(By Keki N. Daruwala. From The Hindu. Link to the complete article given below) Glorious autumn! Even Delhi […]
Category Archive: Poetry
Poetry
“I am indebted to the British poet, actor, and soldier James Milton Hayes, whose poem ‘The Green Eyes of a Yellow Little God’ with its opening line ‘There is a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu’ fired my imagination to name this collection of poems The Eight-eyed Lord of Kathmandu. Hayes wrote his immortal dramatic monologue over a century ago in 1911 just in five hours. Incidentally, he did not consider it as poetry. Following the footsteps of Hayes, a century later, I have made a humble attempt to draw a poetic portrait of Nepal through my poems on World Heritage sites, festivals, places, landscapes, historical personalities as well as its present inhabitants. My time spent in Nepal from July 2012 to January 2016 was full of bliss, learning and adventure.”
ABHAY K
Sherpa
I lead the way to Mt. Everest, paving the path through snow
and ice, fearless of losing fingers to frostbite.
Conquering Everest your face glows like a field of poppies.
Descending the mountain my feverish body breaks.
Your weight on my back. A few dollars in my hand.
Old Lamp by Abin Chakraborty Abin Chakraborty teaches English literature in Chandernagore College, avidly discusses politico-cultural trends, believes […]
(From Singlitstation. Link to the post given below) The Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry invites editors of […]
Reviewed by Rajat Chaudhuri
Title: Crow Dusk
Author: Mark Floyer
Publisher: Paekakariki Press (London, 2017)
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Lilting Bengali melodies drift out of its pages. A crackle of old transistor radios animates the backdrop of ayahs, chowkidars and mosquito nets as crows descend for shelter amongst the banyans of a tropical night. Crow Dusk (Paekakariki Press), Mark Floyer’s collection of poems about Calcutta, the city where he spent his early childhood, is replete with images, sounds, smells and reflections about a place, a people and a country which is intricately woven into the fabric of his life and that of his ancestors.
Floyer’s great, great, great grandfather was John Shore, Governor General of Bengal (1793-1797) succeeding Cornwallis, who also became President of the Asiatic Society. Shore was a close friend of William Jones. The poet of Crow Dusk, while mentioning his ancestor in conversations, characterises him as ‘obscure’, perhaps rightly so, in contrast to his predecessor Cornwallis. However, in his well-crafted poems Floyer, who cites Arun Kolatkar as a major influence, casts the centuries old association of his family with India and the region as a backdrop for the evocations of boyhood and his renewed engagement with the city of Calcutta.
Half of his Calcutta poems are about his memories of the city, his home here and his family and the other half is about his return to find how it has changed. In the eponymous Crow Dusk, the poet writes,
And always crows
suspended high on rooftops and telephone wires
gathering to croak their dusk chorus
kaaa kaaa
their black hoods
silhouetted against the purple disc of the sun. …
Sights, sounds and smells of this Calcutta of the late 1950s come alive in these carefully crafted imagist poems which surprise us with their sharp remembrances, distanced as they are by the smoke and dust of five and a half decades. This digging into the past is never an easy task as he alludes to in the poem Underwater, ‘I probe my diver’s torch for the rusting detritus of memories’.
(From The National. Link to the complete article given below) … In describing Darwish’s legacy and greatness, Ahdaf […]
These excerpts are from Dead Serious (Walang Halong Biro) by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles. Manila: De La Salle University Publishing House, forthcoming November 2018
Hope in Hopelessness
by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles
Translated from Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim
It is a blessing to wait
for one’s death
Surely
it comes without
bearing hope
for the sake of hope even as it reinforces
how I must wait
and stay alive
Pag-asa sa Wala
Biyaya ang maghintay
ng sariling kamatayan
Tiyak na
ito’y darating hindi
nagbibigay ng pag-asa
sa wala gayunman pinananatili
sa akin ang paghihintay
na hindi mamamatay
Grave
by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles
Translated from Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim
It is a noble grave
my interior
A sprawling view
of doom
One foot
in the grave
Sunday by Dilantha Gunawardana Dilantha Gunawardana is a molecular biologist by training, yet identifies himself, as a wordsmith, […]
Shopping for Pomelos by Robert Flinn Robert Flinn holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University, […]
Reclaiming the Power of the Feminine
Reviewed by Soni Somarajan
Title: Reclamation Song
Author: Jhilmil Breckenridge
Publisher: Red River
Pages: (Paperback) 100
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Holding Reclamation Song in my hands is sheer joy – here, at last, is a book of poetry made beautifully, an object of art in itself. Much thought is given to the cover design, the choice of paper, and the font – in this case, a Fell Type. The publisher, Red River, seems to have insight into how poets would love their books to be designed, evocative of the content as well as the fine delicateness of poetry itself. Thanks to Jhilmil Breckenridge, the poet who is also a painter, the illustrations in the book complement a poetic landscape that refuses to wear off days after.
The 55 poems in Reclamation Song are anything but ‘let it be light, it should float’ kind that Jhilmil aspires to, because the personal tragedy and anguish – the crux anchoring this collection – is of an enormous scale. The verse may be light but the effect is anything but floating, the weight of angst becoming our own – threatening to undo the objectivity of a review. For a debut collection, it has everything going for it – including a glowing introduction by the Master himself, Keki Daruwalla, who terms it ‘solid poetry grounded in pain’. Also, add a cluster of luminous blurbs from the who’s who in the world of letters.
Divided into three sections, we can easily say the first, “Overtures” hinges on the autobiographical – a diverse terrain: separation from children, graveyards, being born dusky, the mother’s influence, a lost childhood, abuse, longing, meeting expectations, and relationship dynamics. One begins to picture a comfortable couch, each poem a session of opening up – the release of the memories, vulnerability subject to public gaze, the poetry an attempt in and becoming the catharsis.
In “Letter to Liam”, notice the contrast between ‘I feared for your life and I let go’ and the delicateness of ‘grass and the daisies’. We focus on the poet’s earnest efforts for control over the turn of events as recalled from memory, the loss of her children. In the light of past events, note the second stanza’s ‘I love you more than words can express’ escalating into a superlative trope, ‘like an endless daisy chain’ – the mother’s love rendered in an unusually higher register, disguising a scream of helplessness. In “Love and Other Stories”, love of another kind, bruised by life’s experiences, comes full circle, inwards: ‘So now the safest place for my heart/ is with me. It beats a triumphant song…’
