Nissim Ezekiel Posts

Poetry in India

For some peculiar reason poetry is quoted and used extensively everywhere but rarely does it get a regular space in a publishing house. It is often said poetry is too complicated to publish and to sell. It is subjective. Also many customers prefer to read poetry at the store and put the book back on the shelf. For many poets in India, self-publishing their poems has been popular. For generations of poets the go-to place was Writers Workshop begun by the late P. Lal. Some of the poets published by Writers Workshop included Vikram Seth, Agha Shahid Ali, Adil Jussawalla, Arun Kolatkar, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Jayanta Mahapatra, Keki Daruwalla, Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, Nissim Ezekiel, and Ruskin Bond. Some of the other publishing houses published occasional volumes of poetry too.

Of late the practice has continued. Only the rare volume or two is published. Aleph Book Company has published some fine volumes of poetry which has included translations ( Mirabai and Tirukkal) and contemporary poets such as Jeet Thayil, Sridala Swami and Vikram Seth. Some years ago Harper Collins India published The HarperCollins Book Of English Poetry (ed. Sudeep Sen) and recently the excellent collection of poems by Tishani Doshi Girls are Coming Out of the Woods. Also that of  Sharanya Manivannan ‘s The Altar of the Only World which is considered as well to be a very good volume. Penguin Random House India has a reputation for publishing good volumes of poetry particularly of established poets such as 60 Indian Poets edited by Jeet Thayil. A volume to look forward to in 2018 will be Ranjit Hoskote’s Jonahwhale . The feminist publishing house Zubaan books published a fascinating experimental volume Andal: The Autobiography of a Goddess edited and translated by Priya Sarukkai Chhabra and Ravi Shankar.

Speaking Tiger Books has begun to actively publish poetry — at least far more frequently than the other firms. In the past few months alone some of their titles include Rohinton Daruwala’s The Sand Libraries of Timbuktu: Poems  ; Manohar Shetty’s Full Disclosure: New and Collected Poems (1981-2017) ;  C.P. Surendran’s Available Light: New and Collected Poems ; Guru T. Ladakhi’s Monk on a Hill: Poems ; Ralph Russell’s translations and edited by Marion Molteno A Thousand Yearnings: A Book of Urdu Poetry & Prose  ; Ruskin Bond’s I Was the Wind Last Night: New and Collected Poems ; Michael Creighton’s New Delhi Love Songs: PoemsLater this year the Sahitya Akademi is publishing what looks to be a promising collection of poetry by “younger Indians”, edited and selected by noted poet Sudeep Sen.

Having said that the self-publishing initiatives still continue. For instance a young poet and writer ( and journalist) Debyajyoti Sarma launched the i, write, imprint, press to publish poetry. Some of the poets published ( apart from him) include noted playwright Ramu Ramanathan, Uttaran Das Gupta, Sananta Tanty  and Paresh Tiwari. 

Now there are more opportunities for poets to publish in literary magazines as well. For instance well-known poet Sampurna Chattarji has been appointed the poetry editor of IQ magazine and is looking for submissions and hoping to be read as well! She writes about it on her blog. Another active space for poets is Poetry at Sangam which is edited by Priya Sarukkai Chhabra. It showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases. Another vibrant space for poetry especially Urdu is the Jashn-e-Rekhta festival. 

There are plenty more initiatives in other local languages, meet ups, open mike sessions etc where poets can recite/perform their work. In the past decade there has been a noticeable increase in these events whether informal groups that meet at local parks or coffee shops to more formal settings as a curated evening.

Undoubtedly poets and their poetry is thriving, just more publishers are needed to publish the poets.

6 January 2018 

 

 

 

 

Eunice de Souza: A Tribute by Salil Tripathi

This morning poet Adil Jussawala posted on his Facebook page: 

Image from the Internet

Eunice de Souza
(1 August 1940 – 29 July 2017)
Gone suddenly.

Social media exploded with shock. Very soon some extraordinary tributes began being pouring in for an extraordinary woman. One of the earliest tributes posted on his Facebook page was by noted journalist Salil Tripathi. It is published below with his permission. 

Those who did not know her thought she was temperamental, but those who knew her knew she was generous. She was encouraging and warm if she thought what you wrote deserved to be read more widely, sharp and incisive if she thought you needed to work harder, and candid without being cruel if she thought you should not try writing.

Ammu Joseph edited Post Script, the wonderful weekend magazine of the Indian Post, which we were all part of when it was launched in 1987, and Eunice De Souza edited the books page, and as Ammu reminds us below, she brought her own ideas and was receptive to other ideas to make it what was easily the best weekend magazine of its time. Eunice discovered new voices and gave recognition to some old ones among critics. Jeet Thayil was our poetry editor.

Those were heady days for English poetry in Bombay – Dom Moraes had returned to writing, Nissim Ezekiel ran PEN and organised readings at Theosophy Hall, Arun Kolatkar could be found at Kala Ghoda at Wayside Inn, Dilip Chitre was a regular feature at readings, Adil Jussawalla was at Debonair and with Udayan Patel published poetry under the imprint Praxis, Saleem Peeradina taught at the Open Classrooms in Sophia (where I was a student, as was Arshia Sattar), Gieve Patel wrote poems, plays, and found time to run a medical practice, and there was Newground and Clearing House and OUP still published poetry.

And among all those male voices, there were strong women voices present – Eunice De Souza and Melanie Salgado.

Along with Jeet, Ranjit Hoskote, and Menka Shivdasani had begun writing their early poems then, and it was a small circle, and I’m probably missing out some names, but it was one of those moments where it felt like saying – bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

Eunice was terrific at spotting young talent. I was one of two editors who edited the op-ed page of the Indian Post, and she introduced me to some of her bright students, many of whom went on to write for the Indian Post. I remember in particular Dinyar Godrej, who is now at the New Internationalist and the late Alan Twigg who we lost so tragically and too early, who reviewed films (and wrote a fine piece on Brodsky when he won the Nobel). She also wrote for my page, on literature, feminism, and occasionally, the city itself.

Her poetry was funny, sharp, bold, and strong. I remember Fix, her first collection, with which she announced her presence. I particularly liked the next collection, Women in Dutch Painting. She had at least two more collections to follow.

She read my poems, and urged me to continue, asking me to avoid sentimentality that she though crept into my poems because when I started writing poems, I wrote in Gujarati. She stressed I should write in a more ‘clean’ way.

Many years later, in her columns, she wrote two fine pieces about my recent books – reviewing them with care and attention, and reading the pieces this morning I feel that impulse of hers again. Urging me to go on. I will, as will many others who were lucky enough to have known her. She won’t be with us in one sense, but in many ways, she will always be. Miss you, Eunice.

Salil Tripathi 

29 July 2017 

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