Collection of emotions

Sridala Swami puts forth her impressive poetic craft in ‘Escape Artist’, the second volume of her poetry

Film Editor, photographer and poet Sridala Swami. Photo: Nagara Gopal

Sridala Swamy’s new volume of poetry turns out to be a significant achievement. Take Hypersomnia, a tiny poem with which the volume begins:

This is where

everything means

becomes

the thin thought

only at day break.

The poem then ends like a sudden dart into flesh, a small explosion of arrayed implications:

You can’t make omlettes

without breaking eggs.

Apart form the novel and unexpected trajectories from which she handles her themes, it is Sridala’s attention to poetic craft — chiselled-sparse, tersely inventive and techno-precise — and her bold, even combative, experimentation which strike you at the beginning. The wide ranging poems demand a very sharp, stern attention, a fresh take each time. But wrapped inside them is a quivering, nervy sensibility, too aware of the slips and tragic traps of life, and impregnate with generous affection for people and the world. So if they disturb, shock and challenge you, the poems also often work like a redemptive balm. One only has to step in, mingle with the flow and watch the unravelling beauty of felt thought and brilliant flashes of emotive reflection.

All in all, for this Hyderabadi poet, it is a pat, and apt progression from her first volume of poetry, The Reluctant Survivor (brought out by Sahitya Akademi in 2007). To be an escape artiste , it’s a bold choice, however hedged it may sound. With this, Sridala has for sure secured a place for herself among the leading contemporary Indian poets writing in English.

Sridala’s responses to some comments and questions:

From the first poem itself, you seem to draw parallels between the nature of creative process and living ordinary life. And the variety of subjects and situations dealt with in the poems add to the richness of this approach. Any clues on how you chose your subjects or starting points?

The moment when a poem begins is as unheralded as most everyday things are. Sometimes it begins with a phrase or an image; sometimes with a particular time of day; often it isn’t a poem until much, much later, by which time any memory of how it began has vanished.

In this collection, though, a lot of the poems have their origins as a response to other poets and writers, or painters, filmmakers or photographers.

The journey from ‘A Reluctant Survivor’ to ‘Escape Artist’ is by all means a much assured one, though your primary concerns seem to remain the same.

You’re quite right. If there is a difference, it appears to be in form and language though I would argue that that makes the change a rather large one.

When do you know that a personal experience woven into poetic form attains a degree of universality, or say, timelessness?

I don’t aim for universality and timelessness. History and memory will decide what survives and I confess I’d rather that my poetry was read now than in a few hundred years.

What I am interested in is how the familiar is first made strange through language and then once again becomes familiar. Everyone experiences joy, loss and pain; everyone responds to the world around them in their own way. And people respond to what is familiar, even if it appears strange in the poem.

I sense when a poem is done and then I leave it alone.

Your long engagement with a host of arts informs your poems at a deeply philosophic level.

As a reader of poetry, it is more interesting to me to read the work of someone who is immersed in something, whatever it may be – gardening, rap music, social justice, puzzle-making – but that’s just what interests me.

I find myself going through phases of immersion in different things and naturally that appears in my poetry. But yes – as I said in the introduction to my first collection, A Reluctant Survivor – the state of being in balance between the inner and outer world is necessary to me.

The last poem in the volume reads deceptively like a prose essay / tract. There are various other styles and stances and assumed speaking voices in the poems. Such clarivoyance? What are you at?

You tell me! I would hardly need an entire collection of poetry if I could – or indeed wanted to – sum up what I was doing in a line or two! That said, perhaps it’s just the result of having taken so long to put this collection together, so it reflects a variety of styles.

Do you revise your poems a lot?

It depends on the poem. Some poems go through lots and lots of drafts while others just need minor tweaks. Still, I put a poem away for some time before I decide it’s finished.

On Hyderabad and home! Do you find it helpful for your kind of work?

I grew up in Hyderabad, though I moved away for studies and work. I returned 12 years ago because this is home for me and always has been. I find it helpful to have a base which is home and which is familiar. I suppose I could do the work I do from anywhere, but I like being here.

(‘Escape Artist’; by the Aleph Book Company)