The recently published Harper Collins Book of English Poetry presents the “bravura, experimentation, risk-taking, innovation, erudition, and delightfully uninhibited and fine use of language” by 85 contemporary Indian poets, including Vikram Seth, Jeet Thayil, Amit Chaudhari and others. Sudeep Sen, a practising poet and the editor of the anthology, believes these poems represent a movement that is as good or superior to Indian fiction in English. His books include The Lunar Visitations , New York Times , Dali’s Twisted Hands and Aria among others. He replied to questions in an e-mail interview. Excerpts:
What did your job as an anthologist entail? What were the dilemmas, if any, that you faced while selecting poets?
A lot and lot of reading of course. Then researching, re-reading, short-listing and editing. I have been in the poetry trade professionally for over 25 years, so I am deeply aware of other poets’ work. Also I sent out a general call for submission just in case I missed out on some.
There were no dilemmas really. What matters in this book are the well-crafted passionately-felt poems themselves and their unique, intelligent and artistic qualities — and not reputation of the poets per se. So you will find the stars and established poets sharing the same platform with relatively newer promising writers in a large room without walls where both individual and collective echoes are equally eloquent and important.
I am happy and thrilled with the final outcome – though there would be a few more younger poets I would want to include. But that can happen when a new edition comes out.
What is the range of the anthology, stylistically and geographically?
I have chosen to focus on poetry written in English, as a wider selection that includes India’s many official languages would make this volume too voluminous and unwieldy. This is just the start and hopefully there shall be more such anthologies representing Indian poetry, including those in translation which in itself is an extensive and huge area.
The poets who are presented in these pages live in India and the broader Indian diasporas such as the United States and Canada, United Kingdom and Europe, Africa and Asia, Australia and the Pacific. This diversity and multicultural representation allows the poets to have an internal dialogue between themselves and the varied topographical cultural spaces they come from or are influenced by.
The subject matter of the poems and their poetic concerns are staggeringly large and wide-ranging. There is introspection and gregariousness, politics and pedagogy, history and science, illness and fantasy, love and erotica, sex and death — the list is centrifugal, efferent, and expansive.
There is free verse and an astonishing penchant for formal verse — so you are likely to encounter a pantoum next to an acrostic poem, a triolet juxtaposed against a ghazal, lyric narratives and prose poetry, Sapphic fragments and Bhartrhari-style shataka, mosaic pastiché, ekphrastic verse, sonnet, rubai, poem songs, prayer chants, documentary feeds, rap, reggae, creole, canzone, tritina, sestina, ottava rima, rime royale and variations on waka: haiku, tanka, katauta, choka, bussokusekika, sedoka — the Indian poets are in full flight.
How might this book’s vision be different from earlier anthologies?
The vision and scope of this HarperCollins book is very specific and contemporary. All the poets included in this book are born post-1950 when India became a republic. A unique feature of this anthology is the fact that the overwhelming bulk of the poems are new and unpublished in individual author volumes. Over ninety per cent of the eighty-five poets have specially contributed new work for this book. Therefore the contents of this book give the reader a fine idea and a fresh taste of the vibrant contemporary Indian poetry and cultural scene. Carrying new and unpublished work is a major departure from other available anthologies, where some editors of these volumes have shown a tendency to mostly pick work from already published books or from existing older anthologies.
An endorsement of your book calls it an “important literary marker”. What are poetry anthologies markers of? Why are they important?
There are not enough discerning anthologies of contemporary Indian poetry published in India and even less abroad — and the few that exist (and not very easily available) have tended to be rather narrow, inward looking, and unsatisfactory. The lack of comprehensive poetry anthologies is something of a major surprise considering the vast cultural power of the world’s largest democracy, and India’s position as the third largest English language publisher in the world.
Anthologies of new writing serve as perfect vehicles and repositories that showcase and highlight the best in current literatures. They also capture the pulse of literary culture, and act as good sources for archival material for future generations. Many fine single-author individual volumes by Indian poets have appeared in India and elsewhere, but their scattered appearances (and the lack of a worthy library of comprehensive poetry anthologies) do not add up to what one would think of as a body of contemporary works that reflects a movement in new English poetry by Indians. This anthology hopes to redress some of the shortfall or near absence.
