Nabaneeta Dev Sen
Two of the poets presented were in translation, one from Bangla and the other from French. The Bangla poet Nabaneeta Dev Sen who wrote a small number of her poems in English, left a useful guide for translators in her essay Translating Between Cultures: Translation and Its Discontents. Her questions to guide translators were these:
– Should one prioritise the content or the spirit of the poem?
– Should the translation remain faithful to the text, or is a freer version required?
– How should the quirks of an author’s unconventional syntax be rendered into the target language?
– What to do with cultural and linguistic details like rituals, gestures, dialectal colloquialisms and idioms?
– Should footnotes be used to explain allusions to history, mythology, and prior literature?
– If the original poem has a formal structure such as meter and rhyme, is it necessary to retain that and if so, at what cost?
– Should divisions such as line breaks and stanzas be followed?
The ideal is that translations should not read as translations, but as “poems, a new voice perfect in their own right, transcending the barriers …” (Wendy Doniger)
While Nabaneeta Dev Sen had the close collaboration of her daughter to create the translations, in Victor Hugo’s case (poem A Sunset chosen by Zakia from the collection Feuilles d'Automne or Leaves of Autumn), the translator was the original poet and mystic, Francis Thompson, well-known for his poem The Hound of Heaven:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
We had two Welsh poets represented, Alun Lewis the war poet who wrote two small poetry collections and two short books of prose which have stood the test of time. He was dead at 28 in a brutal war he despised but which he joined, ignoring a long history of mental depression and a strong pacifist bent. He said: “I’m not going to kill. Be killed perhaps, instead.”
Geetha’s choice was an eloquent rendering of Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas, the more famous hard-drinking poet of Wales who was considered too Welsh to be English in England, and had the simultaneous misfortune of being too English for the Welsh. Everybody remembers him for his villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
To reciprocate Joe’s choice of a Bangla poet, KumKum chose a Malayali poet, though one who wrote all his poems in English, having been brought up outside Kerala. Apart from writing poems, the best experience in his life was getting married to a wonderful doctor, Kavery Nambisan, from Kodagu (Coorg) who is a literary person, in addition to spending a life of service as a doctor in remote areas.
Kavery Nambisan who works in rural hospitals has written seven books novels and children's books
Thomo was true to form in choosing a lyricist and song-writer, the front man of the Led Zeppelin rock band. He sang for us one of the famous numbers, Stairway to Heaven, which delighted everyone. But having to go off on a rescue mission to a wedding, he could not be present. Readers must be thankful he sent a recording which is permanently theirs to listen to from a link below within this blog post.
Arundhaty chose a poet, Suniti Namjoshi, who is in the forefront of the feminist movement, but began her professional life as an officer in the Indian Administrative Service before pursuing higher studies abroad. She wrote poems and stories and became a noted academic in Canada, USA and UK. The poem chosen was somewhat dark:
… a poet lives
like any other creature, talks perhaps
more than is normal, her doom no brighter,
nor her death less dismal than any other.
like any other creature, talks perhaps
more than is normal, her doom no brighter,
nor her death less dismal than any other.
We had Devika reciting an elegy for Africa (a continent of countries she loves) by one of its famous sons from Sierra Leone who overcame racism and prejudice to contribute at the highest level of academia, medical science and poetry – Davidson Nicol. Africa, he describes, as a continent for loving:
… the hibiscus blooms in shameless scarlet
and the bougainvillea in mauve passion
entwines itself around strong branches
the palm trees stand like tall proud moral women
shaking their plaited locks against the
cool suggestive evening breeze;
and the bougainvillea in mauve passion
entwines itself around strong branches
the palm trees stand like tall proud moral women
shaking their plaited locks against the
cool suggestive evening breeze;
Shoba recited an astrophysical poem by Marie Howe, inspired by black holes and the singularity (infinity) Einstein found as one possible solution to his famous equations of Gravitation in 1916. Black holes were made popular by Stephen Hawking (to whom the poem is dedicated), although it was the physicist John Wheeler who first used the term in 1967. The poem is titled Singularity and written in the form of an interior monologue, reflecting on the origin of the universe and humans.
Singularity by Marie Howe
Born in Mumbai in 1941, Suniti Namjoshi is an important writer in contemporary Indian literature in English. She has several books of verse and fable .
Her father, Manohar Vinayak Namjoshi, was senior test pilot at Hindustan Aircraft in Bangalore. He was killed when his plane crashed in 1953. Her mother, Sarojini Namjoshi, née Naik Nimbalkar, was from Phaltan.
Suniti was sent to Woodstock, an American mission school in the Himalayan foothills, and then to Rishi Valley in Andhra Pradesh where Jiddu Krishnamurti, the religious philosopher, used to come and talk to the children for a couple of months each year.
Having passed the IAS in 1964, she worked as an officer in the Indian Administrative Service before pursuing further education. She studied Public Administration[ and earned her Master's degree from the University of Missouri and earned a PhD from McGill University on Ezra Pound.
Namjoshi taught in the Department of English at the University of Toronto from 1972 to 1987. She wrote Feminist Fables in 1981. It was described in the journal Feminism as a minor feminist classic. Namjoshi produced a brilliant body of work, marked by sparkling wit, word play and inventive power, emerged.
She began writing full-time in 1987, publishing fiction and poetry works. Kaliyug - Circles Of Paradise (play) and Flesh And Paper (poetry) were written in collaboration Gillian Hanscombe. Namjoshi has been influenced by Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, her friend Hilary Clare, and Kate Millett's tract Sexual Politics. She has been active in the feminist movement and gay liberation movements.
Namjoshi was Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Women's Studies at Exeter University in England from 1995 to 2001, and was a member of the Literary Panel of the Arts Council of England from 1993 to 1996.
In 1996 Namjoshi published Building Babel, a postmodern novel about building cultures, whose story continues online with a collaborative project that enables readers' contributions.
Namjoshi currently lives and writes in Devon, UK.
Her poetry, fables, articles and reviews have been featured in various anthologies and journals in India, Canada, the US, Australia and Britain. A deep engagement with issues of gender, sexual orientation, cultural identity and human rights infuses her work.
Devika
Devika chose the poet Davidson Abioseh Nicol (1924 – 1994).
Davidson Sylvester Hector Willoughby Nicol, pen name Abioseh Nicol, was an academic, diplomat, physician, writer, and poet of Creole descent from Sierra Leone.
His father was a pharmacist who worked in Sierra Leone and Nigeria. His father’s science books fascinated him. He became interested in science and after he left school, he became a science and maths teacher. He then became a technician in a science laboratory.
In 1943 Nicol came to England and went to Cambridge University to study Science. Nicol was the first African to graduate with first class honours from the University of Cambridge and he was also the first African elected as Fellow of a college in Cambridge University (his undergraduate college, Christ’s College).
He wanted to become a doctor and a scientist. He applied to London Hospital Medical College in Cardiology. Because of his name, the college thought he was white man who had an excellent degree. Whey they realised he was African and black they refused admission. Later, another professor at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London invited Davidson Nicol to come and study with him. He went on to get the highest results in his group and became a doctor, and thus overcame the racism that prevented his entry into London Hospital Medical College.
Davidson Nicol earned B.A., M.A., M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. He taught medicine and did medical research in Britain and Nigeria and became principal of Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone and a vice Chancellor of the University of Sierra Leone.
In the year 1950, he married Marjorie Esme of Trinidad and had five children, two daughters and three sons.
He turned to academics from 1950 onward, but left academia in 1968 to become a permanent representative of Sierra Leone to the United Nations. Nicol also served in various positions at the UN – Under Secretary General of United Nations, and Ambassador of Sierra Leone to Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Nicol returned to academia in 1987. He was a visiting professor of International Studies at the University of California (1987-88) and the University of South Carolina (1990-91). He retired in 1991 to his house in Cambridge, UK. He died of cancer there at the age of 70 in 1994. He published short stories, poetry, music, as well as medical papers.
The present poem conveys Nicol’s complex understanding of Africa. He speaks for all his brothers, ‘lonely sons on distant shores.’ It is an evocative statement of affection for the entire continent of Africa. Africa, he says, is a continent made to be loved in the same way that Europe is romanticised and Asia is spoken of as mystical.
The poem starts by saying that far from the distant shores, from other continents, Africa was just a name to him, screaming for freedom. But by the end of the poem, he is almost disappointed. The Africa he finds is undeveloped with weary looking people who have resignation written all over their faces. He ends philosophically, calling Africa a concept that dwells only in the mind. We call it ours but it’s not, it’s a dream.
Africa belongs to those who live within her, not to those dwelling outside!
Africa has always held a charm for Devika. She first heard about the famous African game sanctuaries like Serengeti, Masai Mara, and Kruger National Park when she was a college student in the late seventies from a neighbour who was a merchant navy officer‘s wife. The wildnerness has fascinated her ever since. She has been fortunate to visit several African countries – Kenya, Botswana, South Africa, Egypt, Tunisia – each very different. When she found this poem, The Meaning of Africa, it seemed perfect for the KRG poetry session in June.
References:
Geetha
Dylan Marlais Thomas (DT) (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer. He became widely popular in his lifetime and remained so after his death at the early age of 39 in New York City.
DT was born in Swansea, Wales, UK. He had bronchitis and asthma in childhood and struggled with these afflictions throughout his life.
He was a teenager when many of the poems for which he became famous were published: such as And death shall have no dominion, Before I Knocked and The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.
In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post. After leaving the newspaper, Thomas continued to work as a freelance journalist for several years, during which time he remained at Cwmdonkin Drive and continued to add to his notebooks, amassing 200 poems in four books between 1930 and 1934. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these years.
Dylan Thomas – No. 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, his birthplace in Swansea
Tishani Doshi, Indian poet and dancer, born of a Welsh mother, spent a night in the poet’s Welsh home; she found the return to childhood, a religious experience, and a resting place unlike anything else.
DT saw writing a poem as an act of construction “as a sculptor works at stone,” later advising a student “to treat words as a craftsman does his wood or stone ... hew, carve, mould, coil, polish and plane them...” Throughout his life, his friends included artists, both in Swansea in southern Wales, and in London, as well as in America.
When the poem Light breaks where no sun shines appeared in The Listener in 1934, it caught the attention of three senior figures in literary London, T. S. Eliot, Geoffrey Grigson and Stephen Spender. They contacted Thomas and his first poetry volume titled 18 Poems, was published in December 1934. 18 Poems was noted for its visionary qualities.
In 1936, his next collection Twenty-five Poems, also received much critical praise. Two years later, in 1938, DT won the Oscar Blumenthal Prize for Poetry.
The stage was also an important part of DT's life from 1929 to 1934, as an actor, writer, producer and set painter. DT's parents had storytelling and dramatic talents, as well as theatre-going interests, and this could also have contributed to the young boy's interest in performance.
The Shakespearean actor, John Laurie, who had worked with Dylan Thomas on the stage and radio thought that Thomas would “have loved to have been an actor” and, had he chosen to do so, would have been “Our first real poet-dramatist since Shakespeare."
In early 1936, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara (1913–94), a 22-year old and they were married in the year 1937 and had three children.
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Caitlin Thomas (née Macnamara) was the wife of Dylan Thomas. Their marriage was a stormy affair, fuelled by alcohol and infidelity, though the couple remained together until Dylan's death in 1953
His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940s brought him to the public's attention, and he was frequently used by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene. Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950s. His readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and bouts of drinking worsened. The time in the United States cemented his legend, and he went on to record to vinyl such works as A Child's Christmas in Wales. For the centenary of his birth in 2014, BBC brought out a drama, A Poet in New York, with Tom Hollander as Dylan Thomas.
Although DT wrote exclusively in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. He is noted for his original, rhythmic, and ingenious use of words and imagery. His position as one of the great modern poets has been much discussed, but he remains popular with the public.
DT based his 1945 poem Fern Hill on childhood experiences at his aunt's farm in Wales, where he grew up. The poem is filled with intensely lyrical language and rich metaphorical descriptions that capture the excitement and joy of playing outside as a child and feeling in harmony with the natural world. The result is a hymn to the wonder and grace of childhood and the pain of its eventual loss.
Memorial stone to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was unveiled in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey on 1st March 1982. The inscription is a quote from his poem Fern Hill
Kumkum, Devika and Kavita remarked that the poem has a beautiful flow of words, like the ‘holy streams’ mentioned in the second verse. Click on the link below to hear Geetha reciting the poem:
Joe's surmise on listening to the poem is that DT had a mastery over poetic words, just as he has been acclaimed for, although some critics have argued that DT's work is too narrow and that he suffers from verbal extravagance. One of his reviewers, Rowan Williams (the former Archbishop of Canterbury) called his poetry “heady, incantatory, obsessively sensual.”
The Poetry Archive notes that “Dylan Thomas's detractors accuse him of being drunk on language as well as whiskey, but whilst there's no doubt that the sound of language is central to his style, he was also a disciplined writer who re-drafted obsessively.
One of his famous poems" Do not go gentle into that good night" written as a tribute to his dying father, has been oft quoted in movies and speeches by famous personalities.
Joe
Nabaneeta Dev Sen (1938 – 2019) wrote poetry from a young age. Both her parents were known poets, Radharani Debi and Narendra Dev. Her first published poems date from age seven.
She did her BA in English from Presidency College, Calcutta University, and later her MA in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University in 1958, being in the first batch of that course with the poet Buddhadeb Bose as Head of the Department. Pratham Pratyay (First Confidence), her first book-length collection of poems came out in 1959, just before she left for Harvard where she got another MA with distinction in 1961.
At Jadavpur University, she met her future husband, Amartya Sen who had come down from Cambridge University and was employed as a lecturer in Economics there for two years. They met at debates – she was a good debater, she says. Later when NDS was on the way to America to study, Amartya met her in UK and they got engaged in Cambridge, UK, in 1959. The following summer in 1960 they got married with blessings of her mother-in-law.
Old time pic of Nabaneeta Dev Sen with Amartya Sen from Ananandabazar Patrika
Their married life began in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The scholarly couple migrated to several universities – Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, and Delhi. They became the parents of two daughters, Antara Dev Sen (born 1963) and Nandana Sen (born 1967); Nandana, the younger one who is an actor, children’s writer, and activist is the translator of the collection Acrobat of poems written over the lifetime of NDS; the poems recited by Joe were taken from that collection.
Though her books in prose were more numerous by far than her poetry collections, NDS identifies as a poet first. She carried her poetry notebook everywhere, says her daughter, Nandana. However, her range extended to fiction and non-fiction, feminist essays, children’s books, travelogues, and masses of journalism. Her published books number over 100.
In 1976 her marriage to Amartya Sen was on the rocks and she divorced; there was another woman.
NDS returned to India with her daughters, and though she remained on civil terms with her former husband, there was certainly a pain she had to work through. The hurt shows in several poems, for example in the poem titled:
Make Up Your Mind
Make up your mind
Who do you want That woman, or me?
Within me breathe
Two people —
Make up your mind
Who do you want
That woman,
Or me?
NDS wrote in Bangla (the language of 250 million people across India and Bangladesh). It was a political choice, for she was as fluent in English as Bangla. She was worried about the future survival of Indian languages and their literature. She is not a narrow nationalist, however. She was a keen follower of the English literary scene in India, and advocated for high-quality English translation of works in regional languages to heighten their impact and widen their readership.
NDS had faith in poetry as vehicle for women’s freedom and unity. It was the platform for “the shared memories, the shared apprehensions, the shared metaphors,” a way “to be empowered by the Word and freed by the Word.”
Nandana had the help in her translation from a guideline NDS published in her essay Translating Between Cultures: Translation and Its Discontents; the essay contains numerous questions to which the translator must find answers himerself.
NDS always felt a poem needed more work … every word mattered, every punctuation mark mattered. A poem could become a dangerous question of life and death for her. Her house named Bhalo-Basa, where she was born, has now been declared a Heritage Building. It became a focal point for litterateurs and friends during her lifetime.
NDS retired in 2002, as Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. She had been a visiting professor and creative writer at universities around the world, and received many awards including the Padma Shri in 2000 and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999. She died of cancer in 2019. She has held important positions in various literary bodies around the world.
Her Bengali and English publications are too numerous to list here. For a partial list, see:
Nabaneeta and Nandana Dev Sen in 2018, Photograph by Mala Mukherjee for Harvard magazine
Alun Lewis was a Welsh poet. He is one of the best known war poets of the Second World War. He was born on July 1, 1915 in Wales . His parents were school teachers and he had a sister and two brothers. He took to writing at an early age. He studied at the Aberystwyth University and the University of Manchester. His first job as a journalist was a daed end, and so he earned his living as a substitute teacher. In 1939, Lewis met another teacher, Gweno Meverid Ellis, whom he married on 5 July 1941.
After the outbreak of the World War II he joined the British army Royal Engineers as a private, although he was a pacifist by inclination. He published his first book on poetry called Raiders' Dawn and other poems in 1942. His war experiences were the theme of most of his poems. Lewis died, most probably as a result of suicide, on 5th March 1944 during the Burma Campaign against the Japanese Army.
The poem All Day It Has Rained is a war poem, about the experience of rain while encamped in a tent on muddy ground – it was while training, and the camp was in Hampshire, the area where the poet Edward Thomas lived. Alun Lewis was a great admirer of the poetry of Edward Thomas (1878–1917) who died in the Battle of Arras in WWI just after the publication of his first verse, Six Poems. Lewis had visited Thomas’s grave at Steep in 1940. The poem was first published in Horizon in 1941, where it attracted considerable interest. You can have a closer appreciation of the prosody of All Day It Has Rained by reading this piece by Carol Rumens in The Guardian.
The poem is a tribute to Edward Thomas’ own poem titled Rain.
Kumkum
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He was born in 1963, in Bangalore, where his Malayali parents lived at that time. Growing up there he could speak Malayalam, but did not read the language – a fate common to many expatriate children. Vijay Nambisan graduated from IIT, Madras. It seems he drank, smoked and took drugs to excess at different times of his short life. Vijay Nambisan got married to Kavery, an extraordinary woman from Coorg, who now lives and practices medicine as a Tata officer in their coffee estates. She is not only a medical doctor, but a well-regarded novelist too.
Vijay Nambisan, like many other poets in India, wrote poems only in English.
In the foreword to his book First Infinities Nambisan wrote that he believed poetry didn't matter, but later he realised that in fact, “Poetry is the only thing that matters.”
After their marriage Kavery took up a job at a Catholic hospital in the remote village of Mokameh in the Patna subdivision of Bihar. Vijay came to live with her there. He considered those two years of their life a fulfilling time. Kavery and Vijay enjoyed working and living with the humble folk in this remote dacoit-infested area of the state, feeling a deep empathy for them.
Vijay died of cancer while living in Kodagu (Coorg). The last couple of years of his life saw him more active in composing poems. He not only published his book of poems First Infinities during that time, but he also compiled another book of poems, These Were My Homes, that was published after his death by his wife.
The first recognition Vijay Nmbisan received as a poet was an award for his poem Madras Central. Here is the last stanza of that poem which KumKum found very beautiful, even touching:
I have everything I began the journey with,
And also a memory of my setting out
When I was confused, so confused. Terrifying
To think we have such power to alter our states,
Order comings and goings: know where we’re not wanted
And carry our unwantedness somewhere else.
A list of his published books of poems and essays follows:
– Gemini (a book of poems) with Jeet Thayil and Dom Moraes.
– Language as Ethic (essays)
– These were my Homes (Collected Poems)
– Bihar is in the Eyes of the Beholder (Reflection)
– First Infinities (a Collection of poems published before his death).
– Puntamam and Melpathur: Two measures of Bhakti (Religion)
KumKum liked his poem, Ducks. A second was the poem Snow, quite nice and simple.
Shobha
Marie Howe was born in 1950, in an Irish catholic family at Rochester, NY, in 1950. She was the second among nine children.
She graduated from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. She worked as a newspaper reporter and high school English teacher before taking up poetry at the age of 30.
The Good Thief is her first published book of poems. In the words of Stanley Kunitz, her mentor at Columbine University where she received a MFA degree in 1983: “Whether she is confronting the joys, or the terrors of existence, the light that falls on the page is suffused with Grace and charity.”
Howe’s poetry seeks answers to metaphysical questions through ordinary day-to-day experiences. In her work, mundane incidents and memories help to shed light on the nature of soul and self, and a guide to living on the brink of the mystical.
This is what Marie says about poetry:
Poetry holds mystery. It has a trance-like quality, a spell. … It is more akin to music and song, than to prose. … It is making magic with words. It is a sacred art. … It’s incantatory. It feels as its roots can never wholly be pulled out from sacred ground.
In her view prose can be gorgeous, but it doesn’t have the spell and magic of poetry. You can listen to Krista Trippet, former host of National Public Radio, interviewing Marie Howe here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qaFPX6upy8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qaFPX6upy8
Marie Howe has an appointment at Sarah Lawrence College in New York in the MFA Writing program – the Indian-American poet Vijay Seshadri winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2014, also teaches in the same program.
Howe currently lives in West Village, NY. She never married but adopted her daughter Grace from China.
Marie Howe herself gave a short introduction to her poem Singularity which Shoba chose to read in this short video:
Please listen. The video was illustrated by paper collage artist Elena Wagner and features original music by the cellist Zoë Keating.
Thomo
Robert Anthony Plant who was born on 20 August 1948 is an English singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the English rock band, Led Zeppelin, for its entire existence from 1968 until 1980, when it broke up following the death of John Bonham, the band's drummer. Click on the link below to hear Thomo singing:
Led Zeppelin front man Robert Anthony Plant who is happiest in the company of cider, Wolves and Welsh mythology
Plant developed a compelling image as the ultimate rock-and-roll front man, similar to those of contemporaries such as Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Jim Morrison of the Doors and Freddie Mercury of Queen. Plant was inducted with the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.
Many have accused the band of having hidden praise of Satan inside the recording Stairway to Heaven. They allege that the message, which occurs during the middle section of the song:
If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now...when played backward, contains the Satanic reference:
Here's to my sweet Satan
The one whose little path would make me sad whose power is Satan.
The song was a great success and although it was never released as a single, it sold 37 million copies despite the album being a double album which is unnamed but has come to be known as Led Zeppelin IV. Stairway to Heaven created a record as the most requested song on radio, notching over 3 million requests. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest rock songs of all time.
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Led Zeppelin band in 1969 (L to R) John Bonham (drums), Robert Plant (lead singer and harmonica), Jimmy Page (guitar) and John Paul Jones (bass guitar), photo by Chris Walter
The Poems
Suniti Namjoshi
Arundhaty
Grass Blades
As the first blade bends,
Grass Blade murmurs,
'I bend, but do not break.'
Foot
keeps coming down.
Passionate Grass Blade
mounts a campaign:
Grass blades henceforth
to be made of glass.
Feet henceforth
to travel shoeless.
People walk away —
Why get hurt?
Oak Tree observes,
'Feet are not relevant.'
To be a poet
Saying that this was what it felt like to put
the right foot forward, and then the left, saying
that this was the taste of morning porridge,
that of milk, and this other of a niggling
but persistent pain, saying —
that, I suppose, was what was distinctive —
being unable to keep my mouth shut,
my mind from working. But a poet lives
like any other creature, talks perhaps
more than is normal, her doom no brighter,
nor her death less dismal than any other.
Devika
Davidson Nicol was the first Black African to graduate with first class Honours from the University of Cambridge and the first to be elected as a Fellow of a Cambridge College - Christ's
The Meaning of Africa
(abridged to keep within the time limit)
Africa, you were once just a name to me
But now you lie before me with sombre green challenge
To that loud faith for freedom (life more abundant)
Which we once professed shouting
Into the silent listening microphone
Or on an alien platform to a sea
Of white perplexed faces troubled
With secret Imperial guilt; shouting
….
And in its stead the hibiscus blooms in shameless scarlet
and the bougainvillea in mauve passion
entwines itself around strong branches
the palm trees stand like tall proud moral women
shaking their plaited locks against the
cool suggestive evening breeze;
the short twilight passes;
the white full moon turns its round gladness
towards the swept open space
between the trees; there will be
dancing tonight; and in my brimming heart
plenty of love and laughter.
….
Go up-country, so they said,
To see the real Africa.
For whomsoever you may be,
That is where you come from.
Go for bush, inside the bush,
You will find your hidden heart,
Your mute ancestral spirit.
So I went, dancing on my way.
…
This long uneven red road,
…. The pedalling cyclist wavers by
On the wrong side of the road,
As if uncertain of his new emancipation.
The squawking chickens, the pregnant she-goats
Lumber awkwardly with fear across the road,
Across the windscreen view of my four-cylinder kit car.
An overloaded lorry speeds madly towards me
Full of produce, passengers, with driver leaning
Out into the swirling dust to pilot his
Swinging obsessed vehicle along,
…
His motto painted on each side: Sunshine Transport,
We get you there quick, quick. The Lord is my Shepherd.
The red dust settles down on the green leaves.
I know you will not make me want, Lord,
Though I have reddened your green pastures
It is only because I have wanted so much
That I have always been found wanting.
…
You are not a country, Africa,
You are a concept,
Fashioned in our minds, each to each,
To hide our separate fears,
To dream our separate dreams.
…
‘This is my Africa’ meaning
‘I am content and happy.
I am fulfilled, within,
Without and roundabout
I have gained the little longings
Of my hands, my loins, my heart
And the soul that follows in my shadow.’
I know now that is what you are, Africa:
Happiness, contentment, and fulfilment,
And a small bird singing on a mango tree.
(62 lines, 400 words)
Geetha
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Dylan Thomas, Image from Hulton Archive
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
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Nabaneeta Sen in a picture dated 15th April 1971
Right Now: Forever
Time has not the power to extinguish me,
Don’t think for a moment that I wait upon Time.
Let Time keep on playing his absurd battle game,
Every time he strips me, I rise clothed, without shame;
With the force of prayer, of spells magic and divine,
All that was untimely will turn auspicious, sublime.
In a just war, the rebel stands forever unafraid
For her ally is Eternity, who, divinely arrayed,
Guides her chariot, destroying the enemy line.
Thus, a divisive age will be defeated and spurned —
Though it brings on great wars, it will lose every time;
From all our scriptures, this is the truth I have learned.
Know that I am cherished by an undivided, infinite age:
Time will never have the power to scorch me with its rage.
In Marriage
Stay close. I’m scared.
It feels as if this moment is not true.
Touch me —
like the closest ones touch the body before cremation.
This hand, take it, my hand.
Hold this hand, as long as you’re near me
don’t leave it untouched. I’m scared.
It feels as if this moment is not true.
As untrue as our long yesterday,
as untrue as our infinite tomorrow.
Kavita
Alun Lewis, Engraving by John Petts
All Day It Has Rained
All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap.
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream,
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home; –
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees:
Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.
And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play,
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.
KumKum
Vijay Nambisan
Crisp in the winter’s morning,
Softly all through the night,
What is this without warning,
Falling and white?
I have never seen snow
But I can imagine it quite –
Not how it tastes, but I know
It falls and is white.
One morning I’ll open the door
To bring in the morning’s milk,
And all around there’ll be snow –
Fallen and still.
How I’ll roll in the stuff!
How I’ll tumble and spin!
Until the neighbours cry, Enough!
And send me back in.
Ducks
They hammered in the stakes and wound the long nets round,
Blue nets of nylon, about as high as where
They wound their dhotis, and I wondered as
I sat by the raining window what the blue meant,
The blue circles in the wet square of pasture.
Then at evening the boys drove up the ducks
From the river, squat and uncomplaining,
They herded them here and prisoned them in the
Blue cages. Then they went away. The rain
Sobbed till nightfall in the tamarind trees.
When the rain stopped the ducks began their noise,
Hoarse-throated, full-chested, and we heard them
Away in the big house, after dinner, and my niece
Asked, “Are they bullfrogs?” I said yes, or perhaps birds.
But I knew all the time they were only ducks.
Their noise is incessant, like frogs or crickets.
And sometimes to me it is like the river
A mile or two away, groaning of its strength.
Or like the rain as it winds the teak groves through.
Or sometimes, to me, like the song of birds.
I am still wondering what they’re doing there,
What’s being done to them. As I write
Again the rain is washing the still morning small
And the ducks are silent, not at all thinking
What manner of beast creates these hours of sleep.
Shoba
Marie Howe
Singularity
(after Stephen Hawking)
Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?
so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—
nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone
pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.
For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you. Remember?
There was no Nature. No
them. No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf or if
the coral reef feels pain. Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;
would that we could wake up to what we were
—when we were ocean and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not
at all—nothing
before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.
Can molecules recall it?
what once was? before anything happened?
No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with
is is is is is
All everything home
Thomo
Robert Anthony Plant, lyricist, when young
Stairway to Heaven
(abridged by Thomo to keep within the time limit)
There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for
Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to heaven. ............
There's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven
Ooh it makes me wonder (2)
There's a feeling I get when I look to the west
And my spirit is crying for leaving
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking
Ooh ooh ooh
And it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter
Ooh and it makes me wonder.........
If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on...
Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know
The piper's calling you to join him
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
Very interesting to read the poet bios and a brief of the poems selected . Well put together KRG members Joe and Geetha . Thanks
ReplyDeleteLoved the post of the session. The poet bios also were very interesting. So sorry to have missed this session.
ReplyDeleteFantastic read....as usual!!! Relived the poetry session through this blog😊
ReplyDeleteDefinitely we needed a Physicist to explain the poem Sobha had chosen to read to us.
ReplyDeleteAnother very interesting Session, though we missed the members who could not participate.
I am amazed how well all of us are learning to participate in blog writing.
Loved the variety of poems selected and the poet bios.
ReplyDelete