For a while, as communism began to collapse, the supremacy of western capitalism seemed best challenged by deploying the ironic tactics of postmodernism. Over time, though, a new difficulty was created: because postmodernism attacks everything, a mood of confusion and uncertainty began to grow and flourish until, in recent years, it became ubiquitous. A lack of confidence in the tenets, skills and aesthetics of literature permeated the culture and few felt secure or able or skilled enough or politically permitted to distinguish or recognise the schlock from the not. And so, sure enough, in the absence of any aesthetic criteria, it became more and more useful to assess the value of works according to the profits they yielded. Capital, as has been said many times before, accommodates all needs. So, paradoxically, we arrive at a moment where literature itself has become threatened, first by the artistic credo of postmodernism the death of the author and second by the unintended result of that credo, the hegemony of the marketplace. What then becomes sought and desired are fictions that resonate with the widest possible public: that is, with as many discourses as possible. This public can then give or withhold approval measured in sales.

He goes on to be more hopeful about the future. The age of authenticism, though…really?

Image from Treehugger.com

So I’m guessing you’ve seen  The Poetry Foundation’s new look?  Please go see if you haven’t. PF is a great place to read poems and I’ve always liked that I can browse by poet and period, and also by occasion, holiday and subject. Their new content management system is on steroids and now you can also browse by sub-subject. Eg: if you look at love, you get another menu which has: Desire, Heartache & Loss, Realistic & Complicated, Romantic Love, Classic Love, Infatuation & Crushes, Unrequited Love, Break-ups & Vexed Love, and First Love. (Look and learn, Facebook. Look and learn. I mean, that’s a thorough categorisation for relationship status though, of course, it’s minus the friends-with-benefits type options which are also absolutely essential.)

Only: slight voice is nagging that we’re talking about poems. You know, nuance and feeling and all things totally frightening? Should they really be boxed up this neatly? But yeah, content management systems and databases and other gooey things — they’re double edged.

They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity
barred with black bands,
which divide the scales’
radiant sections

like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.

Read the rest here.

My own attitude toward cooking is as erratic as everything else in my life. I hate it, I love it, I don’t know what I want to do with it. I’m probably the equivalent of people who love poetry and badly want to be a poet but don’t really have the discipline for it. I’m impatient with measurements for one, which is really a no-deal thing if you want to be a cook of any seriousness. And I can’t poach an egg. I tried really hard some time back and ended up with a lot of makeshift egg drop soup. Well, it probably wasn’t really. But that’s what I’m calling it. I like chicken though. I can do nice things with chicken.

More food poetry — Persimmons by Li-Young Lee,  Yam by Bruce Guernsey, and of course this famous poem about plums by William Carlos Williams.

And here’s an early picture of Hart Crane:

Image from Lit Kicks.

Hart Crane’s life–and death by suicide at age 32–certainly makes for a dramatic movie. From Lit Kicks again:

The facts are that over 70 years ago, the poet was on the SS Orizaba, a ship traveling 275 miles north east of Havana from Mexico to New York. It was there he drank copious amounts of alcohol, and after several violent outbursts, had to be locked in his cabin. It is said he was in such a fierce state that the door had to be nailed shut. Somehow, against all odds Crane managed to escape and was seen heading for the sailor’s quarters in search of “the secret oar and petals of love” which translates from Crane-speak as a hefty bout of buggering. He was found later that night beaten up and relieved of his valuables.

The next morning, he visited his companion and sometime lover Peggy Cowley, who at the time was trying to “rescue” him from the terrible affliction that he happened to be attracted to people of the same sex. His last words to her were “I’m not going to make it dear, I’m utterly disgraced.” With this he left, and was seen at the boat’s stern where he approached the railing in an overcoat under the midday sun. He removed this and, in his pajamas, leapt over the side and was last seen swimming strongly towards the horizon. Lifeboats were sent out to search for him but returned empty-handed. His body was never found. The ship’s captain, a man called Blackadder (clearly not skilled in the art of bereavement diplomacy), said, “If the propellers didn’t grind him to mincemeat then the sharks would have got him immediately.”

Date: 26-27 March, 10.00 a.m. – 5.30 p.m.

Venue:British Library, Prestige Takt, 23 Kasturba Road Cross (Opp: Visvesvaraiah Industrial & Technological Museum), Bengaluru

Registration Guidelines: Catering to the age group of 18 – 35 yrs, this workshop will host a maximum 12 participants. We will necessarily screen applicants. So please email ONE ‘finished’ poem to tfaindia84@gmail.com by March 10, 2011 to help Sampurna choose the participants. Once you are selected, you can send in your cheque for Rs 1800 made out to Toto Funds the Arts, at H-301, Adarsh Gardens, 47th Cross, 8th Block, Jayanagar, Bengaluru, 560082. Those selected must bring with them, to the workshop, ONE ‘finished’ poem (either the one they had sent earlier or a new one) and ONE poem in progress.

Three poems are up at pyrta journal. I haven’t been submitting for the longest time so am pleased to break that hiatus with pyrta which is easily one of the prettiest journals I’ve seen. It’s run and edited by poet Janice Pariat.

Also in the issue: Nicholas Wong’s ‘All About My Mother’ strikes goose-pimply levels of sadness, longing and shame. And Abhimanyu Singh’s Amsterdam poems are haunting me. (I’ve been trying to do a series on Durban and god, it’s hard to get the essence of a place.)  I also like the photo essay Gods Lonely People by Nishant Ohri. There is one picture of a boy blowing a bubble gum bubble (is that what it’s called?) with a distant, pensive expression on his face. I like. Go check it out.

]]> http://aninditasengupta.com/2011/03/pratilipi-books/feed/ 0 http://aninditasengupta.com/2011/03/close-to-heart/ http://aninditasengupta.com/2011/03/close-to-heart/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 06:43:33 +0000 Anindita http://aninditasengupta.com/?p=2568 Kuzhali Manickavel on a subject close to my heart:

It saddens me to say that I speak from experience when I say that sometimes I would see these “mistakes” and turn into the Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot. Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot royally points out the mistake even though nobody asked. This is often done with a very Jesus on the cross air, like ‘forgive them father, they know not that their English is all rong but don’t afraid babay, I fix everything because I am awesome’. The Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot then writes out in nice, big letters the right way (AFTER taking picture of the ohsoprecious English to post on blog or generally show everyone because it’s so lololo and also proof that we hast been among the great unwashed and its unwashed English).

I suspect a lot of people are not aware of what they’re doing when they’re doing this. I’ve been there too.

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City of Water has been reviewed in Asian Cha. I’m very pleased because Asian Cha is a nice place to be and because I’ve been very lazy about sending the book to people and this is one time I actually made the effort.

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Uncle Pai died. Amar Chitra Katha comics were really my first insight into so many things–apsaras, talking animals, the perfect body, Buddha, god in general. And love. Don’t forget love.

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]]> http://aninditasengupta.com/2011/03/close-to-heart/feed/ 2 http://aninditasengupta.com/2011/02/fonts-flowers/ http://aninditasengupta.com/2011/02/fonts-flowers/#comments Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:56:14 +0000 Anindita http://aninditasengupta.com/?p=2562 On handwriting and fonts, Nell Boechenstein at The Millions:

Pens are often considered a fetish item of neurotics with disposable income, but a Mont Blanc sensibility is not my point. Despite being reliably cash-poor, writer-types are often as particular about their pens as they are about their fonts. (When Helvetica—the trend, the font, the film, the MoMA exhibition—was the rage, Slate published a piece asking writersabout their favorite fonts and those queried had cultivated preferences at the ready; Courier, mostly, since those writers who may not fetishize the pen fetishize the typewriter instead.)

Confession: my handwriting sucks (at least I think so and I’m hoping someone will convince me otherwise) and I hate writing by hand. This leads to intense fear that I’m not really a writer because real writers, you know, they love pens.

I do love fonts. But even here, I’m commitment-shy so I like to change from time to time. I like serif fonts like Times New Roman or Book Antiqua while writing and Arial (10 pt) while editing. I switch back to a serif font for the final draft. For blog posts, I love Georgia which is convenient since that’s the default WordPress font.

Gosh, how nerdy is this post? But yeah, just to finish, I’ve been through my Courier phase and exactly for the reason that it looks like typewriter font.

On the subject of nerdiness, I recently discovered I have become more short-sighted and I found a strand of white in my hair. I also recently had a birthday. How is someone to cope with such profusion? No really, it has been all upheaval and discovery in the last few months. What is helping now is flower season. Look at the gorgeousity here. My street has some Golden Trumpet and some jasmine. They’re lovely. It’s been raining a little and in the early morning and the evenings when the air is cool, the world seems soft.

It’s interesting that this tuesday’s poem at Tuesday Poem (link in sidebar) is ‘Olduvai Gorge Thorn Tree’ by Sarah Lindsay:

He kept dreaming of a tree, dreaming

of a tree, dreaming of a tree

and its sound like a hush,

and it seemed he could open

his mouth when he woke and make the others

know something they didn’t already know…

The Toto Annual Awards happened earlier this month and the English creative writing awards  went to Deepika Arwind and Ishita Basu Mallik. Both received the awards for their poetry so despite all the lamentations about poetry being dead, people continue to write it. Some damn good poetry too. Also, read Eunice D’Souza’s piece in Mumbai Mirror on an Audience of One.

Several centuries ago, the classical Sanskrit poet Bhavabhuti understood the concept of an audience of one.  He wrote, “If learned critics publicly deride/My verse, well, let them. Not for them I wrought/. One day a man shall live to share my thought:/For time is endless and the world is wide.”

I find all this moaning about the “decline of audiences for poetry” a little mystifying. I don’t believe it is true because there are so many people creating an interest in poetry: through workshops in schools, writing workshops, the internet, festivals, and so on.  I feel that those who do the moaning don’t see the contradictions in what they are doing. Instead of using endless words and newsprint to moan about decline, they could write about a poem or poet in a way that draws in readers.

And Kent Johnson in Almost Island on ’33 Rules of Poetry for poets under 23′:

5. Ask yourself constantly: What is the worth of poetry? When you answer, “It is nothing,” you have climbed the first step. Prepare, without presumption, to take the next one.

This year, they also introduced a Kannada creative writing award which I think is super. Full results here.

East Bangalore finally got its own full-fledged theatre with Jagriti opening its doors. I feel sentimental about this because I lived in east Bangalore for a decade and had to make a two-hour drive every time I wanted to watch a play. So even though I was quite meh about the opening play — Anita Nair’s adaptation of her own novel, Mistress (yes, good grief) — I am happy that Jagriti is there and that my mother and other people who live that side will be able to watch plays easily. It’s funny living in a growing city. Every now and then, something happens that makes you jump and squeal. A theatre in the eastern suburbs is definitely one of those moments.

I went for an evening around the Kabir Project at the Suchitra Film and Drama Academy. Writer Linda Hess talked about her book Singing Emptiness: Kumar Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir (Calcutta, Seagull Books, 2009). I’ll try to write more about the book later but what was striking about the event was the importance of the music — there was a lot of lovely singing — and how easily Kabir’s work gives itself to music. How much of today’s poetry would, I wonder. I’m not talking about concrete poetry and other types of poetry that are clearly not written to be musical. But even lyric poetry.

Hess talked about the concept of singing from a place of formlessness, ‘shunya’ or emptiness. More about this later, if I understand it a little better, and if newfound blog-zeal doesn’t disappear. UR Ananthamurthy, who was in conversation with Hess, read a poem he wrote after meeting Kumar Gandharva for the first time. The poem was about the singer eating a hearty meal right after singing. Watching him, the poet  realises that he needs to do this to ‘come down’ to normal state. This implies that he is in a transcendent state while singing. There are references to divinity as well in the poem. URA talks about God having become a ‘tenant’ in KG for that time. Some people have a problem with this general idea of creativity being attached to God or being divine in some way. What do you think about it?

Okay, and the Attakalari Biennial 2011 is here. Full schedule here.

Ninasam’s annual shibeera (camp) brings together academics, activists, actors, dancers, directors, enthusiasts, journalists, performers, photographers, poets, readers, singers, smokers, writers and watchers for a week of cultural adda. This time, there were two plays by the Ninasam repertory group — Kuvempu’s Shudra Tapaswi and Shakespeare’s Othello. There was Carnatic music by TM Krishna (sublime!). There were lectures by Sundar Sarrukai, Rajni Bakshi, Shiv Vishwanathan and N. Manu Chakravarthy. There were poetry, fiction and play readings in Kannada, Marathi and English. There was other stuff but I don’t want to bore you with lists. What I’m saying is there was lots of gorgeousity.

I did a reading of my work. I was more nervous about this than I am about most readings. Firstly, it was the post-lunch session. Yes, bring on the sympathy. Secondly, there were many Bhasha writers/readers at this gathering. I was expecting questions about mother tongue, cultural roots, the whole continuum of belonging and unbelonging about which I feel tormented sometimes and terribly bored at other times.

It was wonderful. Yes, there were some expected questions. But there were also some unexpected ones, especially later, and some wonderful responses from people I respect a great deal. But most interesting was this encounter with a Kannada poet —-

Our first meeting was after dinner the night before my reading. We were standing outside the canteen, near the washbasins. It was cold and rainy. Water dripping into my ears, muddy feet, poetry talk.

‘People who write in English can’t be authentic because they don’t think in English,’ he said.

‘I think in English.’

‘Yes, but you can’t feel in English.’ He drawled out the feel, like feeel. He looked at me compassionately because I am handicapped in this way.

‘Erm, yeah, I need a smoke.’

It took me a day before I could pass him without wanting to make faces. (Reader, I did not actually make faces. It might have seemed immature.)

After my reading, he waylaid me on two separate occasions, told me what he found problematic about my work–and some of it was exactly what has been appreciated in other places. It’s always freeing, even if unsettling, to encounter totally different poetics. It forces you to pick and choose elements from different cultures, to continually think about what would work best for a particular poem instead of following the easy formulae of rules. For example, I’ve been thinking about the whole ‘show, don’t tell’ principle quite a bit and his aesthetic preferences for exploratory statements as opposed to ‘photography’ made me think about this some more.

With all the intense communicating and socialising and sharing, I started feeling breathless every once in a while.  There is a small tailoring workshop on the grounds, a room with some women on sewing machines, a bench outside and in front, a grove stretching out. I sometimes went and sat there, under the trees, to think or write.  I exchanged smiles with the women but somehow, felt reluctant to break the silent companionship in which we sat — them inside, me outside — working at something. It seemed important to let that place be just for ‘doing’, and not for talking.

Here are some lovely pictures of the festival by Prateek Mukund. Oh, and anyone can attend the annual shibeera. You just need to write to Ninasam around the time it happens.

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After the intensity of Ninasam, there was the intensity of illness. I was sick for about three weeks. The upside is that antibiotics affect the poetry well, mostly because I get so drugged that I can’t see straight. This, I find, is an useful state for poetry. As are hangovers.

It makes me think of this interview with Iain McGilchrist, a writer and psychologist who has written a “a fascinating analysis of, and a clear warning about, our increasingly divided brains (Poetryfoundation.org).” From the interview:

The right hemisphere is not just better at understanding metaphor in the strictest sense, but at making unusual connections, and therefore at any non-literal use of language. I don’t think we need to get hung up on that: metonymy is also going to be a right-hemisphere function—indeed my thesis is that poetry is nothing if not a recruitment of the right hemisphere.

I’m interested in this because I feel like I get through life as two different people (left-person and right-person) — one who is obsessed with process, systems, lists and order and the other who shirks all of these alarmingly. The first fills in excel sheets with plans, routines, menus worked out for the entire month. The other refuses to even look at the excel sheet on certain days. It’s not hard to predict which would be better at poetry. The trick is getting the right one to come out at the right time. It’s not nice when I’m at a social event and find myself drifting blankly while someone speaks to me, or open my mouth to say something and realise I’m speaking strange.  And on that note, read what George Szirtes says on conversation.

Also interesting is what McGilchrist says about the logic, order and patterning required in poetry. Rhyme, rhythm, metre.

And I could not agree less that having a clear metrical pattern and rhyme scheme is limiting, or tends to suggest the left hemisphere’s attitude to language. They are the condition of all music and dance, the right hemisphere’s domain, and when we decide to dispense with them, we take a knowing risk.

Hmm.

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I’ve been making a(nother) attempt to learn Kannada. I decided I had gone about it all wrong in the past — all those conversational classes which told me how to buy vegetables at the market just bored me to death. I realised the only way I can get interested in a language is through its writing. So I’ve learned the script. I can now read signage of all sorts and spend a lot of time reading out shop signs to A.

More ambitiously, I’m also trying to read Girish Karnad’s ‘Yayati’. Since I can spend a total of one hour a week or something on this, I’ll probably be done with it by next year. But hey, remember the tortoise?

In the spirit of slow but sure, I love this site called Padakali which gives you one new word every day.

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Place: Goobe’s Book Republic, Church Street

Date: Saturday, July 10.

Time: 5 pm

Do come!

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Also, three poems of mine, ‘Dolls’, ‘The Mouth’ and ‘The Vivid Stream’ were published in Asia Writes. Read them here.

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And Deepa Ganesh’s interview of me in The Hindu

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ps: What dreadful, short posts. What laziness. I’m going to do better soon.

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I’m in this article in HT Horizons. According to it, my typical day involves reading, reading, and well, not much else. Not sure where they got that idea from but it sounds nice. Kind of a dream life. Also, this article about City of Water appeared in Bangalore Mirror today.

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I had written about South African poet Loftus Marais some time back and I’m really thrilled to see him on PIW. It means that translations of some of his poems are now online.

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