April 3rd, 2010 §
Last days in Canterbury. The sky holds its light longer each day. These last months have been both rewarding and freeing. I had burrowed into a rut and I’ve been breaking out of it, I think. It’s all the time and the poetry, the solitude, the detachment from currents.
I did a reading of my work at the university last week. I was nervous and exhilarated as usual. Some of my older, and what I think of as ‘less crafted’ poems still seemed to move people the most. This and the second one on this page have never been revised and so in essence, are what I wrote as first drafts. I’m puzzling over what this means (and hoping it doesn’t mean I should just retire). Of course, sometimes poems that work well in a reading are not the same as those that work well on the page. A poet brings certain things to their own reading of a poem that make it more than the words. But I wonder if that’s all it is.
As a reader, I like a lot of poets whose work is polished. But there are others I like whose poems are looser or even flawed. The truth is I’d rather read a poem that I get something out of — feeling or thought — even if it’s imperfect than a lovely construction that left me cold in both ways. Even one sparkling or memorable line, image, thought trumps a series of words that sit in the right place but glisten dully.
On the note of rules, I lurked at a workshopping site for some time last year. The site is pretty strict about what makes good poetry and what does not. Obviously this has its uses, especially for beginners, but it can also lead to neat poems with the intelligence and emotional appeal of frozen meals. More harmful is the fact that they stress a singular way to write poetry. This can become a comfort zone, an old couch you grow fat in. It’s very tempting to stay there. Poetry is hard to pin down and it’s easier (less risky) to follow a set of rules than to figure out what works or doesn’t as one goes along, poem to poem, moment to moment. How messy that is! How uncontrollable. How dangerous. How much like life.
So how much revision is good revision? Somebody said (I forget who) there’s an optimum amount after which you need to stop, save the poem from your own mind or something like that. Where’s that point? I think of it like that dot in a painting by Miro, the one poet Moniza Alvi talks about, ‘Barely distinguishable from other dots, / it’s true, but quite uniquely placed.’
The dot knows where it is. And once you see it, you know where it is. But until then, it’s a a bit elusive.
Here is the poem and here is a video reading of the poem by Moniza Alvi which shows the painting.
I Would Like to Be a Dot in a Painting by Miro
I would like to be a dot in a painting by Miro.
Barely distinguishable from other dots,
it’s true, but quite uniquely placed.
And from my dark centre
I’d survey the beauty of the linescape
and wonder — would it be worthwhile
to roll myself towards the lemon stripe,
Centrally poised, and push my curves
against its edge, to give myself
a little attention?
But it’s fine where I am.
I’ll never make out what’s going on
around me, and that’s the joy of it.
The fact that I’m not a perfect circle
makes me more interesting in this world.
People will stare forever –
Even the most unemotional get excited.
So here I am, on the edge of animation,
a dream, a dance,a fantastic construction,
A child’s adventure.
And nothing in this tawny sky
can get too close, or move too far away.
~ Moniza Alvi
March 5th, 2010 §
Last Monday, I finally went to Whitstable which is only a few miles away. No excuses for not visiting earlier except that I was waiting for it to be less cold. I visited the beachfront first which is so very different from the ones back home. The sea looks serene and in the distance, there is a wind farm in the water, giant windmills that look like pinwheels. The ground is full of shells. People walk their well-behaved dogs.
The harbour is beautiful — fishing nets and rope, blue boats, mossy ramps leading down to the water, huge bags of whelk shells outside the whelk shops. Here’s a picture of whelks being steamed to take off their shells easily. Winter is not the best time to be there because many places are closed during the week. And I had gone on a Monday, which is the day the famous Crab and Winkle is closed. I did go and stare at the offerings in the fish market though. It was a moment of longing. It must have been my Bengali blood singing. Or something like that.
I’m fascinated by fishing nets for some reason. And there were plenty of those around. I won’t inflict all the photos on you but here’s one. Aren’t they pretty?
Some more photos from around the harbour.
Weak with hunger at 5.30 pm after not having eaten all day (having been lost in photographs and seagulls and so on), I wandered into a Mr Fish and Chips. The man behind the counter was from apna Punjab.
It was a bit of a shocker, frankly, especially when he asked me to speak to him in Hindi, why don’t you? I ate my cod and chips while listening to sikh kirtans in the background. It was an odd coincidence because the last time I went traveling in India, it was to Amritsar and the music instantly transported me to the Golden Temple. I had not expected to be reminded of the Golden Temple while eating fish and chips in a seaside town in England. Anyway next time, I’ll have a more authentic experience eating oysters.
February 18th, 2010 §
Given my current situation (and seductions) in life, I thought this was appropriate. It’s been a month since I got to England and barring one week of illness and a few days of being snowed in, it’s been exciting. Actually, the illness and the being snowed in were probably useful because I got some work done.
*
Serendipity: A was in Berlin three weeks back and we met at Paris for a very hectic four days. The Louvre is overwhelming in a way that leads to despair. After walking around for about ten hours, we accepted that at least a month was required to see everything. We didn’t have a month. We had just a day and we had to concede defeat. There was so much to love but discovery-wise, Chardin was interesting. The Musee D’Orsay is much more manageable than the Louvre and one of the things I liked most there was Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s Four Parts of the World. I also loved The Orangerie, which has a much smaller collection but is beautifully located inside the Jardin des Tuileries. The rooms full of Monet’s Nympheas or Water Lilies are exciting and serene at the same time.
Okay, I’m not going into what else we did (the Eiffel, a river tour, walks along the Seine etc) and ate (scallops, escargots, crepes, cheese, pain au chocolat) because this is not a travel guide and Paris is not little talked about. There was also an embarrassing episode at a strip-show where we got conned but I won’t get into that either. I did feel a sort of helplessness about all the things we couldn’t find time for. Every now and then, we had to remind ourselves that this was Paris, a city that can’t really be enjoyed in a guided-tour, monument-hopping way. We prioritised leisurely walks and meals over one or two important sights and adopted Indian fatalism about visiting again soon.
*
British poet Drew Milne came to read at the university. You can see his work here and here. What do you think? I’m still trying to make up my mind about it. Frankly, my first reaction was not intense. But maybe, I’ll change my mind. I don’t know.
*
There was a guest lecture about ecopoetries in America. The speaker went on a bit about Americans and their special relationship to their land. It made me think about our relationship to our land. Especially now that we see it disappearing under construction rubble in cities like Bangalore. It also made me think about some of Ramanujan’s poems, especially A River which has these lovely lines:
People everywhere talked
of the inches rising,
of the precise number of cobbled steps
run over by the water, rising
on the bathing places,
and the way it carried off three village houses,
one pregnant woman
and a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda as usual.
And these…
He said:
the river has water enough
to be poetic
about only once a year
*
I haven’t taken too many pictures in London yet, mainly because I’ve been busy doing other things like being completely turned on, obsessed and orgasmic — to continue with the seduction trope — about the Poetry Library. I can’t really explain how moving it is to be in a library devoted to poetry. And they allow you to read and borrow books for free. I know I sound like I want to squeal with joy. But I felt like Gretel finding that magic house made of chocolate and candy in the woods. Minus the witch.
I’ve also been busy visiting more museums, spending time with an old friend and watching movies. Also, Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour made my birthday pretty special.
But here is a gull looking at the Thames. Doesn’t he look like he’s thinking hard?
December 16th, 2009 §
…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):
- Bearings by Karthika Nair
- Boki by Nitoo Das
- Night River by Keki N. Daruwalla
- Nights and Days by James Merill
- Isla Negra by Pablo Neruda
- Human Dark with Sugar by Brenda O’ Shaughnessy
- View From An Escalator by Liesl Jobson
- Bantu Ghost by Lesego Rampolokeng
- Poems by Mongane Wally Serote
- The Poet Lied by Odia Ofeimun
- The Boiling Caracas by Odia Ofeimun
- Glumlazi by Pravasan Pillay
- Romancing the Dead by Gary Cummiskey
- Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
- Selected Poems II by Margaret Atwood
