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Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art’

Jun 04
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Tabish Khair

By Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the 'State' of the 'Art' No Comments
Cite this Interview

MLA:
Khair, Tabish. “Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art’.” Indian Writing In English Online, 5 June 2023, https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/tabish-khair/ .

Chicago:
Khair, Tabish. “Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art’.” Indian Writing In English Online. June 5, 2023. https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/tabish-khair/ .

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?

Tabish Khair (TK): I could say it was because I went to an English Medium school, but this was Nazareth Academy in Gaya, not some top anglophone school in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore or even places like Ranchi. We spoke Hindi outside the classrooms, and between us in the classrooms too. Many of my classmates did not grow up to be fluent in English, let alone want to write in it. So the main reason was that I wanted to write, and English was the language that chose me. This was partly because I grew up in an Urdu-speaking family, but the school offered Hindi (and Sanskrit) as the second language, and the sad semi-communal language politics in Bihar (and India) in the 1970s-80s meant that my Urduised Hindi compositions were always given low grades in school. I grew up suspicious of both Urdu (which I saw, growing up among non-Muslims in the Hindi heartland) as a narrow Muslim language, and in due course I also grew suspicious of Hindi, despite writing some initial poems in it, because I was told by my teachers that I was not writing it well. But I was just writing it as I spoke it. Both Hindi and Urdu were minefields for a young boy like me, who loved literature and wanted to write. English was neutral territory. I knew where I stood with English. I started writing more in it and reading almost entirely in it. That, I think, was the decisive factor. By the time I realised how the stupid and communal politics of language in India had limited my scope, it was too late. I was in college and had read a hundred books in English for every one book that I had read in Hindi or Urdu. English was by then my first language. And one writes primarily in one’s first language.

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 19thcentury 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?

TK: Of course, I educated myself in college and later on, but in school we knew little about Indian poets, apart from those in the Hindustani tradition, such as Kabir, or Tagore in translation, and a scattering of Sarojini Naidu, a poem or two by Nissim Ezekiel or Kamala Das. This was the 1970-80s. In college and later, I read up all of them: Ezekiel, Kamala Das, Ramanujan, Daruwalla, Kolatkar, Agha Shahid Ali etc. I had to educate myself. (Just as I read up beyond the Yeats-Eliot generation outside India, because our school reading stopped largely there.) But to say that I consider my poetry to be part of this 200-year old tradition would be to exaggerate: there is much I share with some of them, and there is much I do not share. Just as there are elements that I feel I share with some non-Indian writers, and there are elements I do not. One makes one’s own extended family as one goes on, uncles and aunts and step-siblings, but writers like me are essentially bastards: we do not have any known parents. Just uncles, aunts and step-siblings. Distant cousins, more often than not. Literary parents are an impossible luxury for writers from the margin. Or you need to belong to a certain literary and economic class, usually metropolitan, in order to have them.

 

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?

TK: I do not think much about the readership. The thought might cross my mind when I write fiction, though it is not a significant worry, but poetry is something much more personal for me. Finally, you write it for yourself. You might publish it for other reasons, mostly because you feel that you have said something well that might appeal to others like you, but you write it solely for yourself. At least I do.

Q: Do you read, write, or translate poetry in a language other than English? If yes, how does it influence your poetry in English?

TK: I have translated the occasional poem, and would like to translate more from Hindi and Urdu, maybe Danish, when I have time. I read occasionally in Urdu (using the Devnagari script mostly), Hindi and Danish, but not too often. Again, time is the problem.

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?

TK: I have taught poetry, but with great reluctance. I would not even teach literature, even prose fiction, if I had a choice. But I need to earn my bread and butter. I don’t think literature, let alone poetry, can be taught. It can be learnt, but not taught. All a teacher can do is open a door or two; the student has to enter on her own, and then make the most of it.

Q: What are your views on the poetry that appears today on such popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram?

TK: At the moment, digital reading is too fast. It does not enable the deep attention, the contemplation that literature requires. Computerisation, it has been argued by philosophers, is opposed to contemplation. And contemplation, or deep attention, is essential to all art, literature, thought.

Born in Bihar, India, Tabish Khair is a poet and novelist. He has authored several books including the poetry collections, Where Parallel Lines Meet (Penguin, 2000) and Man of Glass (HarperCollins, 2010), the studies, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels (Oxford UP, 2001), The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness (Palgrave, 2010), The New Xenophobia (OUP, 2016) and the novels, The Body by the Shore (2022), his most recent work and Night of Happiness (Picador, 2018). His novels have been shortlisted for 16 prestigious prizes in five countries, including the Man Asian Literary Prize, the DSC Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award.
May 29
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Srilata K.

By Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the 'State' of the 'Art' No Comments
Cite this Essay

MLA:
K., Srilata. “Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art’.” Indian Writing In English Online, 29 May 2023, https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/srilata-k/ .

Chicago:
K., Srilata. “Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art’.” Indian Writing In English Online. May 29, 2023. https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/srilata-k/ .

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?

Srilata K.: Like most Indians, I grew up in a multi-lingual environment. My schooling, however, was largely in English and the poetry and fiction I read were mostly in English. Quite soon, it became the language I thought in – though I did revert to thinking in Tamil every now and then, depending on the circumstances. I was never self-conscious about that switch. So even now, while I write in English, that English is imbued with Tamil, Hindi, Telugu and a sprinkling of other Indian languages. I don’t think that question has the urgency it had in the 60s. Languages choose us depending on the paths that nation states forge for themselves. The important thing is to learn to use the language that has chosen us as well as we can in the writing of poetry.

 

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?

S.K.: I have been hugely influenced by AK Ramanujan’s translations of Sangam poetry. I tend to fall back on that register unconsciously – especially these dates in my own re-imagining of the Mahabharatha. Kamala Das too shaped me as a woman poet. I don’t think my poetry exists outside of this long tradition. I may or may not be conscious of where I am located vis a vis the tradition but that’s another question.

 

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?

S.K.: I don’t think of readership at all when I write. I think that anxiety could get in the way of composition. That said, I find that there is a lot of interest in younger people. In Chennai, for instance, there is an active slam poetry presence and so many young people write poetry. Poetry often thrives outside of English classrooms I think!

 

Q: Do you read, write, or translate poetry in a language other than English? If yes, how does it influence your poetry in English?

S.K.: I translate Tamil poetry into English. And as I said earlier, I think the tonality of Tamil and sometimes words, seep into my own poetry even though it is in English. I have actually written about this in my poems.

 

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?

S.K.: For close to two decades I taught a workshop course in Creative writing at IIT Madras. I continue to teach it Sai University, Chennai. A large part of the course consists of poetry. At first, students assume that they won’t get poetry. But I find they grow into it. Trying to write poetry I think helps them understand it better. As a teacher, I refrain from over-explaining the poem, letting the words take over.

 

Q: What are your views on the poetry that appears today on such popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram?

S.K.: Let me just say I follow it all with great interest!

 

A poet, an author, a columnist, a translator, a writer-in-residence at the University of Stirling, at Sangam house and at the Yeonhui Art Space in Seoul, Professor K. Srilata currently teaches English literature at Sai University and formerly at IIT-Madras. Her recent book is This Kind of Child: The ‘Disability’ Story (2022).

 

 

Header Image Courtesy: Srilata K.

 

Mar 19
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Meena Kandasamy

By Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the 'State' of the 'Art' No Comments
Cite this Essay

MLA:
Kandasamy, Meena. “Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art’.” Indian Writing In English Online, 20 March 2023, https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/meena-kandasamy/

Chicago:
Kandasamy, Meena. “Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art’.” Indian Writing In English Online. March 20, 2023. https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/meena-kandasamy/ .

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?

Meena Kandasamy: I wrote in English because of a really strange reason. My mother tongue was Tamil, but the closest government school near my home was a Kendriya Vidyalaya. I had two working parents, so they enrolled me there—and I ended up learning Hindi and English. In many ways I resent this happening in my life because I lost the special access to learning my own mother-tongue. So I started writing in English. I do not think that this question is relevant at all—there are a lot of people who are primarily using English as a mother-tongue, as their principal language. So, why not use it for poetry?

 

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?

M.K.: I have read the works of the 19th and 20th century poets which you mention but I won’t call them my influence. I however do consider Kamala Das a major inspiration and influence. AK Ramanujan is someone I likewise admire, more for his body of translations than for his own work. You are right—I do consider my work as something that belongs to this 200-year-old tradition of Indian writing in English.

 

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?

M.K.: I do think that there is a readership/audience for Indian poetry in English. I do not think that we can only look at book sales and decide that there’s a negligible audience. Because a lot of people don’t buy books, but read poems online, watch stuff on YouTube, read pdf files and such-like. I do not consider the audience, for me everyone is an audience, even people who do not read English because that poem can reach them eventually through a translation.

 

Q. Do you read, write, or translate poetry in a language other than English? If yes, how does it influence your poetry in English?

M.K.: Yes, I read and translate poetry from Tamil. I also write sometimes, but only for my friend, lover or myself. I’m not yet confident of sharing it with the outside world. I think Tamil as a language and as a literature has been influencing me for a really, really long time.

 

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?

M.K.: Yes, I’ve taught it in workshops. I too used to feel very anxious—thinking how can poetry be taught. But very fortunately, you often work with students who are poets in some rudimentary form—they are either readers or writers or someone who likes the feel of language, so it is a joy to teach poetry.

 

Q. What are your views on the poetry that appears today on such popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram?

M.K.: I think a lot more people are writing poetry because of the proliferation of social media, and that can only be a good thing.

Meena Kandasamy describes herself as “an anti-caste activist, poet, novelist and translator.” She is the author of poetry collections such as Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010). She has also written three novels: The Gypsy Goddess (2014), When I Hit You (2017), and Exquisite Cadavers (2019).
Mar 06
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Arundhathi Subramaniam

By Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the 'State' of the 'Art' No Comments

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.

Arundhathi Subramaniam is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose. She won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2020 for the poetry collection When God is a Traveller . Besides being well known for prose on Indian spirituality, she is also an arts critic, anthologist, performing arts curator and poetry editor. More information about her can be found in https://arundhathisubramaniamin.wordpress.com/
Feb 20
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Anjum Hasan

By Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the 'State' of the 'Art' No Comments
Cite this Interview

MLA:
Hasan, Anjum. “Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art.’” Indian Writing In English Online, 20 Feb 2023, indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/anjum-hasan/ .

Chicago:
Hasan, Anjum. “Questions of the ‘State’ of the ‘Art.’” Indian Writing In English Online. Febbruary 20, 2023. indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/anjum-hasan/.

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?

Anjum Hasan: English is a given and to go on doubting it is to obscure the more important question of how to judge what is being written in the language. So many decades of poetry in English later we still don’t have enough conversations about form, matter, style and value. Even the question about language is not really a deep question. I think it ought to be not why we write in English but how we write in English in a multi-lingual reality, often with more than one language in our heads and certainly in our environments.

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.H: Yes of course. And also later poets such as Sujata Bhatt, Mamta Kalia, Tabish Khair, Robin Ngangom and so on.

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.H: The readership is small but it’s there. My only collection of poems, Street on the Hill, published by the Sahitya Akademi in 2006, is still in print. A few copies sell every year.

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.H: I read a little poetry in Hindi and Urdu but most of my reading is in English. I think I have stayed with English for too long, and am just starting now to return as it were to reading more in my mother tongues.

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.H: I do teach poetry on occasion. Most of the “teaching” involves reading good – or what I consider good – poems together as I find that many young or even older people interested in writing have read very little. But what surprises me every time is the receptivity to poetic language once one starts to unpack it.

Q. What are your views on the poetry that appears today on such popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram?

A.H: I don’t read them often but there seems to be a difference between using these platforms to share published work and being encouraged by the ease of sharing to toss off poems for instant consumption and easy forgetting.

Anjum Hasan’s collection of poetry titled Street on the Hill was published by the Sahitya Akademi in 2006. She is the author of the novels The Cosmopolitans, Neti, Neti, and Lunatic in My Head, and collections of short fiction A Day in the Life and Difficult Pleasures. Her work has appeared in publications such as  Granta, Paris Review, and Wasafiri. More information is available on her official website: https://www.anjumhasan.com/home
Feb 13
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Mamang Dai

Mamang Dai

By Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the 'State' of the 'Art' No Comments
Cite this Interview

MLA:
Dai, Mamang. “Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art.’” Indian Writing In English Online, 13 Feb 2023, indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/mamang_dai/ .

Chicago:
Dai, Mamang. “Questions on the ‘State’ of the ‘Art.’” Indian Writing In English Online. February 23, 2022. indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/mamang_dai/ .

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?

M.D: What are the circumstances that led to writing poetry using English– I think the question is relevant (since it is still asked), or asked the other way round as to why we don’t write in our mother tongue. The answers are varied and continuing. There is, of course, the straight answer that many languages are non-script. The English language was the medium of instruction in schools and we use the language we learned to read and write in. Then there are exophonic writers, by choice. If a writer is comfortable using a different language why is mother tongue perceived to be more necessary to write in.

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?

M.D: I don’t know about feeling part of the two-hundred-year-old tradition!  I was reading Tagore quite a bit, and Kamala Das and Nissim Ezekiel. I just feel happy writing, and happy and inspired reading poetry from ancient times in ballads and sagas to modern times.

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?

M.D: Sometimes you read something and almost jump up in joy or fall off the chair. Such a thing is poetry. I think there will always be need for poetry. There is this happiness angle, the consolation and connection that makes us feel part of a larger reality that comes through with the beauty and power poetry.

When writing I don’t think of readership. At the most I might think of some friends and how we might be meeting and talking about, and pondering on the way we are!

Q: Do you read, write, or translate poetry in a language other than English? If yes, how does it influence your poetry in English?

M.D: No.

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?

M.D:  No, never taught poetry.

Q: What are your views on the poetry that appears today on such popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram?

M.D: Actually I am not active on social media and I don’t know much about poetry on social media platforms. But during the Covid pandemic lockdown online poetry festivals were a lifeline—just to see poets coming forward and reading was succour indeed.

Mamang Dai is a poet and novelist from Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh. A former journalist, Dai also worked with World Wide Fund for nature in the Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspots programme.
In 2003 she received the state Verrier Elwin Award for her book Arunachal Pradesh, The Hidden Land featuring the culture, folklore and customs of Arunachal’s different communities. A Padma Shri awardee, Dai is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award 2017, for her novel The Black Hill, in English.
Dai lives in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Read Mamang Dai on IWE Online
Finding the WaySmall Towns and the River
Dec 23
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Portrait of Jerry Pinto

Jerry Pinto

By Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the 'State' of the 'Art' No Comments

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?

J.P: I was born into a family that spoke many languages but which communicated in English. This meant that my dreaming and my desiring, my philosophising and my fantasizing, my worrying and my wondering, are all conducted in English. This pours into my poetry and my poetry comes to me in English.

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?

J.P: Without doubt. We are palimpsests of all the poetry we read. And we were truly the lucky generation. There was Nissim Ezekiel at the PEN All-India Centre, always ready to listen to a new poem. There was Adil Jussawalla who brought us poetry readings every week for years. Gieve Patel was much more distant but he was willing to mentor kids at some school in South India. Eunice de Souza was teaching English and holding a festival called Ithaca at St Xavier’s College. The college I went to had Vasant A Dahake teaching Marathi. Prabodh Parikh brought us Gujarati poetry, Kauns Ma (Between Parenthesis). And because of this best of raucous song birds, we had birds of passage. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra came through and A K Ramanujan. Each brought a distinct voice, another sound. They wrote in Englishes as varied and wonderful as the country from which they drew sustenance.

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?

J.P:  India lives in simultaneous worlds of book saturation and book hunger. The audience is not my concern. The reader is a myth wrapped in a mystery. Both myth and mystery are important to me but not this one. I don’t think I know much about the reader but I will say this as an inveterate buyer of secondhand books. Indian poetry in English rarely ends up on the streets. These books stay home.

Q: Do you read, write, or translate poetry in a language other than English? If yes, how does it influence your poetry in English?

J.P: I have translated poetry from Marathi and Urdu and Hindi into English. There is nothing I do that does not go into my poetry. This encounter with language has been rewarding in so many ways, I am sometimes of the opinion that it should be a requirement for poets. And then I acknowledge that only a maniac or a demagogue would want to make rules for poets and I let the idea fade.

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?

J.P:  I am guilty of conducting poetry workshops. I do not think poetry can be taught but it can be experienced at workshops in different and useful ways. For instance, reading one’s own poems aloud for the first time is a powerful and transformative experience. You are changed by it forever. Your inside is now outside you. Your voice has left you taking with it a soul secret. You have made your first steps into a frightening and exhilarating world. Reading a poem aloud also breaks it open for you. It sounds so different inside your head, it looks so different on the page and in the charged air between you and the person listening it becomes another thing altogether. Then it is workshopped and its flaws and failures pointed out. These may even be its strengths and you must learn to deflect theory’s slings and arrows from the defenceless word artefact on the page. What can be learned will vary from poet to poet. What can be taught will  vary from facilitator to facilitator. But the greatest workshop of all is the reading of poetry and more poetry and yet more poetry and how often we forget that. Poetry is the workshop and the product.

Q: What are your views on the poetry that appears today on such popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram?

J.P: I don’t read much of it so I can’t say.

Born in Goa in 1966, Jerry Pinto is a Mumbai-based poet, novelist, short fiction writer, children’s writer and translator. His poetry includes Asylum and other Poems (2003). His first novel, Em and the Big Hoom (2012), won the Sahitya Akademi in 2016. He is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction (2016). He has also written books about Bollywood, such as Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb (2013), which won the National Award for the Best Book on Cinema. Pinto’s most recent work is the novel, The Education of Yuri (2022).
Nov 28
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Jeet Thayil

By Indian Poetry in English: Questions on the 'State' of the 'Art' 2 Comments

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?

J.T: It was a relevant question in the Sixties. Today, not so much, except among regional-language poets who will contend that those of us who write in English are somehow inauthentic. This is an obsolete notion. There’s a reason why this questionnaire is in English. It’s the only way Indians can communicate with each other. I don’t speak Hindi, or Malayalam, and hope I never have to.

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?

J.T: I am very much a part of the two-hundred-year-old tradition of Indian poetry written in English. I know there are poets who do not consider themselves part of this tradition, and I think it’s a pity. Even if your interest is the breaking of tradition you should know what it is, to break it better. I also consider myself part of the thirteen-hundred-year-old tradition that goes back to the first poem written in the English language, Beowulf. And there is a third tradition of which I am a part. I am an Indian poet, which makes me a modern embodiment of the tradition of Indian poetry that goes back some three thousand years to the Rig Veda,
the oldest poetic tradition of them all.

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?

J.T: I write for myself and the poets I admire, living and dead. Classrooms and audiences come into it later, when I take it  outside. If I want to be kind, I pick poems that might amuse, entertain or delight, always keeping in mind that there are readers who will resist delight with all their might.

Q: Do you read, write, or translate poetry in a language other than English? If yes, how does it influence your poetry in English?

J.T: I read, write, think and dream in only one language, the Indian language also known as English.

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?

J.T: I have taught in several countries and in various settings, from the classroom lecture to the graduate workshop to the online interactive course. I’ve learned a few things over the years. You can teach students how to read a poem. By this I mean the technical side, the number of syllables in a line, the way it scans and how to scan, the metrical foot and how to identify it, the paradoxical freedom of formal verse, the uses of rhyme, and so, infinitely, on. What you can’t teach is how to write a poem.

Born in Kerala, India, Jeet Thayil is a poet, novelist, librettist, and journalist. His first novel, Narcopolis (2012), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His poetry collections include Collected Poems (2015) and These Errors Are Correct (2008), which won the 2013 Poetry Award from the Sahitya Akademi. He recently edited The Penguin Book of Indian Poets (2022).
Read Jeet Thayil on IWE Online
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