Welcome to Indian poetry - December 2005

13 april 2006 If by “known names”, the implication is ‘older poets’, the answer is no. The youngest poet we’ve featured so far was born in 1969; in this edition, we break that record with a poet born in 1972. That ought to be sufficient to banish any suspicions of ageism.

If by “known names”, the implication is playing safe, the answer is no again. The idea is to feature a range of languages, styles and sensibilities, a mix of seasoned voices with younger committed ones. Plurality has been a priority, and there’s no dearth of that in this country. One only hopes that the variety grows more various.

But if by “known names”, the implication is quality work, the answer is yes. Yes of course, the notion of quality is historically fallible and culturally particular. But it remains vital and is definitely, unapologetically, a selection criterion.

And if by “known names”, the implication is that the domain isn’t representative enough, the answer is simply: we never aspired to be. As has been reiterated before, to arrogate to oneself the task of comprehensiveness, particularly in a country of this size and diversity, is not merely absurd, but plain arrogant.

And let’s also admit that in a country like this one, what’s ‘known’ in a specific literary milieu is frequently quite unknown in another. And so you have a young Bangalore poet writing in to marvel at the work of Tamil poet, Manushya Puthiran – someone quite ‘new’ to him. A scriptwriter in Mumbai is startled by the sensibility of Bengali poet, Debarati Mitra – a name she’d never heard of before.

This edition, I believe, offers its share of surprises.

Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry, edited and translated by Sachin Ketkar, offers a new edgy, provocative collection of voices of “prominent young poets of the nineties or the late eighties”. Senior poet and translator Dilip Chitre writes of the book: “A new republican spirit has given Marathi poets the confidence to speak from their own chosen ‘location’ in a vastly varied worldscape and we now see individual talent bursting through with vigour . . . Grab this book at least to hear the small but insistent inner voices of dissent and non-conformity.”

This edition includes a sliver of voices from this anthology. It offers a mere glimpse, but one that’s adequate, I think, to give readers an idea of the tenor and flavour of the work. The world it evokes is a globalised urban India where the style and idiom draw unabashedly from local cadence. The aural landscape is one of Mumbai slang, brand names, billboards, logos, railway announcements, ad jingles, television serials and Bollywood movies. Also included is an essay by Sachin Ketkar in which he discusses the contemporary Marathi poetic context and his choices.

Another strikingly contemporary voice is that of Gujarati poet, Chandrakant Shah. A selection of poems from his volume, Blue Jeans, translated by leading Gujarati playwright, Naushil Mehta, reveals a voice that draws on a spectrum of tones, ranging from the playful to the profound. This is denim poetry: informal, conversational, demotic, ready-to-wear. The trope of blue jeans is skilfully employed to implicate issues as diverse as cultural dislocation, genetics and a subcontinent’s complex history to older themes of love, loss and longing. It is a world of unexpected conjunctions: a world where Vadodara meets San Francisco, where founder of jeans, Levi Strauss, can rub shoulders with Kabir, medieval Indian mystic.

In counterpoint to the many young voices, we also have poems by senior English poet, Gieve Patel. Yes, this is a ‘known’ name certainly. But even those familiar with his name and his much-anthologised ‘On Killing A Tree’ (the staple of school textbooks for an aeon) have often found it difficult to lay their hands on his books. It is clearly time for a publisher to bring out a comprehensive collection of this poet’s work. Until such time, here’s a selection from his three books, as well as an interview with the poet.

While introducing Live Update, Sachin Ketkar writes persuasively of the seditious nature of the poetic enterprise: “Poetry is an unauthorised and self-replicating malicious code written into the software of language. It destabilises the system, gets unauthorised access into human privacy, and can often bring about a crash.”

Happy landing!