Q. To quote poet and publisher P. Lal from his questionnaire sent in the 1960s to an earlier generation of Indian English poets: “What are the circumstances that led to your using the English language for the purpose of writing poetry?” And of course, is such a question relevant to today’s poets, several decades after Lal’s query?
Arundhathi Subramaniam: I use English because it is my language. It’s as simple as that. Deeply regrettable historical circumstances brought it into our lives many centuries ago. But it is now ours. We don’t use the language as passive inheritors but as confident collaborators. Rather than deny or purify or amputate our past, we can choose to critique, acknowledge and reinvent it. Critique doesn’t have to mean contempt; that wonderful Indian sacred poem, the ninda-stuti, in which poets quarrel with their gods without ever ceasing to love them, teaches us that. I do speak other Indian languages, and am grateful for the glorious multilingual inheritance of this subcontinent. But English today is as Indian as cricket, democracy, or green chillies, or sabudana. It is time to stop apologizing for it. And I hope the question will not have to be posed to another generation of Anglophone Indian poets.
Q. In addition to poets from the Anglo-American canon, has your poetry been influenced by Indian English poets of an earlier generation (whether the 19th century pioneers like Derozio and Toru Dutt, or early 20th century poets like Tagore and Sarojini Naidu, or those from the post-1947 generation like Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das, and A.K. Ramanujan)? Do you consider your poetry a part of this two-hundred-year-old tradition?
A.S.: I was born and grew up in the city of Bombay, which was home to multiple Indian poets—Nissim Ezekiel, Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawalla, Eunice de Souza, Gieve Patel, Dilip Chitre, Imtiaz Dharker, Dom Moraes and several others. Their work pervaded my life; and their poems are even today part of the heritage of echoes I carry around with me. As a practitioner of poetry in English, I’d certainly see myself as part of a tradition of Anglophone Indian poets. At the same time, I see myself as beneficiary of many traditions. I grew up reading TS Eliot, Basho, Omar Khayyam and Rilke, and studying British and American literature, but also listening to kritis by Tyagaraja, padams by Kshetrayya, Rabindra Sangeet (which my mother learnt, alongside Carnatic music) and movie songs by Majrooh Sultanpuri! By which I mean that mine was a complex inheritance, as it is for every Indian. It included influences from East and West, and a wonderfully messy amalgam of classical, traditional and popular elements. Later in my life, I also reclaimed for myself another literary inheritance: the poetry of the Bhakti tradition, including the work of Akka Mahadevi, Tukaram, Nammalvar and Kabir, among others. I see them as an utterly integral part of my lineage as well.
In short, while I am most certainly Indian, culturally and spiritually, in some deep and indefinable way, I see myself standing at the crossroads of multiple intersecting cultural tributaries. This is what it means to be Indian and alive today. Borges said, ‘Every poet creates his own precursors’. I’m still creating mine.
Q. What are your views on a readership/audience for Indian poetry in English? Does such a thing exist outside English classrooms and literary circles? How much of a consideration is the readership in your poetic process?
A.S.: The readership exists, and is growing. The internet is clearly the most significant reason. It has made poetry much more widely available—to a small segment of the human population perhaps, but still a much wider global readership. The upsurge of national and international literary festivals has also played a vital role. Poetry is a portable medium; it travels well. The live nature of public readings also motivates listeners to return to a form they may otherwise have lost touch with.
I am delighted when my work is read and appreciated, but at the same time, I’m glad to be practitioner of a quiet verbal art. And if that means a smaller readership, I’m fine with it. I keep the faith in the power of the word to pervade lives imperceptibly but profoundly. I value that, and I do believe that human life would be much poorer if we lost that muted sorcery of word and pause.
Q. Do you read, write, or translate poetry in a language other than English? If yes, how does it influence your poetry in English?
A.S.: I was for more than a decade the India editor of a website (the Poetry International Web) that was largely devoted to poetry in translation. I worked closely with translators of multiple languages, and also personally co-translated poems from Tamil and Gujarati (working with CS Lakshmi and Naushil Mehta respectively). For the Penguin anthology of Bhakti poetry I edited, I worked widely with translators, and did some translations of the Tamil poet Abhirami Bhattar myself. So, the work with translation has been a long-standing one. How did it influence me? Enormously. It allowed new breezes into my life; sharpened my awareness of parallel literary subcultures; honed my own art in many ways.
And yet, long before these overt trysts with translation, I do believe growing up in this hectically polyglot culture had its impact on my life and poetic practice as well. It was inevitable. As Indians, we’re all multilingual in varying degrees, and we’re translating in our heads all the time. It can seem like cultural confusion to an outsider, but it makes for a hugely rich lived experience that is an enormous asset for anyone, and more so for an artist.
Q. Have you ever taught poetry in a class, at a workshop, or in an informal setting? If yes, which aspects of poetry do you think can be taught?
A.S.: I’ve conducted poetry workshops (in universities, literary festivals and for cultural organizations) since the 1990s. The aim has always been to help people to become better listeners, which, in turn, I hope will help them in time to become better practitioners. More importantly, I hope it helps make them more responsive to life itself, and that’s the first step to enriching one’s life experience, isn’t it?
Q. What are your views on the poetry that appears today on such popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram?
A.S.: I’m not on FB or Instagram very often, but some of what I see looks like work that hasn’t been given a chance to ripen. I think the instantaneous nature of communication today is a great possibility, but it also takes away from the long hours of gestation that are necessary for anything to reach fruition. If you put a first draft into the public domain, you often end up doing it a great injustice. More rigour, more reflection, more revision, more reading, and above all, more living–these are also vital components of a writer’s life.
