M eena Kandasamy’s petite frame and youth belie the power in her words. Her poetry spits fire, even when it speaks about love. Elle recently named her among the best Indian writers under 40. Her first volume of poetry, Touch , published in 2006 won accolades from critics. Meena went on to release another volume of poetry, Ms. Militancy in 2010, and has been the darling of world poetry festivals.A Malayalam translation of Touch (translated by V.S. Bindu) is being released next week.
Also a known translator of between Tamil to and English, and a celebrated new voice of Dalit writing in English in India Meena’s is also a known activist for Dalit rights and her writing follows the Tamil tradition of articulating what happens in society. She has a distinct gift for words that light fires in others, Meena’s turning point was when, just after school, her essay on Naipaul , who, she feels, got the Nobel Prize post 9/11 mainly for his anti-Islamic stances, got noticed.She holds a doctoratein socio-linguistics, was a Charles Wallace scholar, a writer-in-residence at the prestigious International Writing Program at the University of IOWA, United States, in 2009 and a Visiting Fellow at the School of Literature, Language & Linguistics, Newcastle University, United Kingdom in 2011.
The foreword to her debut poetry anthology was written by none other than Kamala Das and she blessed the young poet with ‘a magical brew of bliss and tears’. Meena talks about how she has evolved as a poet in the last six years. Excerpts from an e-mail interview with the author and poet…
Touchand its aftermath
Touch was transformative for me in many ways. Kamala Das’ foreword was out of the blue, it gave me the confidence and courage to go ahead. But the success of Touch scared me in the beginning. I thought I would never write poetry after that. Then Ms. Militancy happened, almost four years later. Evolution? I have become sharper, much more militant and political perhaps. That's because so much happened in the meanwhile: personal trauma, the Tamil genocide, things which affect you deeply. I don't regret the journey.
So where does she envisage her seat now? Is it on this side of the fence with Indian English/Vernacular Litt/Global/Feminist/Dalit writing or a combination of several of these as a poet?
I feel uncomfortable reflecting about what I am doing. I am doing something because I have to do, because I want to do it. If I write about feminist or caste or language issues, it is because it is part of my daily struggle, it is what I encounter. One doesn’t have to lay claim to being a martyr or suffering activist because one writes about people, about what one sees around oneself. In fact, these questions should be asked to people whose literature is quite divorced from reality, because it would be interesting where they see themselves.
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So, what does she read?
The last book I read/reviewed was Dom Moraes’ Selected Poems . It was nice to revisit a poet's life and all his work at such close quarters. I am currently reading Scripting the Change , a collection of essays by intellectual-theoretician Anuradha Ghandy and I am moved by her insight.
And her work in translations?
The book I last translated was from German into Tamil, via English of course. It is a collection of poems Tanze mein Kind (Dance my child) by Andreas Urweider, a Swiss German poet about Chernobyl. I co-translated this, taking the help of poet Raphael Urweider. The next work I plan to undertake is the translation of the testimony of TamilNet.com’s reporter Lokeesan.
How about translations of her own work?
I’m incredibly lucky as far as the translations go. My poetry has been translated into Malayalam (of course), Hindi, Telugu, Odiya, Gujarati and Bengali. Because I was involved in a project with Literature Across Frontiers, I also had the rare privilege of seeing my work get translated into German, French and Scottish. The Malayalam version of Ms Militancy is being translated by Ravishanker.
And her much-expected novelThe Gypsy Goddess?
You will get to read it soon.
