09/10/2026
APWT member Vinita Agrawal (Vinita Agrawal) has a new anthology out. War, Violence & Peace, co-edited by Sukrita Paul Kumar and Vinita Agrawal, was published by Penprints in August.
In the relentless machinery of war, where history is written in blood and the grand narratives of nations often drown out the cries of the individual, the poet stands as a solitary witness. But, this witness is one who is compelled to tell the truth of the moment with the powerful tool of words that give rise to pregnant silences and usher sensitivity and compassion to combat the inhumanity of war.
This anthology is not a chronicle of battlefields or a treatise on political strategy; it is a collection of echoes from the human heart caught in the brutal vice of conflict. Within these pages, you will find no easy answers, no triumphant fanfares, only the raw, unflinching search for meaning amidst shrapnel and silence.
For poetry, in its most essential form, is the language of the soul when prose fails, a desperate attempt to articulate the inarticulable horrors of violence and the fragile, aching hope for peace that persists despite it all. The voices gathered here, grapple with the same profound questions: How does one bear witness to atrocity? Can beauty bloom from such devastation? And what does it truly mean to be human when humanity seems lost?
