Poetry IV

I recently attended a TFA run poetry and short fiction reading. Annie Zaidi and Saudha Kasim were the readers. I had read some of Annie Zaidi's poems when I found out about Poetry for Prakriti which is being held in Madras and you should check it out if you’re in the city. Poets being featured include: Aditi Machado (who I am a huge fan of), my new favourite- the ethereal Annie Zaidi, Deepika Arivind-whom I find very interesting and many others I wish I could read and will proceed to do so when I have the time. Previous years' readers include Sharanya Manivannan whose poetry can be pretty gut wrenching and raw. I of course, had to in a gut wrenching(not so much) and embarrassing (very much) display of honesty had to tell her so; Meena Kandasamy and Siddharatha Menon-the only male voice whose name stays with me for reasons I think A will appreciate.

I should mention that I am spending much of my time reading these young female, Indian writers more than anyone else. I’m not sure why it’s happening this way but I seem to have developed an ear and eye for female, young and strictly Indian voices. I’m not sure if this is delayed patriotism or just the shared cultural context that makes it easy to relate to, but I find myself being increasingly inspired by them in comparison to other writers I come across in all my blog surfing. But even this explanation is far too simplistic. After all India is a freaking battlefield of cultures-just the last name of a poet has implications on how you read his or her poetry. And though this does not say much about that person’s context as much as it says about your understanding of that context, I find I am being influenced more by the poetry of these writers than anybody else’s. Take PFFA for instance, it is a world of poetry and by world I literally mean world-poets from all over write here and though I get my daily dose of poetry from them I find that a lot of the work posted here doesn’t stay with me.

So my point is: bells just ring in my head when I hear female, young, Indian poet. I guess it could also be because that is the identity I want to eventually cultivate, though I wasn’t aware of it until I wrote this sentence. Talk about your stream of consciousness!

Anyway getting to the reading, I had found Annie’s poems to be very interesting, different in their style and tone when I first read them. There is an underlying tone of humour in her poems- whether she talks about love or pain, the city or the trials of rustic(her words not mine) lovers’ lives. But all this becomes more effective you hear her read them out loud.

I realised what a difference the reading of a poem does to the piece. It links the poet inextricably to her poem. It becomes difficult to separate one's reaction to the poem and the poet. When one reads a poem (like on paper) though much of one's reaction does spill over to the poet it is solely directed at the poem-as a separate entity. Because it stands by itself- tiny inky black figures dreadfully stark against the white blank background with nothing to support them. The mark of a good poem is of course, that it doesn't need you to jump in and explain why.

I always tend to use the mother-child analogy when I think of poets and their poems. Our reading of a poem definitely mirrors how one might feel about a child and though this has implications on how one feels about his/her mother-it’s never the same reaction. (How many times have we willed a bawling child to shut up and gazed with pity at the struggling mother?) Poets and their poems do not get the same reaction. Unless, of course they are terrible! In which case I will judge you by your poem. I judge me by my poems too so I can be forgiven (I hope!).

But anyway, on paper, after a point it ceases to matter whether the poet was a terrible human being or done terrible things. Especially when it’s a great piece of art. Art gets a little divorced from the person. It stands on its own-if good. Now this of course I can see when it’s on paper, or as I have been witnessing it-on the Internet. But my struggle, okay not struggle but that separatedness (I can make up words okay?) seems less possible when the poet/writer reads out her/his own work. Annie’s reading of her own poetry made a difference. I now know these are her poems and though it does not completely stop me from placing myself in them there is a reserve. As she read them, she had her own inflections, lilts added here and there and a sort of musical quality that would be foolish to attempt to get rid off now. But I wonder if this is something that one can move past.

One audience member after congratulating her, promptly asked her why there was a tone of sarcasm in her poems. I was surprised when I heard this. I haven’t read the poems Annie read that day but I wasn’t aware of any sarcasm in her poetry. A great deal of humour displaying a fondness for what she was talking about-that was what came through. Now the reason why I bring this up is because I wonder how much of my seeing fondness and affection had to do with the manner in which she read the poems. Was it the poem or her? If I were to read these poems by myself would they read differently? Will I find that I like them less? I doubt it. Well okay, I hope not. But all this does bring me back to my rather involved point-does the reading of a poem change the way we understand a poem? And how? If for instance say the lady in the audience, had she read the poem would we see a sarcastic, aloof take on love? If so, then how independent are our poems from us? And- do we even want them to be?

I'm pretty sure I had a point here but I seem to have lost it. It seems rather obvious doesn't it?

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Why did I think I had a point?