Another international milestone was crossed recently by Indian poetry for English. An English publisher has chosen to publish, and make available for distribution in and outside India, an annual compilation of poems in English written by Indians and those from the Indian diaspora. This is the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2023, now in its fourth year, which comprises around 200 poems chosen through ‘blind selection’ by a panel of distinguished poets, publishers and other literati. In an email interview, the yearbook editors, and poet/ scholars, Sukrita Paul Kumar and Vinita Agrawal speak about what readers might expect from the volume, tentatively set to be released this September, and what aesthetic and other trends it might reveal. Edited excerpts:
What does the ‘Yearbook’ present a response to?
The Yearbook is a concerted response to bringing quality English poetry, penned by Indians, under one roof so that the poetry vibe of the country can be accessed through a single book. India, as a uniquely diverse country, with a rich tradition of multilingualism, has been a fountainhead of literary panoramas. The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, as a series of anthologies published annually, is a compendium of calibre poems of a given year. We hope that it will eventually prove to be a fertile ground for establishing the aesthetics of Indian poetry in English and serve as an archive of published poetry in and from India. In a larger sense, the exercise of compiling the Yearbook is also a marker of the sensitivities and uncertainties experienced in contemporary life.
Yearbook editor and poet/ scholar Sukrita Paul Kumar.
Yearbook editor and poet/ scholar Vinita Agrawal.
Could you describe the no-name selection process?
For the selection to be inclusive and for the vibrant diversity of our society to be reflected in an unbiased fashion, we needed to have several pairs of discerning eyes of diverse backgrounds and age-groups to do a blind sifting from more than 800 poems submitted. A fairly long list of 200 poems is then prepared. Every year, we instate a fresh review committee for this purpose, comprising at least four acclaimed poets locally and globally. Remember, these are poems already published during the year. The democratic and shared process of selection seeps into the Yearbook richly because it ends up showcasing poems with multiple themes presented in a variety of styles and forms.
Please tell us more about the ‘Yearbook’ having a new publisher based in the U.K.?
While the first three editions have been supported and published by Hawakal, with the Yearbook 2023 onwards, the series has moved on to an international platform and a global distribution network by entering into a publishing contract with Pippa Rann Books and Media, U.K. The Yearbook includes poems by Indians and Indian poets from the diaspora as well.
What surprises might a non-reader of Indian poetry in English expect from this yearbook and previous ones?
As always, the 2023 Yearbook will reflect noteworthy, outstanding poems written by Indians. By writing about things happening around them, poets become the litmus test of a society with all its diversities. That is what could take a non-reader of Indian poetry by surprise. For instance, in the previous volumes of the Yearbook, poets expressed their sensibilities towards home, identity, roots, language, ecology, childhood traumas, gender, mental health, to name only a few themes. It would be fair to say that the reader can expect the 2023 Yearbook also to cast back whatever life has thrown at them.
What trends have revealed themselves in previous editions of the ‘Yearbook’?
The first Yearbook happened to have been done when the world was reeling amidst the pandemic. This edition clearly records and projects the consequent bewilderment, suffering, mass migration of labourers to their homes and the threat of death looming over people. This is how history gets inscribed into poetry and literature in general. It is in the second Yearbook that there is a mood of reflection and empathy. There is also room for a bit of experimentation with form and we see more concrete poetry here. However, the third edition documents a freer spirit, a settled mood but also quite a variety of themes and styles of writing poetry. The handling of language demonstrates a comfortable expression of cultural specificity of the region where the poem is emerging from. The three Yearbooks reflect a certain dynamism of aesthetics.
In particular, do the ‘Yearbooks’ reflect your previous observation that the English used in Indian poetry is “very Indian”, and is “homed comfortably” among the ‘bhashas’?
When Indian poets write in English, their use of the language is anchored to the region to which they belong. Unfortunately for Indian poetry in English, these aesthetics of poetic language have not been documented and some work needs to be done in the realm of establishing a critical study of this arm of Indian poetry. Indian poets freely use a plethora of words from Hindi, Hindustani, Urdu and other bhashas in their poetry to get the bhav or the emotion across. Some examples of the unique English used by Indian poets are aangan, ghunghat, ghutan, shramik, pagri and resham, ammumma, and many more. These words are so easily integrated in the English language that, English, we realise, has homed comfortably as one of the many bhashas in India. It has not only negotiated with Marathi, Punjabi, Bangla or any other Indian language in vocabulary, but in the use of idioms and metaphors as well. Clearly, Indians have done away with the colonial yoke that characterised English during the British Raj, and embraced the language in a unique manner.
There seems to be a widespread label, attached to poetry in general and Indian poems in English in particular: they are called overly sad. Would you care to respond?
Poetry has always been considered as the natural vehicle for grief. Often, deep sorrow that cannot be adequately expressed through prose is conveyed piercingly through poetry. Perhaps that’s why a melancholic demeanour exists in poetry per se. Sometimes the mood of reflection in poetry may appear like “sadness”. There is a noticeable dearth of humour in contemporary poetry across the world. However the presence of wit, irony, mockery and sarcasm have kind of made up for the lost ground.
The interviewer’s writing has appeared in publications in India and abroad. @suhitbombaywala
