Valmiki's Ramayana provides the inspiration for this vibrant collection of poems, each of which acts as a persuasive encounter between English poetry and Indian myth. After is a collection of poems inspired by Valmiki’s Ramayana , one of Asia’s foundational epic poems and a story cycle of incalculable historical importance. But After does not just come after the Ramayana . On each successive page, Vivek Narayanan brings the resources of contemporary English poetry to bear on the Sanskrit epic. In a work that warrants comparison with Christopher Logue’s and Alice Oswald’s reshapings of Homer, and Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red , Narayanan allows the ancient voice of the poem to engage with modern experience, initiating a transformative conversation across time.