When Men Speak as Women

This is a collection of poems written by men speaking in women's voices and from their perspective. The poems, translated for the first time originate from three different bodies of marginalized poetry: Punjabi Kafis, Dakani Ghazals and Rekhti Ghazals. The poets hailed from the royal courts of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Deccan plateau in South central India; nineteenth-century Lucknow, and rural Punjab of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.