A poem from years back :)

Girl gossip is pow(d)er puff, jujubes
and tutti fruity
not to mention lollipops, lemonade and ice cream soda pop fizz
Guy or boy gossip is
root beer
ginger beer or ale
and sticky
But only Hajmola and Hamdard or Rooh Afza
gossip is spicy

Insight

Dear friends,

Thanks to all who voluntarily liked and commented on my post regarding my certificate, congratulating me. I feel happy that so many of you are my friends, whether both offline and online, or online only. A friend is known by his or her happiness shown at good fortune favouring you. This not only makes the person known to you as a friend but also shows something about that person itself. That he or she has a pure heart in which there is no jealousy or ill wishes/ ill will to his or her friend. Blessings to all who showed me this kindness, may good things happen to you all always. You all know who you are

Obit

Obituary

There was a chap - what was his name now?
Can't remember - but he was
They say, rather a pronounced ass
When he lived, no one remembered him
When he died, they all forgot

Another meta-poem

Pen-ultimate scene (Broken word experiment. Damn, lousy puns)

That only glass -
That John* has to 'drank' from (fucked up line, tense busted purposefully, needs edit) -
Fell down
Broke
Its 'handil' (phonemic transcription, needed or not?)
Last Night (capital misused purposefully)

Well...

He's no Hamlet (echo, allusion, anachronism)
This; no great matter (reference, intertextuality)
When e'en 'is life (archaism, foreshortening for double meaning)
Like so many another's (damn simile, usage broken)
Is only (or all?) brok-en 'andle (Broken word experiment, foreshortening, article 'a 'needed or not?)
With no (to break the line here or not to break the line is the question)
Cup
{{{{{{{Attached

Fallen
Shattered (Rolling Stones song)
To 'smith'reeens' ('e' misnumbered on purpose, contraction through apostrophe only stylistic flourish?)
Long back}}}}}} (Last five lines should be thrown out)

The Baptist

Final draft for now.

Pen-ultimate scene

The only glass
That John* has
Fell down
Broke
Its handle
Last night

Well...

He's no Hamlet
This; no great matter
When e'en 'is life
Like so many another's
Is a brok-en 'andle
With
No
Cup.

*The Baptist

Ekphrastic poem

The nails you drove in still remain there. The scars are there and the wounds from the nails. My body, the site of numerous wars. If you want to know the aftermath of war just study it. You blasted a hole in me through my centre vertically, but see; I have grown a steel spine to counter it. Look in and through me and at my breasts, I proudly bare myself and it all for you to see that like my face and eyes, every inch of me is proud and screams of my ability to survive anything, childbirth, abuse, marriage, harassment, sex, operations, tissue tears, skin fissures, ligament misalignments, rape, beatings, burnings, domestic abuse, stretch marks, broken bones, nothing can break me or defeat me or bring me down permanently in body, mind, soul or spirit. I am the woman, bride of Christ, the church militant, the ecclesia triumphant, I am Frida, radical, extremist, feminist, fearless and free, a bird like my thick, dark, black eyebrows, witch, here I too stand. Nothing can shake me, my feet well planted in earth, my head framed against the background of the louring sky, imprisoned in white bands that show I am the female saviour still in swaddling bonds and bands. I am she who paints my pain, hurt, grief and complaints to ever accuse you to drag you down to hell while I remain firmly entrenched in victory over death and make it immortal. Amen.

Thoughts on Indian Writing in English and The Reuel Prize, Amita Paul and me as a critic.

A lot of people tell me you can't judge poetry. But of course you can. We can and do, meaning mankind. If that was not so I would not have read the entire Epic of Gilgamesh or the Bible or Beckett's How It Is and other books that are really tough to read like Brothers Karamazov from cover to cover. Having read a lot of poetry and getting rather tired of most Indian poets who are called great the best thing that happened to me recently was to come across the poetry of Amita Paul. We came across excellent writers and poets in The Significant League. The ones who got the prizes to me are like a who's who of Indian Poetry in English today starting from Santosh Bakaya and going on to Lopa Banerjee and then Vijay Nair and Lily Swarn and Daipayan Nair and then including Geethanjali Dilip and Reena Prasad. Along with them were young greats like Udita Garg and Dev Mishra and Rinzu, Ritamvara Bhattacharya, Neel Kamal, Joie Bose, Minerva Sarma and Harnidh Kaur who does not exist on my list anymore, Mallika Bhaumik and Aakriti Kuntal who were all powerful poets . Two Malayalis we gave upcoming poets prizes to were ungrateful but I have no regrets. The we here refers mainly to me, Reena, Santosh and Gauri. This year we have been joined by Satbir Chadha and Sunita Singh. In fiction there was Shabir Ahmad Mir and my daughter Joanna Sarah Koshy and in non-fiction again Lopa and in criticism Rukhaya MK Anilkumar Payyappilly Vijayan and CB Mohandas and in translation Bina Biswas. My friend Raman Lakshman who passed away unknown is another example of the skewed Indian poetry scene.

But my point is that apart from the so-called mainstream to which I don't know if these poets are considered as belonging to or not these poets mattered a lot to me as did many others like Atindriyo Chakraborty - poets I found powerful voices, recognised or unrecognised.

I was recently given an introduction to Commonwealth Literature in which while Santosh and Lily and probably Lopa figured as did the Reuel Prize but none of these other poets or writers I mentioned above including the ones who are closer to the mainstream are mentioned.

I now know poets like Sudeshna Mukherjee Ipsita Ganguli Deepti SinghSunil Kaushal Vineetha Mekkoth (mentioned in that article I spoke of) and M Padma Shri, not to mention ones like Akhila Rajesh Smitha Vishwanath Anju Kishore - all good poets. I now also know ones like Jagari Mukherjee and Prabha Prakash and Pratyush Mishra Ananya Chatterjee Jayachandran Ramachandran Poulome Mitra Shaw (a rough diamond) Himali Narang and so many others like this who write powerful poems and are powerful poets. This makes me wonder at the discrepancy between the so called world of accepted poets in India and the real world of poetry, where these poets I named are the ones who also actually matter along with a hundred or a thousand or million others, as much if not less than the ones who are famous today, but these are unknown or relatively less known.

In an Indian or international world that I envisage a poet like Amita Paul would be as respected and honoured as a T.S. Eliot but the fact that I meet her only now and recognise her greatness to be of such magnitude that I have to write this to laud her and that she is unknown makes me feel ashamed of the doyens of Indian English poetry. Same with many others I named, or have not named, as I don't have the time and energy.

The only solution is to go on being a T.S. Eliot myself, a 'Bishop', a critic of the Indian English poetry scene who fiercely critiques it to make people aware that Indian English poetry is not just mainstream canonical poetry anymore but a vast ocean, perhaps the best in the world, and it is shameful that all these writers are struggling to bring out books, get proper publishers, make money through writing etc. All I can say is that if the West had a Pound, a Stevens, a Zukofsky, a Hart Crane, a William Carlos Williams, a David Jones, and a Geoffrey Hill and the Black Mountain poets like Charles Olson etc., we too have not only the main stream writers like Bond but a Santosh Bakaya to offer him company, or a Keki N Daruwalla or Adil Jussawalla or Arvind Krishna Mehrotra or Gieve Patel and Jayanta Mahapatra but an Amita Paul, the sharp witty edge of a Gauri Dixit, a Koshy AV, a Ravi Shanker N, a Sreekumar K, a Prathap Kamath and, yes, a Madhumita Ghosh, and these are all not ordinary poets or writers but as important, and should be recognised and brought into the canon or prominence or eminence as others who are already there, or supposedly are better. And there are many more.

The gap can be bridged only if people recognise that quality matters more than quantity and come forward to support and sponsor such writing and make their voice not just heard but heard as much as it should be, as much as that of others are getting heard, urgently, with immediate effect.

 This is a kind of summing of five to six years of TSL and Reuel and Nissim prizes, especially this year's. I really think that while people in the West valued huge attempts like A, Patersen, Mercian Hymns, Anathemata, The Bridge, the Cantos, Wasteland, and other long mini epic poems that attempted grand themes of great virtuosity and seriousness, or long poems. India looks down on Indian English poets who try that kind of High Modernist thing in English. I wrote three long poems that were all published in an award winning foreign blog but got no serious critical study on it, except by the fellow poet who published them. Your poems too cry out for in depth commentary. People instead go for the small well wrought poems based only on pleasing imagery but this kind of pigeon-holing or bracketing of poetry into a house with only one room is anathema to me, so I have come to rather ignore the Indian English poetry scene. A Parthasarathy with The Rough Passage had at least vaulting ambition but now I don't know what people have beyond the idea of the well written short or brief poem, a necessity media driven, pushing down quality . Of course there are a few exceptions like the Ballad of Bapu which in intent is weightier than Seth's Golden Gate any day but what else is like that I really don't know.

Adidas reappears

Satirical prose - Pandorathon #2

Don't know how many of you have heard of Adidas. He used to be famous once upon a time for his sexcapades, oops, sorry, escapades. His name, as you all know, is an acronym for All Day I Dream About SEX, oops, sorry, Sports. But it also has many philosophical dimensions. Adidasan. First Servant. Now you know the first servant of the land is supposed to be the President in USA and the Prime Minister in India. But Adidas was first servant just as his parents gave him that name, and he had no idea whose first servant he was or the whats, whens, wheres, and whys or hows, if such words like whats, wheres, whens and hows are allowed in English, of such misnaming. Adidas was not sure if to apostrophe or not to apostrophe, either, or how to use or in such a sentence. He was nothing like K, his author or creator, in other words. Adidas, in other words, had an existential angst about his identity.

Adidas walked around with writers, artists and such like people, though he did not want to be any such thing. He read desultorily and saw movies his friends asked him to go to. In short he was a ne'er do well but women had a strange fascination for him precisely because of this or so he thought. He thought wrong, as usual.

At one of the big literary to dos Adidas landed up by accident or design, he is still not sure which. No one noticed him, as most of the attention went to his creator K. But a few did. One girl somehow came up to him and said, I am from DU. Adidas was surprised, not that she was from DU but that she had spotted his existence and come forward to talk to him on her own initiative and not to K. It made him feel almost real, which he wasn't! He asked her what she thought of the present situation there. She was downcast.
Are you for them or against them", she asked conspiratorially. Adidas lowered his voice too. To nothing more than a whisper. He had no idea who 'them' was yet.
"I am against 'them', always, whoever they are or where'er," he said, "damnit, to hell with 'them'!"
Her eyes lit up. She would almost have kissed him, he felt. He would willingly have let her.
She smiled. She took his hand in hers and said "let us go talk."
They were serving drinks somewhere. They both took a large. Adidas drank his in one go. She was talking animatedly. Their glasses were almost touching each other and soon they clinked! Come on, drink up, baby, he thought, while their hands brushed each others' more often and their faces loomed closer to each other's each minute or hour or second. Adidas was fast losing track of time. The air felt hotter. He had three more largesse's. To apostrophe or not to apostrophe? Large has a plural? She was pouting or opening or closing her mouth like a fish gasping for breath or speaking or her lips were asking for a kiss. He could not quite make out which. Maybe their drinks were laced? Like shoes? She said: "There are more of them than there are of us now. My father is one of them and I am one of us " This was very illuminating, Adidas thought. He was struck dumb or dumbstruck with illumination,
he was not quite sure which. Syntax, syntax, like his nun of a teacher, not dunce of a teacher, had told him long back, he told himself again, rapping himself on his knuckles mentally. He wondered if he kissed her would it make him one of them or one of us. He leaned closer, it was disconcerting as he could count every single hair on her eyebrows. She didn't seem to mind. He thought maybe his time to be first servant had finally come. It had many times before but had gone too as mysteriously. He was always seeking for an end to the quest but quests never end, he knew, in these times, unless with death or by being turned into a cockroach like Kafka's Gregor Samosa. Samosa or Samsa? He was not sure. To test his luck he suggested to himself saying lal salaam to her and then if that did not work vande mataram to see which side was safer to be on in this instant. Afterwards he could try Hail Mary full of grace, Allahu Akbar and Wahe Guru and if nothing worked there was always Shiva Shiva or some such thing. But before all that he suddenly felt the urge to pee, fortunately or unfortunately for him. So carrying his bag he went to the loo and relieved his bladder but forgot his bag in his excitement to get back. Would have been worse if he had forgotten his bladder and left it behind there and remembered his bag. What alliteration with b and it happens e'en in prose!

When he got back she was nowhere in sight or even on site. He cursed, not his luck, but his bladder. He was still unaware that his bag was lost.

Pandorathon #2 Part 2 of

Adidas Returns

Bladder empty, girl gone, bag too gone unknown to him Adidas wandered disconsolately for some time and then headed naturally to the other comfort station, the one that served drink. Another large downed at one go fortified him against his loss - of the girl and not the bag - somewhat. Off he went looking for something to eat, fresh game, venison, licking his chops. As luck would have it he wandered straight into the arms, oops, sorry, eyes, of a beauty dressed all in black, a fairer than the famed ten thousand lilies in the Bible one kind of one. Whether from the valley or the one in the field more beautifully clad than Solomon he was yet to find out. He knew why he was approached, though. He had a striking resemblance to K, his creator, especially in dim light and people often mistook the one for the other, to both their utter chagrin, leading to hilarious episodes in both their lives.

What's your name, he asked her.
He was completely sloshed by now. Or again, if one counted having gone to pee as a way of getting unsloshed.
Rita, she said.
Lovely Rita, meter maid, nothing can come between us, he thought.
Give us a kiss and stow your ... meter...away.
She smiled and said I am so happy to meet you. Have heard you are a very good writer,
He blanched. Write? He?
Covering up quickly, hoping his face had not turned green, he said, yes.
Do you know something weird? he said.
What?
I'm writing a book on the Beatles.
Fascinating? And?
They have a song with your name in it .
Oh, she said.
She looked at her watch, suddenly.
I have to go, she said, it was nice meeting you.
She sidled away.
So much for the second line of the song " nothing can come between us" he thought.
He went back for the next large. Having downed it again at one go, he suddenly sensed a vacuum by his side. Shit! His sling bag. Where had he lost it? Cursing and swearing to himself never to get drunk again, he remembered a line someone had written under one of the stories about him. Adidasinu vendathu nalla oru adiya. Onalla, palathishta~
He retraced his steps back to the bathroom but his bag was not there. No longer there. Memory came back to him the way dead characters come back to haunt their author that he had left it there last but was too useless to help him reclaim it. Gone with the wind, with the copies of the story book full of stories about him by K.

He stumbled out disconsolate again. This time he ran into a third damsel. Were there only damsels in this damned damnable hall of mirrors or Hotel California?
Hello, he said.
You look green, she said.
He tried to blanch brown to look normal.
Didn't work.
I am distrait. He muttered. Distraught, distracted, disturbed.
She started laughing.
You who are so good with words, she said, still laughing.
Joan Baez? he muttered, automatically.
Yes. What's your name?
He decided to risk it, what did it matter after all?
Dylan, he said, extending his hand, Bob or Thomas. At your service, madam. Any service? That was what they asked him in the Gulf, to show they knew a smattering of English, it was considered polite and compulsory. He wouldn't know what to do if she asked him to service her, though.
She laughed again, louder this time.
You are funny, she said. Why are you looking worried?
I lost my bag, he said, in the bathroom.
She burst into peals of laughter this time.
Your bag?
Yes?
You are lucky, she said. Imagine if it had been your bladder and not your bag!
Gawd! He had never thought of such a thing! In his entire life! He anxiously felt for his bladder. It seemed in place, alright, not lost. He sighed in relief, thanking his stars or God or the Force for small or big mercies. Bag remained lost, all the same. Damn bag, had got bagged or bogged or was in somebody's bog, no, gob...
Can I sit down here, he asked.
Sure, she said,
He sat down next to her
What do you do?
I am the local president of the Lion's, she said.
He looked at her a trifle anxiously.
Was he Bertie Wooster? Was she going to set the lions free , out on him? Even before there was anything between them and he proposed.
We came to scout this place out for our annual beauty competition.
Oh.
He felt a stirring of interest.
Rita's face danced before his eyes.
Listen, he said, please hold it right here. And in this locality lives a girl called Rita. She is tres beautiful, tres beautiful. Like the lily of the valley or the field, fairer than ten thousand such lilies.
He went into ecstasy at how poetic he was sounding and thinking how fair she was. Every second her fairness took on more and more fairness, as if she had bathed in fair and lovely from the womb. In milk and white honey, if there was such a thing.
The lady she was talking to gave him a strange glance.
A queer glance. A, queer, no, are you off your rocker glance
Oh no. Was there some dirt on his face? he dabbed at his nose, hoping it was there and he had got it off.
He went on in a rhapsody, lost to all propriety.
Find her like Cinderella, reward her like the Prince, he said.
Her stare got more and more pronounced.
Hey, let me get this straight. You want us to rent out this place for the Lion's and - she stuttered
He looked at her apprehensively at the word Lions not knowing if it was in apostrophe or not, his usual problem.
- and hold our beauty competition and call this girl Rita here if we can find her and give her the beauty queen crown.
Yes, he said blissfully.
She got up laughing and went off still laughing. Her laugh became louder and louder and soon sounded for some reason like a lion's roar. Or like lions roaring.

K put his hands down. He only had to type in the name of the story now.
Adidas Returns, Drunk he wrote at the very top of the story, clicked save and fell asleep, tired, instantly.

He slept and he dreamt of lions and Lion's, with and without apostrophes.

Pandorathon 1

Pandorathon #1

In Jellicle* land
where Jellicles rule
come spring or summer
come autumn or Yule
Jellicle fell in love with Popsicle
Lollilop days, riding a lollipop mule
Don't you wish
you were in Jellicle land
where Jellicles run and Jellicles play?
Jellicles sway to Bob Dylan tunes
in Jellicle kingdom
under the moon
Jellicles s(w)ay as Jellicles do
Jellicle and Popsicle happily groove
in Jellicle land
where Jellicles rule
come spring or summer
come autumn or Yule

Word borrowed from Eliot

The editorial of the latest OPA

WELCOME

TO

OUR POETRY ARCHIVE

 

I think when you read a wonderful poem, when it starts, by the end of it you’ve moved so far – and you think how did you move me so far in so few words?”

–- Tishani Doshi

It has been a privilege and an honour for me to be touched by Poetry!  And even more humbling to be a contributor and now part of the Editorial Team to this wonderful E Zine which embraces Poets and Poetry from different corners of the earth. What unites this forum together is the beauty of the poetic form and the common lingua franca~ English!

Born out of passion of NillavroNill Shoovro in April 2015, Our Poetry Archive has indeed come a long away in facilitating a cross cultural exchange of world poetry. It has also given space and recognition to many wonderful new poets from all over the world. This special edition in May celebrates Indian Poets writing in English.

Indian English Poetry has made a rich contribution to the world of literature and is associated with writings by Indians both residing in India as well as literature from the Indian diaspora. Tracing its journey, one remembers the patriotic and spiritual poetry of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Aurobindo Ghosh, Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu.

Moving on from that era in post colonial India, contemporary poets have written about a variety of themes, from forging a new identity, to social issues, and even autobiographical content.

A strong trend in modern Indian Poetry is the use of free verse, non rhyming poems with irregular verses, a literary style where thoughts, feelings and emotions are presented in a free flow. It experiments with language and imagery and is often influenced by globalisation.

Contemporary Indian Poets have made it big in the world arena. Poets like Vikram Seth, Sudeep Sen, Tishani Doshi, Ampat Koshy, Santosh Bakaya to name a few have global following. Well known amongst the diaspora is Rupi Kaur who with her illustrative poetry has caught the imagination of the Indian youth in different parts of the world. Dr Ampat Koshy has invented a new form of sonnet called the Roseate Sonnet where the first Alphabet of the last four lines when read together spells Rose. Many poems have been written in this format.

And so here it is ladies and gentleman. A special edition dedicated to Contemporary Indian poets writing in English and contributing to world literature. Happy Reading!

Ipsita Ganguli

From The Editorial Desk

OPA

https://ourpoetryarchive.blogspot.com/2019/05/ampat-koshy.html?fbclid=IwAR1diPvOqF5y1Mx1C85gmXVTF5EPcrYdrePnwfYO1ShseRb4dqyYCILbo8c

AMPAT KOSHY

A ROSEATE SONNET-1

On a cancer patient after she had to shave her head due to chemotherapy

Welcome, light, coming through the window

Fall softly on my eyes

Remind me of dawn coming after the dawn

The sun and its countless dawns

Welcome, the sights, soothing my eyes

Of curtain and pots and plants

Familiar, and the world outside

Sing to me, of green and new lives

Welcome, the breeze, that gently comes

Into my room and caresses

My head and skin

With no barrier now between

Sing to me of light breathing life into yonder

Of light and breeze giving me, again, head cover'

Rapt, unseen, the thoughts behind your eyes

Over and over in circles, swim like fishes

Swim where the light is, gain strength where the shade is

Energizing, to help you overcome your plight

A ROSEATE SONNET-2

On the nude photo of a male friend

When Michaelangelo sculpted David

When he painted Adam on the chapel's ceiling

Yeats said it was for girls at puberty

To find the first Adam in their fantasy

Mapplethorpe oft used the male nude

To make the same point, in ebony

That while all cats may be in the dark, grey

All women aren't, or all men

Do not demonize, do not eroticize

Do not criticizie, do not glamorize

Rather, valorise my art that tries

Off-beat, to not objectify

Something we all want to sexualize/sensualize

Eyes blind. But here stands Mars without his arms.

ROSEATE SONNET FOR MY MUSE – 1

I do not kiss your photograph

Your eyes are glazed like a dead fish's

I want more than a mimeograph

Give me lies, truth, lows, middles, highs.

I do not worship your idol

To which one can only talk

No word from it can I, in return, cull

It has feet but cannot walk

Goddesses are rare, and one precious

Hands have they, but they want caresses

Rose dancing on the cusp of nothingness

One is worth the manifold

Seeing your breasts are a pair of lights

Every time on their grace I (have to) keep a tight hold

AMPAT KOSHY

"Dr. AMPAT KOSHY is a seasoned poet whose CV is peppered with numerous books and publications. He has written seven of those books and co-written four other books. This freethinking and unconventional doctor has edited and contributed to several anthologies that would read as a virtual countdown of the world’s best literary works. He wrote a seminal book on Samuel Beckett, the Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. It is entitled: Samuel Beckett's English Poetry: Transcending the Roots of Resistance in Language. When Dr. Koshy was a kid, he won an international prize for poetry. He made a mark as a Pushcart nominee for poetry in 2011. The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honours the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot." After that, he won several awards for writing as critic, academic and poet. However his crowning glory so far was being adjudged best academician this year in his university, Jazan University, Saudi Arabia, where he teaches presently as an Assistant Professor. He is presently working on a novel, a film script, as well as grinding hard as editor for a book of essays and four or five collections of poetry etc. His books have been to Frankfurt, London, Dubai and Turkey, not to mention Indonesia and the short stories collection Scream and Other Urbane Legends have been shortlisted in the Hindu Literary Prize. He has also written online and offline in anthologies etc…basically, if achievement is a muscle, then he is muscle-bound! Above all else his zest for love, life, wife, wine, women, family, the grim reaper, romance, sex, God, autism and song inspire him to write potently and prolifically."