Keshab Sigdel (1979) is a Nepali poet, editor, academic and rights activist. Heteaches Poetry and Literary Theories and Criticism at Tribhuvan University. He is the author of poetry collections Samaya Bighatan (2007), Six Strings (co-authored, 2012), Colour of the Sun (2017) and Embargo (French translation by Alexandra Crette, 2025).

His other works include atranslation of indigenous Nepali poetry, Shades of Colour (2021), Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Nepali translation, 2026) and an edited volume, Madness: An Anthology of World Poetry (2023). Besides poetry, he also writes fiction, literary essays and plays. He also edited Poetry Planetariat (World Poetry Movement), and co-edited Of Nepalese Clay (Society of Nepali Writers in English) and Rupantaran (Nepal Academy).

He is anthologized in South Asia in Verse: Earth and Embers (Speaking Tigers Books, 2026), Anthology: Contemporary World Poetry (Kathak, 2026), Kavya: Representative Nepali Poetry in English (Grey Sparrow Press/Vajra, 2022/2023), Americans and Others: An Anthology of International Poets (Italy), Anthologie POP: Halte au feu ! (France), A World Without Wars: Overthrowing Capitalism (USA), Boda Boda Anthem and Other Poems: A Kampala Poetry Anthology (Uganda) and Anandaotsavach Bishwosetu (Marathi anthology; Hastakshar, 2025).

His poems have been translated into more than 20 languages and have appeared in different magazines including Balkan Herald (Serbia), Folket i Bild (Sweden), Poesis (Slovenia), Syndic Journal (USA), Snow Jewel (USA), Banmuang (Thailand), Azhar: Revisita Poetica (Mexico), Poezia (Romaina), Tupel Quaterly (China), Chinese Language Monthly (China), Rendition of International Poetry (China), World Poetry Magazine (Greece), The Art of Being Human (Canada), Kalenin sesi (Turkey), The Silk Road Today (Egypt), Le National (Haiti), JUNPA (Japan), CNP News (South Korea), Van Nghe (Vietam), Poetry Planetariat (Columbia), Adabiyat (Kazakhstan),  Kabyle (Algeria), Shirisherdalpala (Bangladesh), Kritya (India), Gyanodaya (India) Of Nepalese Clay (Nepal), Kavita (Nepal), Madhuparka (Nepal), and Kalashree (Nepal),

He is featured in poetry festivals and events in India, China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Turkey, Iran, Colombia, Venezuela, and Slovenia.

He is also actively involved in Nepal’s human rights movement. He has served as the Vice Chairperson and the Board Member of the Nepal Section of Amnesty International from 2004 to 2010. He has travelled widely across the country as a resource person in human rights education/training for youths, teachers, women activists, police officers, and parliamentarians. He even faced several arrests during human rights campaigns in his country.

He is the recipient of the ‘Bhanubhakta Gold Medal for Literature’ (Culture Ministry of Nepal, 2014), ‘Yuwa Barsa Moti Puraskar’ (National Youth Fund, 2018), and ‘Kalashree National Youth Award for Literature’ (2022), and is nominated for SAARC Literature Award (Lifetime Achievement) 2026 by Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature, New Delhi. He is working on his first long fiction depicting the impacts of a decade-long armed conflict in Nepal. 

With the Waves of Rara

Deceiving the pine trees standing in sentry

The moon flirts with the lake

In response

The lake creates ripples of waves

And splashes as if it were a rehearsal of an enticing dance

Of a winter night!

The moon, as always,

Continues its own course

In that caliginous night

The lake sees the moon’s revived youthfulness

Its seductive appearance

Excites the lake

That it liberates in the waves.

In the light of the moon

The lake appears intriguing

My sickening heart

Becomes even more impatient

And, to pacify the unquenched desires

My imagination dives into the lake.

As the night exceeds

The breath of the hostlers

Evaporate and dissolve in the sky

And the horses moving from the alleys nearby

Wake up the lazy sleeps

With their neck-bells.

Travelers with their bag-packs

Spend a night in the tents at the bank of Rara

And anxiously wait for the sun to come out

In the morning,

They pick up their cameras

And click a photograph

Of the sun’s reflection

On the lake.

I keep waiting

For the moon to come back again;

When the birds and horses sleep

Wearing the night’s somber

I prepare myself to consume

The excitement of the lake

Rippling towards the edges

In the obscene light of the moon!

(Translated from Nepali by the poet)

—

* Rara is the biggest and deepest freshwater lake in the Himalayas of Nepal.

An Evening

Each day before the sun sets

Cows return to their sheds

Blowing dust along their trails

The goat’s kid that had parted from its flock

Comes hopping at the yard of the house

And looks reassured. 

Somewhere around the guava grove

The soft sound of the beetles

Grow into a strong melody.

In its hide-and-seek movement through tiny clouds

The moon glitters.

After keeping safe his slippers with the blue straps

Chádani’s father sits with his legs crossed at the porch

He takes out a leaf-wrapped tobacco stick

And with a loud voice

Asks for a coal-fire to kindle it.

This way, since many years,

This old house has composed a melody

Of its happiness.

Unexpectedly, today

The cows did not return through their dusty trails

Nor did the goat’s kid arrive hopping as usual.

The frogs croak incessantly

Probably to invite rain in the village 

Chádani’s father’s slippers are found

With their broken straps

Below the guava tree nearby our house.

Due to some unknown fear

I am sweating.

At the edge of a paddy field

There is a cloth, completely drenched.

As the moon grows dull covered by the clouds

I am unable to discern

Whether that piece of cloth

Is a flag of victory

Or an indication of my despair!

            (Translated from Nepali by the poet)

Wonders of a Leaf

Lying in bed

I dream of a caterpillar.

The caterpillar stops a while,

Dreams of a leaf

and resumes!

I lie, while

the caterpillar soothes me,

crawls upon me

and excites me with its

innumerable hands and feet.

Belly upon the belly,

caterpillar and me –

intoxicated,

we live a complete dream.

The caterpillar –

touches me,

gets aroused,

squeezes and sucks me,

and, transforms itself into a butterfly.

I, too, dream,

get excited with the touch,

and offer myself to be eaten up;

But, left with a mystic of life

I dream and wonder:

if the butterfly is my love,

my ultimate dream.

Why Does the Bridge Exist?

As my daughter rides on my back along the Dhobikhola, 
like a victorious emperor she asks me everything that crosses her

mind. The only difference I discern is that the emperor could 
measure his authority with his questions.

My daughter strives to give me a higher status than that of the

emperor, as if her father were the wisest and the most powerful

man in the world, as if her father possessed answers to 
all the questions she could think of. What else then? 
Like a princess on a jaunt, she makes a sedan chair 
on her father’s shoulders and showers him with questions.

While crossing the bridge over the Dhobikhola
she asks, “Baba, why do we have this bridge here?” 
“We need a bridge to go across the stream, my daughter,” 
I reply. The answer doesn’t satisfy her. The Dhobikhola

suffocates in piles of rubbish thrown into it. A man in rags

continues sifting through the garbage for plastic bags and dogs

bark at him from garbage piles.

My daughter averts her gaze, and asks, “Can’t you cross the

stream without a bridge?”

Why would you need a bridge to cross a stream that doesn’t have water to fill

the ditches? I ask myself. I say, “These vehicles can’t go across

without a bridge.” I try to satisfy her. “This bridge separates

Babarmahal from Baneswor,” I explain.

“Baba, would not Babarmahal and Baneswor become one if not

for the bridge?” The question she asks shakes the foundations of

my belief.

—Does a bridge connect us or keep us apart?

—I keep contemplating the question.

(Translated from Nepali by Khem K Aryal)

Death Note of a Maniac

A tree fell

And became a log.

The time the tree lived ceased abruptly

And became history.

Men exhumed the history

And recreated memories.

They again carved those memories on the log

And made new expressions of life.

            Outside the window, there are no trees left now!

Question

(In memory of the victims of Russia-Ukraine war)

After the winter rain stops

The sky glows with the rising sun.

When the farmer sees

The field and the plants warmed up,

And finds the smell of the soil intoxicating,

He experiences happiness within.

He remembers his daughter uttering “ting flower”

Once he sees acmellaoleracea grown on the ridge

And smiles in a way that goes unnoticed by himself

He scrapes the canal buried by time

And makes it flow.

Overwhelmed by the memory of his childhood

He leaves the weed of common vetch

Grow bushy.

As the heat of the sun rises to the limit

Sweat flows through the posterior of the ears

And he wipes it again and again

With a towel, unannoyed,

He rather holds high a karuwa,*

Opens his mouth, facing toward the sky,

And quenches his thirst.

Before the first drop of water reaches his throat

He sees a sky covered with smoke

And a bird-like object

Falls indiscriminately near the ridge of the field

Suffocated by the lump of smoke.

He tries to disbelieve his own vision

And wipes his acrid eyes with water in the karuwa

Then he penetrates the smoke cloud with his contracted eyes

Only to see the destruction of his happiness.

Who, for no reason,

Bombarded the sky with missiles of ego

To let common vetch and ting-flowers

Get burnt

Breaking hopes, and

Dismantling the melody of life?

                        (Translated from Nepali by the poet)

—

*Karuwais a narrow-necked wide-bodied brass water pot with a spout.