“ The poet is much more the one who inspires, than the one who is inspired. ” Paul Éluard
I tend to associate Sudeep Sen with a kind and giving shade of blue. Blue, like the cover of The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry, one of the many important anthologies he has edited. I am not wrong in my colour-poet connection. For instance, in Mediterranean, he speaks of “/1/ A bright red boat/ Yellow capsicums/ Blue fishing nets/ Ochre fort walls/2/ Sahar’s silk blouse/ gold and sheer/ Her dark black kohl-lined lashes/ 3/ A street child’s/ brown fists/ holding the rainbow/ in his small grasp/ 4/ My lost memory/ white and frozen/ now melts colour/ready to refract”.
It’s true what they say about poets painting pictures.
It’s hard to choose accomplishments that give you a sense of this extraordinary poet. A cursory reading will show that his body of varied work runs into pages. So here’s a telescoped version. Sudeep Sen is the editorial director of Aark Arts and the editor of Atlas, the ‘book[maga]zine’. He’s a translator, writer and director. His prize-winning, much-awarded poetry has been translated into more than two dozen languages and has appeared in magazines, newspapers and on TV channels. He’s also a keen graphic artist and photographer and his work features in scores of prestigious publications. Now before I sound like a groupie, let’s look at his poetry a bit more.
Sudeep Sen’s poetry creates startling and soulful images in my mind and heart. In Jacket on a Chair, a casually tossed jacket, becomes “The assembly of cloth/collapsed in slow motion. Into a heap of cotton-/cotton freshly picked from the fields-/ like flesh without a spine…” It brings to mind the image of clothing sans the wearer that somehow still retains the memory of the person who inhabited it.
In his lines to Leela Samson, Sudeep Sen ends with these lines, “But it is the sacred darkness that endures,/melting light with desire, desire that shimmers/ and sparks the radiance of your quiet femininity/ as the female dancer now illuminates everything visible:/ clear, poetic, passionate, and ice-pure.”(Bharatanatyam Dancer). All through this particular poem, one sees the dance brought to life – the garb, the expressions and adornments. But it is these last lines that give the performance and the performer another dimension altogether. As a seeker-and-finder-of truth and purity.
We watch as the poet says, “I meticulously stitch time through the embroidered sky…”(Flying Home). He is, “… greedy for long drawn-out vowels, / for consonants that desire lust, tissue, grey-cells…”
We sense unanswered questions in Kargil, “Beyond the mountains are dark memories, / and beyond them no one knows, / and beyond them/ no one wants to know.” The ink is ‘scorched,’ the note-book is ‘crowded’ and silence is ‘the invisible wind.’(Sun-Blanched Blood). And poetry is spoken in silence.
As I continue to read, I am once more reminded of the life and beauty that are infused in each poem. There is movement and music, passion and prayer in the lines that frame the narrative.
What better way to celebrate the 25th column in Running on Poetry than with a poet whose kindness and encouragement to me are as inspiring and moving as his work.
(Srividya is a poet. Read her work at>www.rumwrapt.blogspot.in)
