Article
‘The smell of coffee and the taste of olives . . .’
January 18, 2006
The approach is understated; the tone sophisticated without being mannered, quiet without being bland, impassioned without being dogmatic; the conversation uncluttered and precise, willing to turn exploratory, but never given to unguarded self-revelation. And then there is her face – finely etched, reflective. A decidedly interior face.
“Best to meet in books” is a line from a Eunice de Souza poem, evoking the sense of unease one often experiences when meeting an artist after knowing her art. Not so, however, with Dharker. For Dharker terrain gives you space, engages you without overwhelming you, is incisive without being aggressively minimalist.
“Well yes, if the starting-point of Purdah was life behind the veil, the starting-point of the new book, I Speak for the Devil, is the strip-tease, about what happens when the self “squeezes past the easy cage of bone”,” remarks Dharker.
She acknowledges that displacement in the new book no longer spells exile; it can mean instead an exciting sense of life at the periphery, the fringe. “I may never be able to define my home, but the question is, do I want to? Where is my home anyway? In Scotland under a particular group of trees? In the texture of a fabric? The feel of rain? In the end, you carry these things with you wherever you go. Home for me is here, but it’s also in the smell of the south of France. Cezanne and Van Gogh are my relatives. And when I went to Punjab, I felt I was genetically programmed to know that landscape of flat sugarcane fields. I’m sure I shall feel the same shock of recognition when I bite into an olive in Tuscany.”
In a cultural climate that favours unitary cultural identities, Dharker’s unabashed embrace of unsettlement as settlement clearly isn’t designed to curry favour with the conservatives. In her poem, ‘Not A Muslim Burial’, for instance, the persona begs for cremation and for her ashes to be scattered “in some country/ I have never visited./ Or better still,/ leave them on a train,/ travelling/ between.”
“During a Delhi conference,” recollects Dharker, “someone in the audience asked whether Indian writers felt that they had a duty to foster Indian culture, to create a synthesis between East and West, between tradition and modernity. I replied that the result of such a synthesis was likely to be a synthetic response!”
The ‘back to the roots’ obscurantism clearly needs to be resisted at various levels. “I don’t have to use Indian mythology in my poetry to prove my credentials as a South Asian poet. And I don’t have to pretend I owe any allegiance to the Indian miniature tradition to validate my drawing,” she declares. Likewise, she points out, she has never chosen to include glossaries to demystify certain words for an overseas readership. “I don’t see why I need to explain myself. Readers who are interested shouldn’t have a problem approaching the work on my terms.”
The same conviction underlies her prerogative to stay with poetry rather than move to its more fashionable cousin, the novel. “The writing of poetry and the public aspect of it are two completely separate areas, and that’s the great luxury of being a poet.” There’s also the purity of the poetic form that attracts her. “I feel the same excitement about the unadulterated line in drawing. It’s true that poetry doesn’t receive the same respect as the novel, or drawing the same as painting, but there’s no point getting angry about it. I’d rather spend that energy writing or drawing.”
For the process of stripping away superfluity has been not merely cultural and political, but psychological and emotional as well. “It’s been about cutting away unfruitful frustration and anger. Of course, the anger never quite disappears, particularly when you see what’s happening around you in this country, the way people are being pushed around by religion and politics. But meanwhile there is also the smell of coffee and the taste of olives…”
And what does she make of the readership for poetry today? Dharker holds no apocalyptic views on the subject. “I don’t think the audience has dumbed down. It’s just that there’s so much communication nowadays that poetry, which in any case is a demanding form (often feared for its abstruseness and non-linearity), requires even more effort to read now than it did 30 years ago.”
The recurrent trope of the strip-tease in I Speak for the Devil leads the reader inevitably past the repudiation of status quo politics, through psychological excavation to the realm of the existential – the province of the spirit. “I’m disturbed by words like ‘spiritual’ because I see the body as part of the journey, not as polarised from spirit” says Dharker, “But of course, there is a quest, an attempt, a mad hope that something could get better if the poem was written – not for the world, of course. Maybe for God. Maybe just for me.”
She pauses, then adds, “I guess you could say I write because I’d rather take those three steps that it takes to make a poem rather than just sit here.”
Abridged version of an article for The Hindu, 2001.
In conversation with Arundhathi Subramaniam: Imtiaz Dharker on strip-tease and the address of home.
Meeting Imtiaz Dharker is a little like reading her poetry. The approach is understated; the tone sophisticated without being mannered, quiet without being bland, impassioned without being dogmatic; the conversation uncluttered and precise, willing to turn exploratory, but never given to unguarded self-revelation. And then there is her face – finely etched, reflective. A decidedly interior face.
“Best to meet in books” is a line from a Eunice de Souza poem, evoking the sense of unease one often experiences when meeting an artist after knowing her art. Not so, however, with Dharker. For Dharker terrain gives you space, engages you without overwhelming you, is incisive without being aggressively minimalist.
“Well yes, if the starting-point of Purdah was life behind the veil, the starting-point of the new book, I Speak for the Devil, is the strip-tease, about what happens when the self “squeezes past the easy cage of bone”,” remarks Dharker.
She acknowledges that displacement in the new book no longer spells exile; it can mean instead an exciting sense of life at the periphery, the fringe. “I may never be able to define my home, but the question is, do I want to? Where is my home anyway? In Scotland under a particular group of trees? In the texture of a fabric? The feel of rain? In the end, you carry these things with you wherever you go. Home for me is here, but it’s also in the smell of the south of France. Cezanne and Van Gogh are my relatives. And when I went to Punjab, I felt I was genetically programmed to know that landscape of flat sugarcane fields. I’m sure I shall feel the same shock of recognition when I bite into an olive in Tuscany.”
In a cultural climate that favours unitary cultural identities, Dharker’s unabashed embrace of unsettlement as settlement clearly isn’t designed to curry favour with the conservatives. In her poem, ‘Not A Muslim Burial’, for instance, the persona begs for cremation and for her ashes to be scattered “in some country/ I have never visited./ Or better still,/ leave them on a train,/ travelling/ between.”
“During a Delhi conference,” recollects Dharker, “someone in the audience asked whether Indian writers felt that they had a duty to foster Indian culture, to create a synthesis between East and West, between tradition and modernity. I replied that the result of such a synthesis was likely to be a synthetic response!”
The ‘back to the roots’ obscurantism clearly needs to be resisted at various levels. “I don’t have to use Indian mythology in my poetry to prove my credentials as a South Asian poet. And I don’t have to pretend I owe any allegiance to the Indian miniature tradition to validate my drawing,” she declares. Likewise, she points out, she has never chosen to include glossaries to demystify certain words for an overseas readership. “I don’t see why I need to explain myself. Readers who are interested shouldn’t have a problem approaching the work on my terms.”
The same conviction underlies her prerogative to stay with poetry rather than move to its more fashionable cousin, the novel. “The writing of poetry and the public aspect of it are two completely separate areas, and that’s the great luxury of being a poet.” There’s also the purity of the poetic form that attracts her. “I feel the same excitement about the unadulterated line in drawing. It’s true that poetry doesn’t receive the same respect as the novel, or drawing the same as painting, but there’s no point getting angry about it. I’d rather spend that energy writing or drawing.”
For the process of stripping away superfluity has been not merely cultural and political, but psychological and emotional as well. “It’s been about cutting away unfruitful frustration and anger. Of course, the anger never quite disappears, particularly when you see what’s happening around you in this country, the way people are being pushed around by religion and politics. But meanwhile there is also the smell of coffee and the taste of olives…”
And what does she make of the readership for poetry today? Dharker holds no apocalyptic views on the subject. “I don’t think the audience has dumbed down. It’s just that there’s so much communication nowadays that poetry, which in any case is a demanding form (often feared for its abstruseness and non-linearity), requires even more effort to read now than it did 30 years ago.”
The recurrent trope of the strip-tease in I Speak for the Devil leads the reader inevitably past the repudiation of status quo politics, through psychological excavation to the realm of the existential – the province of the spirit. “I’m disturbed by words like ‘spiritual’ because I see the body as part of the journey, not as polarised from spirit” says Dharker, “But of course, there is a quest, an attempt, a mad hope that something could get better if the poem was written – not for the world, of course. Maybe for God. Maybe just for me.”
She pauses, then adds, “I guess you could say I write because I’d rather take those three steps that it takes to make a poem rather than just sit here.”
Abridged version of an article for The Hindu, 2001.
© Arundhathi Subramaniam
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