Article
An interview with Nilmani Phookan
‘May All Men Become Poets, Rebels and Lovers’
January 18, 2006
KSN: Nilmanida, can you tell us a little about yourself: life, career and achievements?
NP: Well, as you know, I was born in the small village of Dergaon near Jorhat in 1933. I completed my Matriculation in 1953, graduated from the well-known Cotton College, Guwahati, in 1957, cleared my Master’s Degree in History from Gauhati University in 1960 and finally joined Arya Vidyapeeth College as a lecturer in 1964. I retired from the college in 1992.
I started writing in my early twenties and became known when I, together with contemporary poets like Navakanta Barua and Ajit Barua, adopted the modern free verse started by our seniors like Hem Barua, Amulya Barua, Maheswar Neog in the mid-forties. I have so far published thirteen books of poems, two anthologies, including one on Indian tribal love poems, and four volumes of essays relating to my other vocation as an art critic. I have also edited Sanjaya, a leading literary and cultural quarterly, between 1977 and ’79.
I have won eight awards for poetry, including the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981, and one for my book on Assamese folk arts. In 1990 I was given the Padmashri Award and was subsequently made Emeritus Fellow of the HRD Ministry and Fellow of Sahitya Akademi.
You may think that I have ‘tremendous achievements’, but personally, I would like to repeat Jaroslav Seifert and say – I have only added a few poems to the several million poems of the world. There is no deeper wisdom in them than the sound of crickets. I know you will forgive me.
KSN: What is it that inspires you most as a poet? What are the recurrent themes in your poetry?
NP: About my inspiration, let me put it simply – had I not been born amid that wide expanse of soft and bountiful green through which nature unfolds itself in Assam, had I not spent my early days soaked in the rhythm of our life in the countryside with its homespun speech, rituals, folklore, music and dance, had I not grown in the intimacy of other poets, past and present, of this country and other lands (particularly Latin American, Chinese and Japanese poets), I could not have taken to writing poetry.
Like many other Indian writers, the days of my childhood and youth spent in some unknown village are the spring and base soil of my life as a writer. In the village itself, knowingly or unknowingly, I struck a perceptive relationship with nature, life and reality, and slowly it blossomed into an awakening of life, thought and sorrow.
After having spent fifty long years in the city, even today it is the village itself that is my memory, dream, grief, happiness and countless other things – melody, smell, colour, and glimpses of the mystery of night and day. The village has constantly stirred my mind, heart and imagination. Standing at the edge or in the middle of the village, on the bank of its river in winter or summer, I see the horizon all around, the birds that fly away at dusk. I stretch my hands to the towering trees. Crossing the rivers and oceans, the forests, hills, mountains and deserts, this man from some place goes and appears at some remote distance. Assuming them to be friends of some past life, I embrace them one after another. I become oblivious of my own self and find myself anew. I have become the partaker of the boundless energy, hopes and aspirations, the pride, joy, shame, affliction, triumph and loss of the eternal man.
Passing through unaccountable want and poverty for thousands of years, our villages have kept our Indian languages and cultures flowing and exuberant. That is why I feel strongly that if the villages are not freed from the clutches of exploitation, poverty, caste differences, religious enmity and fanaticism, ethnic clashes and globalisation, the languages and literatures of the Indian writers would lose the source from which they draw the nectar of life.
KSN: Rilke once remarked, “Art is superfluous, can art heal wounds, can it take away the bitterness of death? It does not assuage despair, it does not feed the hungry or clothe the shivering.” As a man who has devoted his entire life to poetry, what do you think of its role in modern society?
NP: Well, it may be true that “it cannot feed the hungry or clothe the shivering”. But C. G. Jung had also once remarked: “Modern man is searching for a soul.” I believe it is through poetry that one day we would find that soul, that we would find a clue to a world of love, new spiritual value and a human era in its totality.
All art aims at developing the full sensibility of man. It is poetry’s function also to humanise. The creative power in man, his capacity to realise truth in experience, the subtle sense of right and wrong, the expansion of the human consciousness, to freshen the impulses, to make imagination create as well as see into the nature of things – all this can be achieved through poetry. All the poets of the world wish that all men might become poets, rebels and lovers.
A Chinese poem written 2,500 years ago still lives. In the moment of crisis in the history of a people, the poem lives. The poem will continue to live even amongst those who have never read the poem. This is because the poem is the ultimate language of man – the general as well as the concrete embodiment of the agony and ecstasy of life.
In this interview held in December 2004, and published on PIW for the first time, Nilmani Phookan reflects on poetry – “the ultimate language of man” – and the sound of crickets.
Nilmani Phookan is the most distinguished Assamese poet living today. Born at Dergaon in 1933, he started writing poetry in the early fifties. He has now published thirteen volumes of poetry and won ten regional and national awards, including the Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry in 1981, and the Padmashri in 1990. KSN: Nilmanida, can you tell us a little about yourself: life, career and achievements?
NP: Well, as you know, I was born in the small village of Dergaon near Jorhat in 1933. I completed my Matriculation in 1953, graduated from the well-known Cotton College, Guwahati, in 1957, cleared my Master’s Degree in History from Gauhati University in 1960 and finally joined Arya Vidyapeeth College as a lecturer in 1964. I retired from the college in 1992.
I started writing in my early twenties and became known when I, together with contemporary poets like Navakanta Barua and Ajit Barua, adopted the modern free verse started by our seniors like Hem Barua, Amulya Barua, Maheswar Neog in the mid-forties. I have so far published thirteen books of poems, two anthologies, including one on Indian tribal love poems, and four volumes of essays relating to my other vocation as an art critic. I have also edited Sanjaya, a leading literary and cultural quarterly, between 1977 and ’79.
I have won eight awards for poetry, including the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981, and one for my book on Assamese folk arts. In 1990 I was given the Padmashri Award and was subsequently made Emeritus Fellow of the HRD Ministry and Fellow of Sahitya Akademi.
You may think that I have ‘tremendous achievements’, but personally, I would like to repeat Jaroslav Seifert and say – I have only added a few poems to the several million poems of the world. There is no deeper wisdom in them than the sound of crickets. I know you will forgive me.
KSN: What is it that inspires you most as a poet? What are the recurrent themes in your poetry?
NP: About my inspiration, let me put it simply – had I not been born amid that wide expanse of soft and bountiful green through which nature unfolds itself in Assam, had I not spent my early days soaked in the rhythm of our life in the countryside with its homespun speech, rituals, folklore, music and dance, had I not grown in the intimacy of other poets, past and present, of this country and other lands (particularly Latin American, Chinese and Japanese poets), I could not have taken to writing poetry.
Like many other Indian writers, the days of my childhood and youth spent in some unknown village are the spring and base soil of my life as a writer. In the village itself, knowingly or unknowingly, I struck a perceptive relationship with nature, life and reality, and slowly it blossomed into an awakening of life, thought and sorrow.
After having spent fifty long years in the city, even today it is the village itself that is my memory, dream, grief, happiness and countless other things – melody, smell, colour, and glimpses of the mystery of night and day. The village has constantly stirred my mind, heart and imagination. Standing at the edge or in the middle of the village, on the bank of its river in winter or summer, I see the horizon all around, the birds that fly away at dusk. I stretch my hands to the towering trees. Crossing the rivers and oceans, the forests, hills, mountains and deserts, this man from some place goes and appears at some remote distance. Assuming them to be friends of some past life, I embrace them one after another. I become oblivious of my own self and find myself anew. I have become the partaker of the boundless energy, hopes and aspirations, the pride, joy, shame, affliction, triumph and loss of the eternal man.
Passing through unaccountable want and poverty for thousands of years, our villages have kept our Indian languages and cultures flowing and exuberant. That is why I feel strongly that if the villages are not freed from the clutches of exploitation, poverty, caste differences, religious enmity and fanaticism, ethnic clashes and globalisation, the languages and literatures of the Indian writers would lose the source from which they draw the nectar of life.
KSN: Rilke once remarked, “Art is superfluous, can art heal wounds, can it take away the bitterness of death? It does not assuage despair, it does not feed the hungry or clothe the shivering.” As a man who has devoted his entire life to poetry, what do you think of its role in modern society?
NP: Well, it may be true that “it cannot feed the hungry or clothe the shivering”. But C. G. Jung had also once remarked: “Modern man is searching for a soul.” I believe it is through poetry that one day we would find that soul, that we would find a clue to a world of love, new spiritual value and a human era in its totality.
All art aims at developing the full sensibility of man. It is poetry’s function also to humanise. The creative power in man, his capacity to realise truth in experience, the subtle sense of right and wrong, the expansion of the human consciousness, to freshen the impulses, to make imagination create as well as see into the nature of things – all this can be achieved through poetry. All the poets of the world wish that all men might become poets, rebels and lovers.
A Chinese poem written 2,500 years ago still lives. In the moment of crisis in the history of a people, the poem lives. The poem will continue to live even amongst those who have never read the poem. This is because the poem is the ultimate language of man – the general as well as the concrete embodiment of the agony and ecstasy of life.
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