2025年9月——新書上架

About Aerial Roots

Aerial Roots is a poetry collection that meditates on the liminal space of displacement and settlement, arrivals and departures, uprootedness, and assimilation. It is between these hybrid shifts of time and place, of bilocation, that diasporic writers dwell for most of their lives. 

Visualising the ongoing narratives as akin to the banyan tree and its allegorical roots, the poems revisit the vast canvas of memory, places, and lived experiences. This collection negotiates and interrogates the complex issues of identity, ethnicity, belonging, heritage, and multiple homes to know where and what home is. 

About Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal

Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal is an Indian-Singaporean poet and author of two poetry collections. Her work has appeared in the Practice Research & Tangential Activities (PR&TA) Journal, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Best Asian Poetry, The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, Trivium, Little Things, to let the light in, Anima Methodi, and elsewhere. 

Poems from her previous collection Between Sips of Masala Chai (Kitaab International, 2019) have been selected for secondary school curriculum in Singapore. Her poem, ‘Hymn of Hope’, written during the pandemic for the Homeward project, was performed by the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic Orchestra. Some of her poems have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese Ink-Art. 

Her poems have been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize and awarded second place in The Letter Review Prize, 2022. Her third collection, Aerial Roots, was awarded The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books, 2024. She has read poetry at the Singapore Writers Festival, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai, Poetry on the Move, Canberra, The RevTen Radio, USA, and the Festival of Friendship (Revolution of Tenderness, USA).

Shilpa has adjudicated several poetry competitions including the National Poetry Competition, the CLASS Poetry Competition, the National Poetry Recitation Competition, and the Write and Burn Spoken Word Competition. Shilpa serves on the organising committee of Poetry Festival Singapore as a poet and literary organiser.

Born and raised in India, Shilpa completed her Master's in Computer Management (MCM) from Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Symbiosis University, Pune. She worked in a leading IT services company before relocating to Singapore in 2001. She has recently completed her second Master's, M.A. (Arts) from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Shilpa resides in Singapore with her family.
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Recommendations/Blurbs

These poems take us to the minutiae of the author’s beloved landscapes, familiar haunts and remembered neighbourhoods, but a new, rich tapestry of sights and sounds; of ethnic variety and riches. This is food for the soul; part of a significant journey of discovery, recall and recovery, a traveller’s recognition of how nature’s beneficence is a palpable blessing no matter where one is in the world.

 — Anne Lee Tzu Pheng

Tender. Present. Generous. Dignified. Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal’s Aerial Roots is a deeply contemplative collection, intelligent and lustrous in its surfacing of rich feeling and authenticity. Perambulating around the banyan tree are poems laced in heavy symbolism. Threaded through are astonishingly beautiful images and sounds. The confessional moments meander their way confidently through verse, from the ghazal and haibun to prose poem. One becomes witness to a fondness—of memory, of nostalgia. Wait for the beautiful epiphanies, even as time and space remain suspended in this alluring lyric imagination. One encounters a poetry that bravely looks at ideas of identity, border crossings, diaspora, heritage, tradition, community, family, and what it means to belong. Indeed, this is a welcome homecoming for the author, and what a grand tour of a life’s journeying it has been. Sublime. Remarkable. Simply magnificent.

— Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
Winner of the Singapore Literature Prize

Shilpa's poetry traces how shifting light, from "coppered dawn" to "a sundown mist [descending] on the ghats," illuminates the tender narrative of a family in transition. The play between natural radiance and urban gleam becomes an objective correlative for the immigrant clan's own metamorphosis. Each poem distills the complex emotions of leaving and arriving, of roots seeking new soil while branches reach toward changed skies.

—Eric Tinsay Valles, poet, editor and educator

Shilpa's is a voice that is at once intelligent and humane. Her work is dynamic and beautifully paced—a culturally rich and sensually stimulating experience that is, quite simply, a joy to read.

— Kita Das, Ol James
The Letter Review

Shilpa has beautifully meshed the world she grew up in and with the world she currently calls home. She draws parallels between her childhood by recalling memories of Little India and her Amma, and finds joy in how technology keeps the family together internationally. This collection of poems invites the reader into her world of duality, through her thoughtfully crafted words.

— Latha
Writer

Through richly evocative language and a keen eye for botanical metaphors, Shilpa embarks on a poignant exploration of movement and displacement, love and belonging, and the liminal spaces between migration and settlement. Buttressed by her transnational sensibilities, the personal and the universal entwine in her poetry, serving as a living, breathing testament to the intricate connections between place, identity, and the human experience. Like seeds that grow into mighty banyan trees, Shilpa's poems weave a tapestry of interwoven perspectives, akin to a reticulated network of aerial roots—one which branches out into a forest of reflection and imagination that takes root in the reader's mind.

— Ow Yeong Wai Kit
Educator and Poet  

These poems are lush with images and symbols from the two countries/cultures Shilpa deftly inhabits, her original home in India and the new in Singapore where she now lives. The diction reflects this reality,  the English enriched with untranslatable words from the mother country and allusions ( people, places, birds, trees etc), pointing to a restless, assimilative mind journeying to seek identities, roots, and loops in her rich past and present.
 
A cornucopia of poetry.

— Robert Yeo
 Poet and Playwright

Aerial Roots is a heartfelt homage to memories of the poet’s time spent in India, her country of origin. Set under the metaphoric, awning leitmotif of the banyan tree, Thapliyal’s poems offer the reader a universe with hidden windows that open unto an “undergrowth of decades”. One unlocks new meanings every time one enters her work. The poems speak of dislocation, migration, identity or the loss of it, and of the untethered state of our being, while also being contained within exquisite, precise language. The poet has a remarkable ability to draw connections between the personal and the cosmic, the present and the past, longing and reality. Her work is tender, incisive, clear-sighted and deeply intimate, replete with “stains and spills of plump memories”. Her poetry stuns us, wounds us, keeps us warm, while being unapologetically her own. The poems display amazing manoeuvring of the terrain of the page and the mind - a gentle flow, akin to a river’s graceful swirl on its journey. The memories shared with us are mesmerising and quintessentially, culturally, charmingly Indian. Indeed her poems hold “… lamps to moonless skies”. The collection is a milestone written on the existential nuances of life. Every line, an “aperture for departure”.

— Vinita Agrawal
Poet and Editor
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About Rosetta Cultures

Rosetta Cultures is an imprint by TrendLit Publishing that focuses on championing and bridging languages and the arts across cultures and communities.

Rosetta Cultures is currently based in Singapore, serving local and international readers.

Publication Information

ISBN: 978-981-94-3584-5 (Paperback)
CIP: Available with National Libarary Board, Singapore
Publisher / Imprint: Rosetta Cultures
Date of Publication: August 2025
Suggested Categorization: Poetry, Contemporary Literature, Singapore Literature
Format: 19cm (H) x 13cm (W), 100 pages

作者簡介

譯者簡介

　　周作人(1885–1967)，浙江紹興人。現代著名散文家、翻譯家，新文化運動的主要代表人物。周作人生前曾兩度從希臘原文翻譯這部《希臘神話》，遺憾的是他生前未能看見到這本書的出版。本事版保留周作人原譯的譯文習慣和風格，為便於閱讀，全書的譯註改為腳註排版。

作者簡介

作者簡介

　　盧省言

　　愛丁堡歷史系碩士，倫敦大學歷史高等研究院博士。天下雜誌《換日線Crossing》專欄「安妮／本初子午線觀察記」、「故事」（Story）網站專欄「安妮的午茶八卦時間」作者。現為台灣師範大學專案助理教授，曾任德國馬克思普朗克（Max Planck）歐洲法律史研究中心博士後、中研院法律學研究所博士後研究學者。

作者簡介

　　陳子良

　　畢業於台灣大學醫學院物理治療系、美國紐約大學碩士班，美國AT斯蒂爾大學物理治療博士。

　　旅居美國三十年，長期工作於都會區，為殘障人士服務。同時身處同志與亞裔移民兩個邊緣化的族群，建立了對種種社會公義議題的認知與體驗。成為同志家長後，更致力於倡導建立對同志家庭友善的環境。小孩公開出櫃後，現以「有同志孩子的同志家長」雙重身分，在紐約亞太裔彩虹家長團體擔任指導委員，推動各種支持與訓練活動，幫助有同志孩子的家長成為伸張同志平權的倡導者。

　　多年來於台美兩地參與諸多演講訪問，成為台灣第一個公開出櫃的同志爸爸。
 
陳海思鐸

　　美國印第安納州立大學學士、碩士，美國肯特州立大學諮商教育博士。

　　自從博士班受到兩位非裔指導教授啟發，便致力於反種族歧視及其他社會壓迫的倡導工作。擔任諮商教授的二十幾年中，專注融合社會正義於諮商教育與工作中，並推動改革學校諮商的權責。

　　專長涵蓋學校、性／別、社區心理健康、家庭伴侶諮商等。曾任美國許多專業組織主席，兼任過彰師大與實踐大學客座教授，發表諸多演講及著作，現任紐約市立大學李曼學院教授。著有《動盪時代中學校諮商與領袖可用的101種解決辦法》、《兩爸一孩：一個同志家庭在台美的拓荒之旅》等書。

譯者簡介

　　周作人(1885–1967)，浙江紹興人。現代著名散文家、翻譯家，新文化運動的主要代表人物。周作人生前曾兩度從希臘原文翻譯這部《希臘神話》，遺憾的是他生前未能看見到這本書的出版。本事版保留周作人原譯的譯文習慣和風格，為便於閱讀，全書的譯註改為腳註排版。

作者簡介

　　劉以鬯 (1918–2018)，BBS，MH，原名劉同繹，字昌年，香港著名小說家、編輯，香港公開大學榮譽教授。生於上海，祖籍浙江寧波鎮海。一九三六年開始發表創作，主要作品有《酒徒》《對倒》《打錯了》《寺內》《天堂與地獄》《島與半島》《他有一把鋒利的小刀》《郵票》《劉以鬯手稿：郵票裏的文學世界》等。