Sharan Hunjan - Open Mouths

Rough Trade Books 2024 ISBN 9781914236402 Acqn 34326

Pb 15x21cm 72pp £10.99

In Open Mouths Sharan Hunjan presents a vision of a world simultaneously familiar and strikingly
strange. The quotidian, the domestic, the commonplace are interrogated and manipulated
through the poet's eye for detail, linguistic sense of play and restless imaginative and
philosophical impulses. The shortcomings of language, the gulf between words and meaning,
between experience and description, the space between translation, between places, between
generations-these are the problems with which Hunjan grapples.

Full of seemingly quiet, yet startlingly profound thought, razor-sharp wordplay, raw emotion and
dazzling image and phrase-making, Open Mouths marks the emergence of another stellar talent
from the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE stable.

orders@artdata.co.uk

www.artdata.co.uk
Will Burns, editor said: 'Sharan is a hugely exciting talent and we're all
chuffed here at RTB to have the opportunity to work with her again after
doing so on the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE publication, of which her
thoughtful, quietly intelligent and linguistically curious poems were such
an important part. In her debut full-length collection she has continued
down that same path, only with even more startling results. The quotidian
is never what it seems in this book -the knockabout everyday life of
parenthood, of work, of simply being in the world all transform in front of
the reader through Sharan's deft and yet disarmingly direct voice.'

Sharan Hunjansaid: 'The metaphor of an open mouth first struck me during

a frozen video call during lockdown. Then from watching my daughter
trying to form words, through the mess and struggle of teaching her to eat.
It is crying, screaming, kissing, licking, raging and pure joy. When Will
Burns, an editor with the sharpest eye from the cutting-edge Rough Trade
Books, where I'm beyond pleased that my debut collection has a home,
then asked, what if the sky were a mouth, my poems tried to answer in
infinite ways.'

Praise for 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE:

'Explosive, sensual, inventive, painful and playful. After reading I felt more
myself again and somehow different-braver.' - OLIVIA SUDJIC

'Darkly funny. Achingly familiar. Devouring. I loved it.' - AVNI DOSHI

'Some of the most exciting, dynamic, heart-breaking, and completely

fucking alive writing I've read this year.' - NIVEN GOVINDEN

Sharan Hunjanis a poet and teacher from London. She is part of the literary
collective 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE, whose first collaborative book
was published by FEM Press, and has had work published in the poetry
anthology Slam! You're Gonna Wanna Hear This (Pan MacMillan 2020). She
published her pamphlet, 'Hatch', as part of the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO
WRITE publication with Rough Trade Books in 2020. With 4 BROWN GIRLS
WHO WRITE she has performed at Stoke Newington Literary Festival,
Edinburgh Fringe, British Library and Tate and appeared in British Vogue.
Open Mouths is her debut full-length collection.

orders@artdata.co.uk

www.artdata.co.uk