In 1969, the poet and publisher P. Lal (1929-2010) published Modern Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology and a Credo. A singular feature of this six-hundred-page volume was the ‘credo’, which featured responses to a questionnaire that Lal had sent to contemporary Indian English poets. The provocation for this questionnaire was an entry by the poet and critic Buddhadeva Bose in The Concise Encyclopaedia of English and American Poets and Poetry (edited by Stephen Spender and Donald Hall, 1963), which concludes with the claim that “‘Indo-Anglian’ poetry is a blind alley, lined with curio shops, leading nowhere”. The responses to Lal’s questionnaire reveal the myriad ways in which the poets related themselves to the terms ‘Indian’ and ‘English’ in the 1960s.

The present questionnaire from IWE Online recalls the pioneering attempt by P. Lal, in a whole new set of cultural contexts for the genre. These questions attempt to take stock of Indian poetry in English today: to understand what contemporary poets think about their relationship with India, and the English language as a medium for their poetic expression. All except one of these questions differ from the 1969 questionnaire. While the two questionnaires have shared concerns, such as the status of English in India, as well as a tradition of Indian poetry and its readership, they also have significant differences owing to the passage of more than half a century and the inevitable changes it has brought to the circumstances in which Indian poetry in English finds itself today. The present questionnaire, being part of an Online Educational Resource, is also concerned with the pedagogical aspects of the genre, in addition to the influence of the internet on its circulation.

The poets here are almost unanimous in claiming the English language as their own, while also accepting their multicultural and polyglot heritage. While situating their poetry in a global tradition going back several millennia, they also acknowledge their debt to their contemporaries. Even though readership is often not a primary concern of their creative process, some poets do reflect on its reassuring presence, thereby demonstrating that Bose’s grim prediction made in the 1960s did not come to pass. In this fortnightly series, IWE Online brings together some of India’s finest poets writing in English today in order to reflect on how Indian poetry in English has survived and continues to thrive in the twenty-first century.

Atul V. Nair