*

My computer was down for six days and I suffered. I had to use computers in a common room and write by hand the rest of the time. I survived. But I’m glad it’s over.

*

I went to see Ron Arad: Restless at the Barbican. Arad is an industrial designer, artist and architect. I don’t know anything about design or architecture really but I found some of it really fascinating / amusing including a strangely-shaped ping pong table which one could actually try out. Some pictures here.

*

Before that, Patience Agbabi came to read at the university. She was warm, vibrant, very lovely. Her next collection is a retelling of the Canterbury Tales in poetry. Quite a challenge, I’m guessing. She’s blogged a little bit about it here. She’s also Canterbury Laureate for the year and the audience was quite large. The questions were similar to the ones asked back home — do you write for the page or the stage? what kind of research are you doing for this book? Patricia Debney who is a poet and writer herself and a senior lecture here asked about the fact that she often uses form and whether she finds this restricting. Agbabi said that using form makes things more interesting / challenging because it sets parameters that she has to work within, makes it less amorphous.

*

Somebody read my horoscope and it was full of some troubling stuff. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before and I was all shrugs and smiles about it. But I was surprised at how it played on my mind all the way back in the bus from London to Canterbury. Nothing some wine and sleep couldn’t fix. But still.

*

I was only reading poetry (and poetry-related essays / criticism) for the first month simply because there’s so much of it available here that I don’t get back home. I started missing prose though so have picked up a novel, Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Wizard of the Crow. It’s quite gripping and very funny in bits. The protagonist is a conman who pretends to be a healer and diviner. I thought this was interesting:

As a novelist, Ngugi says he is very influenced by the “trickster” tradition. “The trickster character appears in tales all over the world,” he explained. “In West Africa it is Anansi the spider. Elsewhere it is Hare or Tortoise.

“The trickster is very interesting because he is always changing. He always questions the stability of a word or a narrative or an event. He is continually inventing and reinventing himself. He challenges the prevailing wisdom of who is strong and who is weak.”

Among other poets, I’ve been reading Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. Some of her poems here.

***

Because we are all Bhopali. Don’t forget.

Swim across this strip of sea.

After all, what separates us
is brief as an eyelash–
only continent, only colour,
only language,

and a zone marked
by the thin, thin fingers
of a clock.

Ultra Violet has been featured in the feminist magazine make/shift. Mostly good stuff but they have said the site would benefit from a greater variety of voices, something I entirely agree with. So please, please, spread the word and ask people (men and women) to contribute with their stories, essays, poems, vignettes, whatever. No bars whatsoever. I received a copy of the magazine and it looks really good. Do consider subscribing.

Also, my poem ‘The Kitchen God’s Mistress’ has been republished in the latest issue of A cappella Zoo. (It’s been published previously in the anthology Not A Muse by Haven Books). I don’t think I’m going to send it anywhere else so here it is:

The Kitchen God’s Mistress

Did you always smell of cinnamon?

It reminded me of a long-ago kitchen.
Mustard seeds. Mutton crackle. Hot air
condensed on window mesh while I shelled peas
on stone cool enough for sleep.
I should have barred the doors

when you nuzzled in
but a weakness for spices and memory
stopped me. Besides, I glimpsed
your feet, smooth and brown, with an arch
I could fit into. The night you drowned,
I was deveining prawns and drinking beer. I thought

it would be like any other night: we’d chew
slowly, listen to the cicadas sing. Later,
they would leap indoors and crawl
under our bed where we lay side by side
in the dark, entering each other’s dreams.

I was so happy watching the kitchen
simmer in pools of light. How could I know
they would gulp you down without a ripple?
And who would have thought you’d be so
hard to pull out? You always looked so light
with your thin beard and gossamer cap.

***

The Nizam’s Wives

Four girls in brocade, tussar
and stiff smiles, the slow stranglehold
of gold on their hands, necks, faces.

They were the children who aged early.

Were they friends? Did they
share their fractured power
while swapping dolls, diamonds
and nights? Or were their eyes
darting and vicious over the kheer?
Did they avoid the bath at certain times?

Perhaps, three of them colluded
against the fourth, leaving
frogs on her bed,
peas under her mattress,
spit in her tea.

We can’t know. In this photograph,
they’re just four girls
released from purdah,
frightened and unblinking
into the cameraman’s flash.

***

Originally published at Kritya.

I haven’t had time to read the issue properly because the power has been gone ALL day and has just come back and I’m due to meet a friend in 20 minutes. On the upside, I got a lot of actual book reading done because I had no computer.

And yes, I know I’ve said this everywhere else but once more, Ultra Violet, the feminist site I manage, has a new home on the web. There are some changes in structure, focus, content and mood as well. Do check it out and mail me if you want to write or post something as a guest.

***

I prefer my poetry a little stronger, more bourbon than Bailey’s Irish Cream. Like this Sharon Olds reading of her poem ‘I Go Back to May, 1937′.

***

Or Sonia Sanchez reading ‘Poem for Some Women’, startling and very, very sad.  (Incidentally, Sanchez just won the Robert Creely Award.)

]]> http://aninditasengupta.com/2009/03/lazy-tuesday-evening/feed/ 4 http://aninditasengupta.com/2009/02/coorg-diary-iii-or-the-most-serious-thing/ http://aninditasengupta.com/2009/02/coorg-diary-iii-or-the-most-serious-thing/#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:48:05 +0000 Anindita http://aninditasengupta.com/?p=1068

Not snow geese, these. But beautiful all the same. Or at least, i think so. I’ve always liked geese despite their honking and their ill reputation as silly creatures. I think it’s because of ‘the ugly duckling’, one of my favourite fairy tale characters when i was little. Anyway, these were pets at one of the resorts where i stayed. They recently bred goslings, and grown-ups and babies were all having a jolly time in the green-brown pool.

And here is the poem ‘Snow Geese’ by Mary Oliver. Clearly, she likes geese too.

Look how crows have replaced the leaves.
Their silent, alert eyes fix me.
They have me down as someone
who fails continually
to understand the simple things.
That water boils.
That one is alone.
That there are things one cannot bear.

They know I have lost my destinations,
that I am unplanned and motiveless.
I need to be cut down,
resprouted in some place
where land meets water
with relief
and there are geese,
fish, sea urchin.

***

This and two other poems (this one and this) in the latest issue of Yellow Medicine Review.