At the end of each year, at the beginning of each, you hope the coming year would be so much better than the earlier one. So often, you are disappointed.

It is poetry we turn to when you are out of sorts, when your world falls apart, when you feel lonely and abandoned, when you feel the crowd, when you are bombarded with images and news of the planet brutalised and humanity becomes a curse word…. Especially the last.

2016 was another year of madness.

2016 was a year of poetry, a year for poetry.

While I asked some favourite poets to submit poems to help us confront our world, I have found so many new poets who make me think if all else goes downhill, we will still have poetry.

There are many favourite poets who are not part of this collection, some of whom I consider among the best. Some didn’t respond, some I didn’t contact. The future was getting me down as much as the present, perhaps more than the present, definitely more than the past. This is the anthology then to our future, some of our future poets, some of the people we will turn to, not just to cope with the times, but also perhaps to understand, to overcome.

Best wishes for a better world, best wishes for a happy 2017…

GJV Prasad