The release of Across The Pause: Poems by Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma brings together 75 poems shaped by the quiet observations, emotional tensions, and everyday challenges of human life. The collection emerges from the poet’s engagement with both subtle and unmistakable experiences—the moments that pass quickly, the situations that demand reflection, and the emotions that often remain unspoken. Across its pages, intellect and feeling meet in what the author describes as an impromptu conversation, creating a poetic space where personal experience and wider human concerns can coexist.
Across The Pause takes its title from the moments between experiences—the pauses in which people reflect, remember, question, and understand. Rather than presenting poetry as an escape from ordinary life, the collection draws much of its energy from the realities surrounding us. The poems respond to the emotional and intellectual pressures of daily existence while allowing room for contemplation, ambiguity, conflict, and discovery.
One of the defining characteristics of the collection is its movement between the personal and the collective. Individual memories and emotions are placed alongside experiences that belong to a wider human landscape. The intimate and the universal frequently intersect, suggesting that private feelings can often reveal larger truths about relationships, society, vulnerability, resilience, and the passage of time.
The poems also bring together seemingly contrasting elements. The ephemeral meets the enduring, while innocence encounters conflict. Yet these contrasts do not necessarily remain opposed. Instead, they contribute to what the collection presents as a form of conflict-driven harmony—a poetic balance created through the tensions inherent in human experience. Through this interplay, Sharma allows readers to encounter different shades of emotion without reducing them to simple conclusions.
Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma is an established bilingual poet, translator, and author whose literary career has extended across poetry, fiction, translation, and critical engagement. Born in 1952, he is a former government college Principal and has published sixteen books of English poetry along with two anthologies of Hindi verse. His other works include Another Gandhi, a monograph on a freedom fighter, and A Three-Step Journey, an English translation of Zahid Abrol’s Urdu poems.
His contribution to contemporary poetry has also received recognition. Malini Joshi, Editor of The Literature Times, describes Sharma as a seasoned voice whose reflective poetry brings together personal introspection and universal human experiences, adding depth and quiet emotional power to modern poetic discourse. His book On the Edge received the International Culture Award from the International Academy of Rome, while his poetry and other literary works have appeared in several books of poetry, stories, and academic research.
The year 2026 marks another significant phase in Sharma’s literary journey, with the publication of Icy Chill on Fire and his first work of fiction, Blind Man’s Bluff. Across The Pause adds another dimension to this continuing body of work, returning to poetry as a medium for examining the emotional and intellectual currents of life.
With 75 poems arranged as a sustained exploration of experience, emotion, conflict, and reflection, Across The Pause invites readers to slow down and inhabit the spaces between moments. It is a collection that recognizes how much can happen in a pause—an emotion can surface, a memory can return, a question can emerge, or an ordinary experience can acquire unexpected meaning. Through these poems, Dr. Sharma continues his exploration of the human condition with attentiveness, restraint, and literary sensitivity.