Longing to Awaken features twenty-five translations of Buddhist devotional poems and songs composed by revered Tibetan masters from diverse traditions and time periods. The anthology invites readers to experience a variety of poetic forms that embody a range of emotions, from grief and longing to skepticism and humor, demonstrating the ways that poetry can inspire faith as well as reflect the profundity and at times fraught nature of the teacher-student relationship. This collection gives weight to literary-not simply literal-translation as a crucial endeavor in the transmission of Buddhism today, one with the potential to raise the profile of Tibetan poetry onto the stage of global literature. Featuring a remarkable interview with esteemed Tibetan master Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche to elucidate Buddhist devotion and a landmark essay by Lama Jabb articulating a Tibetan theory for translating poetry.
Longing to Awaken: Buddhist Devotion in Tibetan Poetry and Song, Holly Gayley and Dominique Townsend, University of Virginia Press, Paperback, 308 pages, $35.00

Holly Gayley, Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, is a scholar and translator of contemporary Buddhist literature in Tibet and Himalaya. Her research areas include gender and sexuality in Buddhist tantra, ethical reform in contemporary Tibet, and theorizing translation, both literary and cultural, in the transmission of Buddhist teachings to North America. Gayley is author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2016), co-editor of A Gathering of Brilliant Moons: Practice Advice from the Rim� Masters of Tibet (Wisdom Publications, 2017), translator of Inseparable Across Lifetimes: The Lives and Love Letters of the Buddhist Visionaries Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tare Lhamo (Snow Lion, 2019), and editor of Voices from Larung Gar: Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century (Snow Lion Publications, 2021). Her recent journal articles and chapters on Tibetan and Himalayan women writers, gender and sexuality include �Parody and Pathos: Sexual Transgression by �Fake� Lamas in Tibetan Short Stories,� co-authored with Somtso Bhum in Revue d'Etudes Tib�taines (April 2022), "Karma and Female Agency in Novels by Bhutanese Women Writers" in Innaugural Issue of the International Journal for Bhutan and Himalayan Research (Fall 2020), "Gendered Hagiography in Tibet: Comparing Clerical Representations of the Female Visionary, Khandro Tare Lhamo" in Buddhist Feminisms and Femininities, edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo (2019), and "Revisiting the Secret Consort (gsang yum) in Tibetan Buddhism" in Religions (June 2018). Her work on the emergence of Buddhist modernism on the Tibetan plateau and a new ethical reform movement spawned by cleric-scholars at Larung Buddhist Academy in Serta culminated in the anthology, Voices from Larung Gar. Her journal articles on the topic include "Controversy over Buddhist Ethical Reform: A Secular Critique of Clerical Authority in the Tibetan Blogosphere" (Himalaya Journal, 2016), "Non-Violence as a Shifting Signifier on the Tibetan Plateau" (Contemporary Buddhism, 2016 with Padma 'tsho), "Reimagining Buddhist Ethics on the Tibetan Plateau (Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2013), and "The Ethics of Cultural Survival: A Buddhist Vision of Progress in Mkhan po 'Jigs phun's Advice to Tibetans of the 21st Century" in Mapping the Modern in Tibet (International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, 2011), revised as a chapter in Voices for Larung Gar to introduce select translations from Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok's "Heart Advice to Tibetans for the Twenty-First Century." In addition, Dr. Gayley is co-founder of the Tibet Himalaya Initiative at CU Boulder, co-chair of a five-year seminar on "Transnational Religious Expression: Between Asia and North America" at the American Academy of Religion, and part of the founding team for the Contemplative Resource Center at CU Boulder.


Dominique Townsend is Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at Bard College in Annandale on Hudson, NY. Her primary research interests include Tibetan Buddhist history, aesthetics, cultural production, poetics, and translation theory. Columbia University Press will release her first scholarly monograph, A Buddhist Sensibility: Aesthetic Education at Tibet�s Mindr�ling Monastery, in March 2021. She is also a poet and published a book of poems called The Weather & Our Tempers with Brooklyn Arts Press in 2013. She has an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD from Columbia University.