Anindita Sengupta

Besides the talks on writing and feminism, we also had poetry readings. Because poets must, after all, do what they do best. And making speeches is not it. Highlights:

Tamil poet Salma. There were many in the audience not paying attention because of the unfamiliarity of the language but they sat up when Swarnjit Savi, a Punjabi poet who translated many of our works, started reading his translations of her poems. There were quite a few mm’s as well. This is a sound heard at poetry gatherings when the audience sort of collectively half-moans  at a line they like. I first heard it pointed out at Poetry Africa by South African rap artist Ewok when he was MCeeing one of the evenings, and have subsequently noticed that it apparently cuts across cultures. Anyway, Salma got quite a few mm’s once the language barrier had crumbled. Some of Salma’s poetry is full of brutal, even grotesque images like this one in ‘Image’: “The cockroach was crushed / To pulp. All night,/ An army of ants have / Marauded its flesh..”. This lends a starkness to her poetry, a sense of darkness to the world she inhabits. This quality is disappointingly missing from some of the poems featured  at Poetry Web International but came through abundantly in the poems she read. Update: I know this because I have heard the English translations by N. Kalyan Raman whose comment rightly reminded me that I had neglected to mention this. She read one of the translations at this reading and the other, I had heard at a previous reading.

Tarranum Riyaz was very affecting–her ghazals are poignant without being drippy and she reads like a dream. Her voice is magical and so is her language (Urdu). Quite clearly, the highpoint for me. We had sort of disagreed on something earlier during the session on feminism, mostly because I think we misunderstood each other. But after the poetry, we (literally) hugged and made up. The healing power of good poetry? Anyway, here is an excerpt from an Arundhati Subramaniam interview with her which I found telling because the tension she describes here was evident in her poetry as well. There was a great deal of passion but it was unusually tempered with something else, something not quite cynicism, a wry sort of wisdom.

I’ve always believed in the primacy of women, not the mere equality of the sexes. That premise informs my work. I don’t see the woman’s lot as one of mere misery. A woman is not a mere sacrificial goat; she has agency and volition and that belief enters the work as well. But while there’s rage, there’s also the fact that I still love men. I call myself a Draupadi with three men: my husband and two sons. And so there’s the deeper realisation that there’s no point turning this relationship into a World Wrestling tournament. This is our greatest tragedy, isn’t it? The fact that we have to fight those we love.

Naseem Shafi

I enjoyed Kashmiri poet Naseem Shafi’s recital as well. I’ve never heard the language before and I found it very mellifluous. Her poems had great sound and rhythm and, going by the translations, were reflective of the disturbed social situation in the Valley. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything about her online.

There were two poets from Karnataka–Hema Pattanashetty and Jayshree Kambar (who was also my roommate) and we had a private reading session among ourselves the night before which was great fun. I don’t really understand Kannada very well, I’m ashamed to say. It’s not due to lack of effort; I’m just dreadful with new languages and my learning seems to have halted with the languages of my childhood.

Jayshree Kambar

But Hema insisted on reading her poems to me in Kannada and looked at me very expectantly after each line, sometimes impatiently, to see if I got it. Surprisingly, after a while, I actually started understanding bits. Maybe, I’d be able to learn the language if someone read out poetry to me every day. It would certainly be more fun than learning the names of 15 types of vegetables which is what they focused on in the class I joined for three months.

Another thing I found interesting was that the Bodo and Nepalese poets were very socially engaged in their poetry. One had written a poem about the Mumbai attacks and another talked about insurgency and violence. It was difficult to judge levels of craft because they were reading English translations of their works and these sounded a bit bereft of rhythm or imagery.

There were a lot of Punjabi poets and some of it was good, especially Punjabi poet Nirupama Dutt who was smart and funny though I think her poems don’t work as well in translation because they rely heavily on rhyme and this gets lost. In a slightly older article, Sutinder Singh Noor, Vice President of the Sahitya Akademi, talked about the state of Punjabi poetry and I’m going to quote that here:

A lot of poetry is being created each day both good and bad. So while I would say that Punjabi novel has stagnated, poetry is one medium from where a lot of material is being generated, both good and bad. However the ground reality is that bad poetry is finding its way into the market faster than good one, there by diluting the entire genre. We need to sift the good poetry from bad one. We in Punjabi literature have grown horizontally but not vertically. From a few handfuls we are now thousands but our growth intellectually has stagnated. Lesser known languages like Bodo are producing much higher and better literature than Punjabi.

I did find some of the poetry a bit stagnant in terms of theme (the preciousness of grandchildren, beauty of nature and so on). It seems to be stuck in the romantic mode and I’m surprised about that because clearly, their world can hardly be that much more conducive to that than the rest of ours. So is it a conscious choice to write in a mode that seems untouched by contemporary movements? Or is it some notion that women must write about soft, sweet things? But it’s also true that among 50 poets, there are bound to be some whose work doesn’t appeal. As Marvin Bell put it, no good stuff without bad stuff. And perhaps, it’s through gatherings like this that ideas on aesthetics can be exchanged and borrowed.

I’m back from the Sahitya Akademi Women Writers Conference in Patiala. It was one-and-a-half days of frenetic talk and poetry with about 50 women from 21 states descending on the gorgeous and formidably well-maintained campus of Punjabi University. The opening speech by Sukrita Paul Kumar was far more interesting than one expects keynote-type speeches to be. She actually managed to clear the path towards many of the later discussions by easing into the feminism theme gently and bringing up some very useful points. The two that I remember:

Sukrita Paul Kumar

1) the necessity of a more androgynous identity in writing and in life with reference to the Ardhanarishwara myth. I was impressed that she actually said ‘androgyny’ to this seemingly conservative audience without blinking. I also thought of this when I had to take the bus from Patiala to Amritsar and I chose to wear jeans. I find it extremely difficult to travel in salwar-kameez or saree and I think this has much to do with my associations with these garments as feminine, delicate, and therefore, vulnerable. In jeans, I feel less bound by my gender and therefore less bound by the constrictions placed on it by society. But this meant that I would have to do my reading, which was right before I caught my bus, wearing the same thing. Most of the others were dressed rather more traditionally. This makes me wonder about clothes, how loaded they are with gender constructs, and what a truly gender-neutral garment would look like.

2) the need for women’s writing to be mainstreamed in education as opposed to being treated as a niche subject. It’s astonishing that such a simple thing needs to be pointed out and fought for, but it’s true that women writers are, by and large , relegated to the women’s studies / feminism papers. I remember reading Toni Morrison and Attia Hossain in college as part of exactly such a paper. As if they were not part of the larger literary history / canon but only significant as ‘women’ writers. The other five papers we did, as far as I can remember, did not have a single text authored by a woman.

There was a session on ‘Why I Write’ which had five writers talking about their locus and labours. The common thread here seemed to be that writing is a a compulsion. It has a je ne sais quoi quality, a “I write because I must” sort of motivation. The only voice that was different was Marathi poet and writer Dr Jyoti Lanjewar who was rather strident about the necessity for socio-political engagement in writing. ‘How can I write romances when there is so much going wrong around me,’ she asked. Which was fine in itself but she also seemed frankly judgmental about those who do write said beleaguered romances. I have arguments with that sort of logic. Surely there is space for all kinds of writing. The more various, the merrier. I don’t see why people who live in terrible times and places should be deprived of their romance or fantasy or humour. If anything, they probably need it more. Such prescriptive approaches put me off but gatherings of this sort always bring out the vehement best (or worst) in people. Speech-making is inherently so conducive to extreme  positions that people tend to shear out any tentativeness from tone. But life is tentative at the best of times. (I’m tempted to add an ‘isn’t it’ at the end of that statement but I won’t because of this article.)

There was a symposium on ‘feminism in the Indian context’ in which I read a paper. There were some interesting points made about stereotypes perpetuated by religion, the silences of women affected by partition and so on. We were all coming at it from reasonably various viewpoints, which was good because it meant we didn’t say the same things. Some speakers relied heavily on examples from literature and there were at least two references to Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas. My talk was pretty simple and focused on the need to examine our own prejudices especially towards other women who we perceive as different. I drew more from posts and discussions we’ve had at Ultra Violet as opposed to literary texts–and later wondered why. Perhaps, because UV seems more ‘right here, right now’, a constantly updated motion picture? Apparently, some people in Punjabi heartland found some of my suggestions about sharing public spaces with sex workers and not expecting daughters-in-law to be deferential a bit ’shocking’. Or so I was told later by one of the Akademi people. Funny because I was actually trying really hard to keep it tame (without actually slipping into bovine). Maybe next time I’ll talk about what I really think of the traditional institution of marriage. That should be fun.

More on the poetry in the next post…

I’ve moved and almost settled in. In other words, my Internet connection is done but not all the pictures are up and the eager gardener who bounced up to the door to ask for the job, never showed up after that. Oh well.

The good news is that my reading at the Sahitya Akademi Translators’ Meet here in Bangalore went off well — this was a three day thingie that threw poets, short story writers, novelists and translators together. There were readings and discussions and it was fascinating to hear poetry in such a multitude of languages including Sindhi, Assamese, Nepalese and Santhali. I was sort of the lone English representative at one poetry reading session, which was very intimidating because I was surrounded by people who knew more languages than me. But I finally met Tamil poet Salma, which was wonderful. We were both part of the same session and it was nice to hear her read. I can’t understand Tamil but I like its strong rhythmic sounds when someone speaks it well. Salma’s poetry draws power from its brutal honesty, its ability to look tough subjects in the face. One of her poems was called ‘Menopause’, for example, and it talked about the body, unwanted hair and all, with great frankness. Unfortunately, the person who read the English translations of her poems read them in this halting, badly enunciated way so the impact was a bit lost. I wish they would engage good readers / performers for such things instead of handing the mike to the first available person.

The other person I remember is Sindhi poet Vasudev Mohi, who read one Sindhi poem and then a couple of Hindi poems. He did not read any English translations and therefore had the advantage of retaining all the music of the original words. He also read very well, in a clear and emotive manner. Going by audience reaction, this really made a difference. Even the post-lunch snoozers at the back woke up and did the ‘wah-wah’ routine. Which goes to show how important sound and performance are in poetry. Nepali poet Jiwan Namdung was also interesting. I was faintly disappointed with some of the other poetry read — it didn’t sound much like poetry to me, too prosaic or declamatory, not musical enough certainly but also not very impressive in terms of trope or imagery. I don’t know whether this was a problem of bad poetry, poor translation, or both.

I also liked Kannada poet and writer Vaidehi’s speech for a session called ‘my writing, my world’ which was chaired by Shashi Deshpande. (They brought four women writers together and asked each of them to speak about their influences.) Vaidehi talked about a number of things to do with her childhood and what struck me most is what she said about the house in which she grew up — it had room after room in the interiors, away from the sun, all fitted with cribs. These were for the women of the house who were expected to spend most of their lives in this “baby-making factory” (Prasanna’s translation).

Anyway, I don’t have much time for proper settling in because I leave tomorrow for Poetry Africa, an annual poetry festival in Durban. I’ll be wandering Joburg and Soweto and (hopefully) watching lions in Kruger National Park before I hit Durban for a week of readings and poetry meets. Excitement. Most of the other poets are from Africa but Sunil Gangopadhyaya from India will also be there. I’m especially interested to see how they perform their poetry differently from us, given the emphasis on spoken word, slams etc that they tend to have there.

Speaking of poetry slams, Bangalore is having its first one hosted by a group called Bombay Elektrik Projekt  at Bacchus F&B on Sunday, 27 Sep. That’s today. You can register for the event and perform. It starts at 7.30 pm. The Facebook event page is here. I’ll be in the audience.

And listen to Don Paterson read poems from his latest collection Rain.

Blogging will resume some time in October after I’m back. Until then, be good?  Or don’t. It’s more fun that way.