Poor Sujata Bhatt was in the frustrating ping-pong state probably all young writers have to go through: sending out a book-length unsolicited manuscript of their poems to publishers – only to see it bouncing back to where it came from. At first, naturally, she tried publishing houses in the USA where she had lived for most of her young life after her family had emigrated from India. After graduating in 1986 from the far-famed Creative Writing Program in Iowa City where we had met and fallen in love two years earlier when I was a fellow in Paul Engle’s International Writing Program, Sujata had come to visit me in Bremen, Germany. Now her focus was on publishers and magazines in Europe, mailing out the manuscript or selections from it to Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. In those pre-internet days that involved far more physical activities than today’s one-click email submissions. Print out the script, get an envelope, or rather two, one self-addressed with an international reply coupon attached, write a cover letter, walk over to the post office, buy stamps, put it all into the box and hope for the best. Unforgotten the pain it caused, when instead of the letter of acceptance, the manuscript showed up again, accompanied by a more or less polite pre-fab statement of rejection, if the publishers proved to be courteous enough. (But then again who wants to read it anyways. I don’t know a single writer who has felt encouraged by the insult of having his or her manuscript refused….)

This ...