good + bad = verse?

‘my agent tells me that i have a name | an audience waits, he says, for what i say.’ that was dom moraes in 1965, from a collection of poetry titled john nobody. it was a time when poets did have an audience. not an impassioned one perhaps, or a particularly large one, but an audience nonetheless. can that be said for the times we live in? times that have, in the early years of our millennium, borne witness to the demise of moraes, g s sharat chandra, agha shahid ali, arun kolatkar, kamala das and dilip chitre?

the youngest and first non-english person to win the hawthornden prize for his debut collection in 1958, moraes lived his declining years in obscurity. he chose to fade away quietly while a majority of us awoke to the dubious joys of reality television. obscurity had, by this time, long been thrust upon a number of other poets; nissim ezekiel, for one. described as the ‘father of post-independence indian verse in english,’ all he received was a 100-word obituary from the press trust of india. then there was kolatkar, whose seminal collection jejuri was forgotten by all but students of indian writing in english. it was eventually re-published by the new york review books classics series, two years after his death. and then, a year ago, dilip chitre passed. his life of letters spanning seven decades was condensed to a couple of paragraphs on page 4 of a national daily.

keeping these facts in mind, then, is it safe to say that poets writing in english no longer enjoy the kind of attention, albeit limited, they once did? eunice de souza, one of india’s most respected poets, disagrees rather vehemently, when asked. “kamala das always had readers,” she points out, “as do many poets today. their work is known online, via texts taught in colleges and schools, and through festivals.”

i put the same question to sampurna chattarji, a younger poet whose debut collection sight may strike you blind was published by the sahitya akademi in 2007 and reprinted a year later. “it may sound odd,” she replies, “but it seems as if poets in english are getting more attention, and seem to be publishing with greater alacrity.” she qualifies this by adding: “it seems easier to be published and heard, there seem to be more openings for readings by first-time poets, more poetry festivals, and the blogosphere seems to generate more debate and discussion. also, with a number of international and national anthologies — 60 indian poets from penguin india, the bloodaxe book of contemporary indian poets, women unlimited’s anthology of 54 women poets in english and in translation, and a forthcoming one from harpercollins — it seems a whole spectrum of poets has found a place. whether this seems so only to the poets concerned is, of course, another question. also, whether one is mistaking ‘noise’ for attention is worth thinking about.”

naturally, not everyone’s view is as rosy. poet dominic alapat, who publishes much of his work online at collaborative blog woodsmoke, believes the diminishing space for poetry in the mainstream media has contributed to the poet’s near invisibility. in the same breath, he identifies e-zines and blogs as spaces where poets, critics and readers can now interact.

going back to chattarji’s comments, the interest shown by publishers is rather new, when one considers major collections published in india over the past 50 years. one can’t help but compare the situation with indian fiction in english, which attracts bigger advances each year, along with the odd auction for publishing rights.

in the 60s and 70s, many of our most respected poets were simply forced to self-publish. in 1976, arvind krishna mehrotra, gieve patel, kolatkar and adil jussawalla formed the publishing collective clearing house. the only other major publisher willing to allocate space for poetry at the time was oxford university press, with its ‘new poetry in india’ series. according to a recent feature in literary magazine the caravan, clearing house titles were cheap but didn’t have much of an audience beyond mumbai’s shores. still, four important collections — mehrotra’s nine enclosures, kolatkar’s jejuri, adil jussawalla’s missing person and gieve patel’s how do you withstand, body — were published in its first year alone.

why do our poets fail to find their rightful place in the sun? james russell lowell, the american romantic, once described them as ‘forerunners and prophets of changes in the moral world.’ it was a long-held view — the poet as prophet. the late dr jacob arlow, president of the american psychoanalytic association, weighed in with a paper describing how a poet tended to spin a public fantasy, speaking to ‘the unconscious fantasies of his audience’ and presenting ‘a socially acceptable form of expression of forbidden wishes and conflicts.’ he went on to describe how poets, by rebelling against societal constraints, could be looked at as heralds of a changing morality, their art as instruments for change.

i asked de souza and chattarji if they agreed with the notion, and if an audience still existed — people who would pay to read and discuss poetry, while placing the poet in a position of eminence. “there are enough people around who think some poets speak to them directly about their experiences,” de souza says. “most of us are not hung up on audiences.” chattarji believes the number of people “willing to pay to read english poetry, and attend events (almost always free, as opposed to such events abroad that are ticketed, and where poets get a reading fee) is as small as it has always been.” she thinks there is fatigue, and boredom, when one hears the words ‘poetry reading,’ but points out that a recent public reading by adil jussawalla in mumbai was packed to the rafters. in alapat’s opinion, readers probably view poets as “modern-day shamans satisfying some emotional, aesthetic and philosophical hunger, rather than as prophets or clairvoyants.”

maybe what readers now want is — like everything else — something that entertains rather than provokes, work that can move away from self-obsessed free verse and the long shadow of the modernist movement. another thing one must consider, while attempting to look at the big picture, is that there are usually two groups of people involved when it comes to poetry — populists who want more readers, and academics who prefer the serious study of an art form. while the former look back at a golden era when cities mourned the death of a poet (when 83-year-old victor hugo died in 1885, more than two million people accompanied his funeral procession), the latter sometimes oppose the spread of poetry on the bizarre notion that commercialisation could have an adverse effect on artistic integrity. that view surfaced a few years ago, after a wealthy heiress left america’s poetry foundation a gift of $200 million.

as with most other things, economics is certainly an influencing factor. i asked rakesh khanna of independent publishing house blaft, why publishing poetry didn’t make sense. his firm has a rather eclectic catalogue, after all, covering everything from bestselling crime novels to pulp art, experimental fiction and graphic novels. “i am personally not that into english poetry and don’t follow the scene,” he admits, “although everyone tells us publishing poetry is not something you should do as a business.” and there you have it.

what this means is, despite short-lived bursts of publicity — when tishani doshi’s countries of the body won the uk’s big forward poetry prize in 2006, for instance, or tranquebar press gave us 2007 winner daljit nagra’s look we have coming to dover! — publishing poetry in english isn’t exactly a cakewalk. add to this a missing tradition of criticism, and the possibility of things changing for the better in future seem rather bleak. still, eunice de souza points out that even well-known and very fine poets like manohar shetty have just published their own work instead of waiting for publishers. chattarji refers to online journals, and a new print journal in mumbai called nether brought out by college students. she also mentions ongoing schemes from the sahitya akademi, forthcoming titles from harpercollins and small presses like hemant divate’s poetrywala, which recently published her second collection, absent muses.

alapat admits that while he has been published in some poetry magazines, acceptance is low. “everyone has a view on what a poem should be like,” he says. regarding the absence of a tradition of criticism, chattarji agrees. “that is a lacuna i feel more deeply than i do publishing opportunities,” she says. “review spaces for poetry are increasingly constrained, if not completely excised. some of the more intelligent, nuanced, objective and contextualized criticism is written by poets themselves, and that is vital, but i wish there was more of it.” she’s not the only one.