A case for the verse

January 30, 2015 06:48 pm | Updated 06:48 pm IST

There’s a tiny revolution brewing in the Indian literary world, and you wouldn’t know it if you didn’t pause in your tracks, press your ear to the ground and listen for that soft thump of a new heartbeat. That stepchild of popular publishing, Indian English poetry, is announcing its presence louder than ever before, and voices nationwide are waving warm welcomes in return.

Just look at the bounties that 2014 gave us for proof: From Adil Jussawalla and Keki Daruwalla, to K. Satchidanandan and Ranjit Hoskote, some of the best of our poets published excellent new volumes last year, and 2015 promises more. Platforms that front Indian poetry, such as Poetry at Sangam House, The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, and Almost Island have thrived in their fledgling ways. Almost every major city today (led by Mumbai, Delhi and Pune), besides organisations like the Airplane Poetry Movement and The Big Mic, nourishes poetry slams. And just as the dust settles on January’s flurry of literary festivals and awards, the big pat on poetry’s back came at the Jaipur Literature Festival, where the maiden Rs. 2-lakh Khushwant Singh Poetry Prize went to Arundhathi Subramaniam, for her beautiful collection When God Is A Traveller .

Even so, for the average reader, poetry remains dodgy territory, thanks mostly to our high school upbringing. In that English-examination search for metaphor and irony, simile and symbolism, rhyme and rhythm patterns, is lost the pleasure which only a poem swallowed whole can give you. In literature class, I remember thinking Yeats was a mad man disguised as genius, and Shelley quite the indulgent drama queen; but it wasn’t until I met John Donne that I was swept off my feet into the eye of the powerful storm that a few lines of tight verse can be. Here was a cleric of the Church of England railing against God and his faith with all the ferocity of an unbeliever; and with the same intensity of feeling, dashing off some of the 16th Century’s most sensuous love poetry too. In no other form of literature had I encountered such a stunning shock of unbridled emotion. There I was, a reluctant convert, one poem at a time.

This journey came into its own when I discovered India’s contemporary women poets. Much closer to my existence than a 16th Century metaphysical priest, were poets like Tishani Doshi, Anjum Hasan, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Meena Kandasamy, Karthika Nair, Sumana Roy and Sridala Swami — urban writers who spoke of life, love and personal politics in the same unabashed breath. How could I not feel that sense of homecoming when Subramaniam writes of the Mumbai local, “Like metal licked by relentless acetylene/we are welded — dreams, disasters/germs, destinies/flesh and organza/odours and ovaries./A thousand-limbed/multi-tongued, multi-spoused/Kali on wheels.”; or when when Doshi writes of Chennai, “I forgot how Madras loves noise/ loves neighbours and pregnant women/ and Gods and babies.” It is in these urban times that we need poetry more than ever, that in the face of endless, barrages of information, poetry presents us with instant, distilled concentrations of meaning and beauty. I see our fast-paced times slowly take to poetry, for what other form of literature lets you dive in and swoop out enriched so quickly? Jump on this bandwagon, I urge you; this one’s a joyride.

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