English as one of our many bhashas
Another international milestone was crossed recently by Indian poetry for English. An English publisher, Pippa Rann Books and Media, 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. The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2023, now in its fourth year, comprises around 200 poems chosen through ‘blind selection’ by a panel of distinguished poets, publishers and other literati. In an email interview, the yearbook’s editors and poetscholars Sukrita Paul Kumar and Vinita Agrawal speak about what readers might expect from the volume, tentatively set to be released in September. Edited excerpts:
Question: What does the Yearbook present a response to?
Answer: 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.
Q: What surprises might a nonreader of Indian poetry in English expect from this yearbook and previous ones?
A: 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 nonreader of Indian poetry by surprise. For instance, in the previous volumes of the Yearbook, poets expressed their sensibilities towards home, identity, language, ecology, 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.
Q: What trends have revealed themselves in previous editions?
A: The first Yearbook happened when the world was reeling amidst the pandemic. The edition clearly recorded and projected 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.
Q: 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?
A: When Indian poets write in English, their use of the language is anchored to the region to which they belong. Unfortunately, these aesthetics of poetic language have not been documented and some work needs to be done to establish 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 emotion across. 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. Clearly, we have done away with the colonial yoke and embraced the language in a unique manner.
Q: There seems to be a widespread label, attached to poetry in general and Indian poems in English in particular: they are called overly sad.
A: 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. 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.