil poetry. Translator and scholar Buku Sarkar praises Raman’s contribution to making Tamil literature accessible to readers beyond its linguistic boundaries.
Perundevi’s literary work extends beyond poetry to fiction, translation, literary criticism and academic scholarship. She published her first poetry collection, Tiyuraittukkam, in 1998 and has since published nine more volumes, with her most recent collection appearing in 2022. Her poetry is particularly noted for its use of everyday speech, humour, irony and the absurd to examine the shifting nature of contemporary life.
With When You Whirl Round and Round, Perundevi’s unconventional poetic voice enters a wider linguistic space, while Raman’s translation attempts to carry across the wit, irony and unpredictability of the original Tamil. The collection offers English readers an opportunity to encounter a contemporary Tamil poetic voice that deliberately refuses to remain within familiar literary boundaries.
