Anindita Sengupta

Toto Funds the Arts
in association with

The British Council
& the Association of British Scholars

is delighted to invite you

to Ruth Padel’s reading of her poetry and fiction.

Ruth will also be in conversation with poet-novelist Anjum Hasan.

Venue: Crossword Bookstore, ACR Towers, Ground Floor, 32 Residency Road, Bangalore – 1

Date and time: Friday, 8 January 2010 at 7.00 pm

Coffee/tea and refreshments will be served from 6.30 pm onwards

Ruth Padel, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London, is a prize-winning British poet. Her seventh poetry collection, Darwin – A Life in Poems, is an intimate verse biography of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin, bringing out connections between his personal life and his work. She has written an acclaimed book on tiger conservation, Tigers in Red Weather, for which she explored forests in South East Asia, Sumatra, Russia, China, Bhutan and Nepal as well as India. She is visiting India on a British Council Darwin Now grant, to complete research for her first novel, which will focus on king cobra conservation. She will read from Darwin – A Life in Poems, Tigers in Red Weather, and her forthcoming novel, Where the Serpent Lives. To find out more about Ruth and her work, visit www.ruthpadel.com

Anjum Hasan is the author of the novels Neti, Neti (2009) and Lunatic in my Head (2007), and the book of poems Street on the Hill (2006). Her poems, short fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in anthologies, magazines and journals in India and abroad. She is Books Editor, The Caravan.

The Poetry Foundation invited nine poets to talk about the decade in poetry. Interestingly,

Annie Finch on how women poets changed in their attitude towards each other:

Jane Dowson and Gilbert and Gubar have pointed out that for generations women poets renounced and ignored the women poets before them. During the last decade that pattern seemed to change as, in new physical, textual, and virtual spaces, women poets increasingly took control of the development and maintenance of the canon and poetic tradition.

And Ron Silliman on how the technology changed access, tools and poet-reader relations:

The poet’s relationship to his or her audience is undergoing a profound transformation. The poet’s relationship to the institutions and even to the tools of her or his practice is doing likewise. Everything is up for grabs.

Some poets have chosen to embrace the new with everything from flarf to technology-based visual poetries. Others have decided that the “timeless” values of tradition will outlast even this….What’s apparent is that (a) this joyride isn’t over, and (b) we’re all in this together.

So we are continuing with the cheer. Look, I even changed to a Christmassy theme! I thought this was nice, sort of subtle, unlike the ones which had holly all over them. I heart Wordpress more and more for making it so easy to change look. I dabbled in web design a few years back, even made money from it which qualifies it as a previous profession, and I used to enjoy playing around with typeface and colour. I don’t do that anymore so this is my consolation.

Anyway, over the weekend I watched Cheri, Stephen Frears’ film of Colette’s novella Cheri. I have a weakness for lush period movies and this one is certainly both lush and period — 19th C France and the life of the rich and infamous. Lea, an aging courtesan takes Cheri, the decadent and disaffected son of a friend, under her wing and into her bed. The relationship starts off as a transaction of sorts, the age-old exchange of wisdom and youth, and the two are so cynical about love that they don’t imagine it could happen to them. Against all expectations, they stay together for six years. When he goes off to get married in keeping with his mother’s wishes, they realise they love each other.

The movie has lavish sets and costumes. Rupert Friend looks both callous and vulnerable. Michelle Pfeiffer makes up in style what she lacks in substance, and is patently well-cast as the aging beauty. But it’s no Dangerous Liaisons so don’t expect a huge deal. It feels rushed in the beginning and abrupt at the end because they’ve crammed the entire story of the sequel, The Last of Cheri, into a four-line voiced narration. The lovers are unconvincing in bits and there’s something incomplete about the whole venture. Still, if you have an afternoon to spare and and like period movies, it’s a relaxing sort of watch.

I was struck and a little amused by something while watching the movie. Much of it is about the lovers’ suffering. And because they’re rich, they have the means to ‘cope’ rather well. So here is evidence of my flawed heart: I was finding it hard to sympathise with people who can check into luxurious hotels for weeks to get over someone. I had to remind myself of the debilitating nature of heartbreak, its sapping of colour from everyday things, its dulling. Most likely, the brilliant blue of the Atlantic seemed pale to Lea in her post-love blues. It’s unfair to not extend the same level of human compassion to everyone (including the rich) but I think it does happen sometimes.

***

Movies often speed up the pace of books. In one of the essays in Art Objects, Jeanette Winterson talks about how each book has its own pace and good reading means finding the pace of a book and settling into it. Because pace is integral to any text, its deeply unsettling when it’s manipulated too much for adaptation. I think that’s why the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was one of the more satisfying ones because at least they gave the story enough time. Also Jane Eyre, which I watched twice for its gothic mood and for Timothy Dalton as Rochester.

***

Speaking of hot men, have you seen Captain Kirk make beat poetry of Palin’s speech? Some of my happiest memories of childhood include ‘Captain Curd’ as I inexplicably called him. I was always torn about who I wanted to grow up and marry more: him or Mr Spock. Twenty years and the Star Trek movie later, I’ve decided on Spock but it was real close.

…I’ve changed back to the camels which is cheery (I think) and plan to deal only in happy stuff for a while. Wait, that might mean I have nothing to write about. But we shall take that risk.

Next month I leave for Canterbury where for three months I will be reading, writing, walking about and trying to keep my toes unfrozen. Of course, I’m very excited about all this. Most of all, about the mountains of free time to do nothing but stare at my blank screen and will poetry to come. More seriously, I’m looking forward to traveling England and attending poetry readings and performances in London.

I also seem to have developed an irrational fear of not getting enough spicy-tangy food to eat in those three months. Which would explain why I’ve been hastily eating every kind of chaat, thali, curry, tandoori and biriyani that I can lay my hands on. Maybe I fancy I’m a camel. By the time I get there, I’m going to be a blimp.

Besides eating, I’m looking for a coat and boots to fight the winter there. This means that I have to spend a lot of time trying to get inside shops. Sometimes, I manage this. But often I do not, because of sheer lack of stamina and will power. On Sunday, we drove down Commercial Street and the entire city was doing their Christmas shopping. A sea of people rustling packets with that curiously determined look that shoppers acquire — beady eyes, sweat on the upper lip, steely jaw. We drove down the street in awe. He cursed the shops, the people, the traffic. I slumped in my seat as if I was being led to the torture chamber. Predictably, we didn’t find parking, heaved a sigh of relief and quickly left to get a drink instead.

I decided to go back on a weekday morning, and am now convinced that this is the only way to do it without getting stampeded. People who have to go to offices will have to take the morning off, but what’s half a day’s pay for health, sanity — and who knows — life? Of course, if everyone does this, then Monday mornings will be as bad as weekends. So on second thoughts, strike that suggestion.

Anyway, I did some shopping that I liked. Goobe’s Book Republic on Church Street has expanded their collection and I bought two poetry books: Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf and Margaret Atwood’s Selected Poems II. Quite pleased. For the uninitiated, Goobe is a bookshop and a library so you can rent or buy, or first rent and then buy if you like the book. I think it’s totally cool.

The year end is full of ‘best of’ and Rob Mackenzie’s holding a poll over at Magma Poetry on what was the best poetry collection of 2009. Of course, most (none?) of these books are available here but I like to look at the lists so that when I buy online, it’s easier to choose what to go broke on. The usual votes for Alice Oswald and Don Paterson but another name that cropped up quite often is Orphaned Latitudes by Gerard Rudolf.

Lastly, I’m not very fond of having to choose what I liked best in a year mainly because I tend to like too many different things at the same time but here are the poetry books I bought / got in 2009 roughly in order of acquisition (not all of them were published this year):

1. Bearings by Karthika Nair
2. Boki by Nitoo Das
3. Night River by Keki N. Daruwalla
4. Nights and Days by James Merill
5. Isla Negra by Pablo Neruda
6. Human Dark with Sugar by Brenda O’ Shaughnessy
7. View From An Escalator by Liesl Jobson
8. Bantu Ghost by Lesego Rampolokeng
9. Poems by Mongane Wally Serote
10. The Poet Lied by Odia Ofeimun
11. The Boiling Caracas by Odia Ofeimun
12. Glumlazi by Pravasan Pillay
13. Romancing the Dead by Gary Cummiskey
14. Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
15. Selected Poems II by Margaret Atwood

Dilip Chitre, poet, critic, painter and film-maker, passed away today.

“Alternatively, I may start running
If it’s not too late already, down the slope
My eyes cataleptic, my motion blurred

Blinded by the wind and bitten in the face
With frost-burnt nostrils and cracked lips
I may go vaguely towards the end

Of this wayward narrative.”

~ from ‘Post-Climactic Love Poem’ by Dilip Chitre (Atlas 01, edited by Sudeep Sen)

But then…

“I am exquisitely here and now
And where I never before was
Nor ever will be.
Moreover, this is not an end.”

~ from ‘Absence from Myself’ by Dilip Chitre (Mascara Literary Review)

Some of his poetry here.

His recent translations of Namdeo Dhasal’s poetry at Almost Island.

Some recent poems at Mascara Literary Review. And some at Muse India.

Hari Batti’s talking about Bhopal all week at his Green Light Dhaba, a place I’ve wanted to give a shout-out to in any case.

Suketu Mehta’s piece in NY Times. Very well-written and quite unflinching.

Imagine if an Indian chief executive had jumped bail for causing an industrial disaster that killed tens of thousands of Americans. What are the chances he’d be sunning himself in Goa?

Here’s where you can donate money for victims: bhopal.org.

And my piece at Guardian Cif. I don’t know why they removed the link to the site from the bottom where I had put it. Must be some policy thing. But anyway, take a look at the comments section where someone’s taking apart Union Carbide’s PR bullshit.

The toxic seethes. Lip wound,
split bone and the blood brays
at noon. A tourist walks in, opens
his mouth. Like a snake swallowing frog,
he can devour history whole.
The children are patient as gods,
watching grey noise up red,
listening to metal innards clink
through the night, shrill kingdoms
of sound. They stitch gapes
opening in skin. Their hands are tidy
with practice. Down here, we’re not tested
for rot. The barometer
only measures what it must—
the length of memory, the depth
of forgetting. Watch for the stampeded step
at the entrance, the broken tooth
glinting in mud. These
are your souvenirs. Pack flesh
tightly in boxes. Face the click
without trembling. See,
here is your grin
turning to grimace.
Here is your face
filling the hole.

***

Because we are all Bhopali. Don’t forget.