A poem shortlisted, IIAS, and poems in SCRIPTS

So, I loved IIAS, I loved the conference, and I loved the hills. Who would not love to have the poet Sampurna Chattarji as their very own room-mate for three whole days?? I intend to brag about this for the rest of my life. She also happens to be the sister of one of our English deptt teachers-- well, just gives me more reasons to brag. My paper went well and was well received, hopefully it makes it to the anthology of selected papers!

Okay, in other news, there is a art, culture and literature organisation based in Pakistan which is called Umang, and is headed by Dr Nosheen Ali. This organisation held a competition on the theme of 'Liberation' for the Nasreen Anjum Bhatti Poetry Prize wherein I was shortlisted for my poem 'Kabir Das ki Nagri- Reclaiming My City'. The poem deals with Benares, where I was born and brought up. Nothing to rave about too much perhaps, as this was supposed to be an international competition but could not spread very far and wide, so they only got a few entries, and these were mostly from India and Pakistan. So, nothing to rave about, perhaps, and yet, something to still feel nice about.

Well, alright, I haven't posted any actual poetry in here for a long, long time now, so I am putting the two poems and the passage that appeared in SCRIPTS below.

Baidew

You said I remind you of your sister

When she was very young.

Sometimes I think I could have been

Your littlest sister. Could have played

With you, read with you and

Grown up with you.

Sometimes I think I could have been Axomiya

I look at your sister, she is like you

But not a mirror image. Sometimes I think

I could be her. I could be her sister too. You, her,

And me too. I could sister-love you, sister-look-up-to-you

And sister-tease you then.

I could take that as fundamental fact

Before I took on the world.

Sometimes I think I could have

Called you Baidew.

An Illicit, Wicked, Scatological Love Poem

To lick salty sweat off your skin

To kiss your hot fevered body

To touch your menstrual blood

To smell it. Hair too. Pubic hair too.

To caress your wounds and itches.

To clean vomit and shit and then again

To love every part of you. To suck

Blood like a vampire or a suction pump.

Is that violent? I did not mean violence.

Is this poem violent? Is it blasphemous?

Is it grotesque? Does it talk about the gross parts

Of you, or rather, of me? But already,

It is becoming inseparable, you see.

You may feel repulsed by this poem. You may

Want to eject it. Vomit it out. My animal hunger.

Like morning phlegm spat out with toothpaste,

You wrote somewhere. Spat, that’s the end of that.

But all this is only fantasy. And I could make the climax

A little more gruesome, a little more profane

It’s just a different way of me being inside you

I could be inside you as food. Yes, you could kill me

And eat me, if you prefer to do.

You have taken residence within my brain, anyway.

In skin vein and limb, dream and whim, your name

the obsessive compulsive disorder of my tongue

I was just trying to get inside you. I thought

It might be a little less lonely.

a short excerpt from a short story 'Dream Desires': 

 

There were all the tiniest of wish fulfillment dreams, where so much happiness came at the cost of so little. Such as the dreams about the parties, for instance. Planning a party sitting on a side bench with Kopilee ma’am’s sister. Gatecrashing a party at Kopilee ma’am’s house and then struggling to find a way out. Sitting. Talking. Dreams about things much smaller than parties. Parties are grand, after all. These dreams were like Virginia Woolf’s “small matches struck in the dark … “, they were what made life go on. These dreams were about eyes, looks and glances, about  beautifully sweet nothings and random acts of kindness. They were “moments of being”, which get lost in the act of storytelling. The only way to keep these moments is to bind them tightly to oneself, as precious little secrets that can never be divulged or given away. To keep them like the last sweet morsel on the tongue which you don’t want to swallow. To live at night what you could not live during the day. To love the dreams, to rub them, caress them, to preserve their sanctity, to refuse to destroy them requires that they not be written down. Because the written word was rigid, and her dreams were small. 

sorry sorry, sorry blog, it seems to have been more than six months since I abandoned you... well, so what has been happening these past six months, errrm...

I hardly wrote some three poems in the whole of 2015, so not too much on that front. (though I have written quite a few poems in 2016 already!)  I was writing my story more, I guess (my story is my work-in-progress "novel"), and academic things like papers and PhD chapters. okay, so whatever news I have is this--

1. I have two poems ( 'Baidew', and 'An Illicit Wicked Scatological Love Poem' and a short extract from a story called Dream Desires accepted for SCRIPTS-- which is a queer, LGBT journal based out of Mumbai. (Bombay)

2. A paper 'Food, Love, and the Self in Indian Women's Poetry in English' has been accepted by a journal called The Apollonian, which is edited by Subashish Bhattacharjee and Saikat Guha, who work in JNU in some capacity, I do not know what!!

3. IIAS, Shimla accepted by abstract for the conference 'Poetry as Counter Culture: An Unbroken Indian Tradition' organised by K. Satchidanandan, so I will be attending the conference there from 16-18th May and presenting my long paper. Oh, the topic of the paper, you ask? I forgot. The title is something like -- 'The Portrayal and Agency of the Woman's Body in Indian Women's Poetry in English post-Independence'. Yup, the title probably needs to be made more "proper", but looking forward to a solo trip out in the hills! :-)

Besides this, well, I will keep updating you as and when clarities and concrete realities come my way. :-) 

Papers accepted for Fulcrum.

I was stunned, shocked and amazed :-) one late night at 2.30am to discover that I have had two academic papers accepted for the prestigious international journal 'Fulcrum: a journal of poetry and aesthetics' , edited by the poet, Philip Nikolayev.
The two papers are from my MPhil and PhD work, and I have presented these earlier at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and at in the IAWS (Indian Association for Women's Studies) Conference in Guwahati, Assam.

So yes. :-)

1. 'Frontiers: Connecting and Dividing Places in the poetry of Arundhathi Subramaniam, Anjum Hasan, CP Surendran, and Tabish Khair'.

2. Representation of Marginalised Figures in Contemporary Indian Women's Poetry in English


It should supposedly be out by the end of the year.

I may have some more news in waiting... but I'll keep it "in waiting", for the moment, I guess. So long, till then! 

'Irom Sharmila' in Six Seasons Review

My poem 'Irom Sharmila', is a ghazal, written a long time back in 2011, and has been published earlier in Kritya by Rati Saxena. Here it is again, in the 3rd issue of the Six Seasons Review, an international anthology (poetry, fiction etc), mostly based in Bangladesh, but the Indian poet, Sudeep Sen, is also an editor. This came out in June. Forgot to post, sorry! Here it is now, along with the front cover and back cover. I hope the text is readable enough.

1 Over The 8th

The journal started by K.Satchidanandan, 1Over The 8th is out.

1 Over The 8th is the precise point when you get drunk, while drinking alcohol. It has three of my poems 'Grief', 'Only The Bones Know' and 'You Don't Have To Tell Me Anything.', and some other great poets and poems besides.

You can find them here. My poems are on page 8 and 9 of the Magazine Section 1.

'What Ifs' published in The Viewspaper

A friend who works for The Viewspaper, Sangeeta Purkayastha, decided to publish one of my poems in it. You can read 'What Ifs' here. :-)

Lady Luck is shining on me! :-)

Lady Luck is shining on me indeed. So I got three pieces of news, all in the same week. These are all acceptances for forthcoming publications.

1. One of my short stories, 'Holi Colour' is accepted for publication for an international anthology on non-normative love called Marked by Scorn. The editor, Dominica Malcolm, also liked 'A Corridor Moment' but she had to follow the rule of accepting only one. The first time I ever got a story published. :-)

2. Three of my poems were accepted by K. Satchidanandan for the next issue of the e-journal Open Sesame at www.ogazine.com which he has recently started.

3. This one came as a jolt from the blue because it has been many eternities since I had sent these poems. Sudeep Sen accepted three of my poems for Six Seasons Review, which operates from Bangladesh, and where he is one of the editors on board. These poems have been published elsewhere in the meantime, but will be reappearing in the Six Seasons Review.


Just a little bit of luck! :-) I will gradually provide links and put them up as and when they are published.

Queer Love in India

A couple of months ago, around Valentine's Day, a friend, Souradeep Roy, asked me to write a love-themed article. As I am currently working on the 'Love Poetry' chapter of my PhD in any case, I agreed. Somehow, Souradeep and I both seemed to think that writing about queer love would be good, as Valentine's Day has mostly been celebrated in heterosexual contexts till now. So I hastily came up with this article for Tokioga journal called 'Queer Love in India'. You can read it here.

'Photograph'

Here is the poem 'Photograph' which was published in Coldnoon Diaries last month. Along with the photograph it was written for. The photo has been clicked by my friend, Ritu Singh, in IP College, Delhi University. And, Happy New Year and all that!

Photograph

A photograph is a means of travel.

It is a way of defeating binary linear logics

Of space-time by jumping them. Flying

Through them. A Muggle way of apparating

 A Muggle Time-Turner. An apparition,

I apparate there, where the topmost branch

Meets the roof. I am a bird who lives in the tree.

(I wonder if you would like me if I was a bird in a tree?

If you would shoot me with your lens instead of your eyes)

Photography at least gives scope for the imagination.

I am a bird right now, in this twilight dusk, crooning

And chirping. Do you see me? Can you hear me?

I am right here, in this photograph. I am flying now.

Tree friends, bird friends, rooftop friends, muggle friends,

Present friends, past friends, and you, will you be my friend?

I have been here for an hour now, this evening, this tree,

This photograph, this place. This mist of memory and dreams

Which films my eyes, this foggy lens of imagination. This place

Looks so beautiful in a photograph. Is it so beautiful, really?

I am trying to remember. I always thought that photography

Is a bourgeois art. I used to think it is a voyeuristic art.

But it is also a way through which I am both bird and human

Both there and here, both then and now, both in and out

This photograph has set me free from factuality.

'Photograph' published in Coldnoon Diaries

My poem 'Photograph' has just been put up in Coldnoon Diaries, a journal focussing on forms of literature and art related to travel. It is an off-shoot of the journal Coldnoon Travel Poetics and is handled mainly by Arup K Chatterjee and Amrita Ajay, who have also been my academic peers.

They have also given it a nice Roland Barthes introduction on photography, making the poem seem more sophisticated! The photograph I actually wrote the poem for however, is not the one that is up on the site. You can see the original photo- here. It is an IP College pic clicked by a friend, Ritu Singh.

To read the actual poem in Coldnoon Diaries, you can click here. :-) Happy Reading!

'Smell Spells' in North East Review

Here is 'Smell Spells', published in the North East Review on Diwali day.


Smell Spells

The polite fragrance of elaichi
is the dining room visitor perfume
the tangy amchur remembers
the green mango before its demise
the heeng invades all your senses
but the laung reveals its sharpness
only to the tongue
the ajwain is strong and yet prim
like a school mistress.
the dried methi seeds tell you the story
of how the sun dried the green fields
the abrupt saunf bids goodbye to the guests
the boring old jeera screams everydayness
and the tej patta is what everyone uses
but secretly hates
In a North Indian kitchen, I drown myself in Malabar.

'Creativity' and 'Smell Spells'

Here is 'Creativity', published in Allegro


Creativity
Fall in love with someone
From another culture.
Be swept off your feet and let this
Fascination transform you.
Do not treat the other
As other. Do not judge in haste.
Begin to understand, perhaps even
Become the other.
Speak their language. Learn
The names of their rivers, dance
To their festivals and music,
Dress like them, discover their food,
Tattoo them on your skin.
Be vulnerable. Let the other
Ravage you, give them the power
To destroy you. Open yourself
To translation. In that living shattering
evolving heartbreaking accepting space
lies creativity.


Read 'Smell Spells' published in the Xarodiya (winter) issue of The North East Review here.

'Creativity' finds a home in Allegro, and 'Smell Spells' in North East Review

My poem 'Smell Spells' (written long back, in April 2011) has been accepted for the 'Xarodiya' issue of North East Review. Sharat in hindi, shawrot in bengali, Xarot in Axomiya, It is an autumn/winter issue around the Durga Puja festive season. My poem, well it's about smells, more specifically, it's about spices used in food. Will put up the link to it later once it gets published.

Another poem 'Creativity', a very very recent one has been accepted and published in Allegro, a new e-zine based somewhere in the UK. It is their very first issue and the theme is 'New'. It seems to be a nice selection of poems, do check out 'Creativity' and the other poems here.

Renu Mashi: a poem in Earthen Lamp Journal

Here is the poem that was published in the July issue of Earthen Lamp Journal themed 'The Personal is Political'.  Happy reading!

 

 Renu Mashi

A sweet mother
and a strict father who insisted
on the loftiest principles
She was that startling mixture of fair skin
and jet black contrast curls
Two sisters and a brother complete the framed picture
There were two more sons, but one died at birth
and the other at infancy.
The poor mother had already borne so much pain
Shrouded in silence, this lovely lady
sari clad, old, knitting needles clicking in the sun
as I remember her.
They ensured the best college education
yes way back in 1950, for their daughters
Years later, I was to call my grandma's college my own
but this is not about my grandmother, this poem
is about my dadi's sister, Renu masi they always call her
She was doing a PhD in Chemistry, they said
A PhD is like a marriage, she said. I wish
it had been her only marriage.
But her second marriage was to a man who killed her
out of greed because she did not supply him with the money he wanted
I do not know if she could not or she would not
I only know that she died
They put poison in her morning coffee, they killed her
Cleverly using her own chemistry against her
Sixty years later, her sister's grand-daughter
pretends to do a PhD in feminism.