Women Poets Poetry Session - October 21, 2022

Sea Poppies - The title of the poem by Hilda Dolittle

The October session of the Kochi Reading group was dedicated to women poets. A wide range of women poets were featured – we had two Malayalam poets, Sugatha Kumari and Balamani Amma, in translation; the Kannada writer Vaidehi also in translation; Warda Yassin, a British born Somali poet; Forugh Farrokhzad from Iran, Hilda Dolittle and Mary Oliver from USA and Meg Cox from UK. All the poets, except Mary Oliver, were new to the KRG readers. This opens up new vistas for those of us who enjoy reading poetry.

The reading year has reached its last stretch with only the next session in November for the novel Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley and the December session on humorous poems to kick start the Christmas celebrations. This last is the most anticipated session for the merriment it affords, not only through the poems, but by the fancy costumes and makeup readers wear for the occasion. This time hopefully we can all meet physically, instead of on Zoom. The Zoom platform has been a boon which allowed KRG to meet regularly during the almost three years of the Covid-19 pandemic; but the physical sessions we used to have at Yacht club  provided an intimacy that enhanced the literary zest. All of us will be happy to get back to regular meetings there, hopefully in 2023.

It is that time of year when we select the six novels for the coming year, so everyone is invited to put on their thinking caps on and select a great list. 

The women poets session was the first since Kumkum and Joe moved into their  beautiful apartment at DLF Riverside. Fort Kochi is poorer without these two lovely people, but Kumkum says she will be visiting often as she misses her house and the sea. We too miss the pictures of the sunset that Kumkum used to sends us on WhatsApp.

We missed three members at this session – Thomo, Geetha and Pamela. Pamela is visiting her daughters to discharge grandmother duties to welcome two beautiful angels, one in the US, and the other in Norway. But we hope to have her back with us soon.

Thomo and Geetha have set out on a Bharat Darshan in their Tata Nexon EV and will be away for sometime. They send us regular updates of their travels and we keep in touch through the marvels of modern technology. You can follow Thomo and his adventures on his Facebook handle @Thomas Chacko. As I write this, they have reached Hisar in Haryana.

Thomo and Geetha setting out from Ernakulam on their trip

Thomo at Kanyakumari – starting point of his Bharat Darshan; 

the Vivekananda Rock Memorial and Thiruvalluvar Statue are in the background.

Our resident poet, Joe penned these few lines in honour of our intrepid travellers: 

Bon Voyage to Thomo and Geetha

Like Shankaracharya

From Kalady to Kashmir 

Venture Thomo and Geetha

From Kanyakumari to Umling La without fear,

Part pilgrimage, part tourism,

Part dare, part adventure,

Plotting their route by an algorithm,

Through EV charging points well-measured,

Impelled by an avid quest,

To establish new records

For distance, time, height and the rest,

Traversing modern highways forwards

Even to ancient roads,

Filling their eager hearts

With the Discovery of India ! 

Arundhaty

Warda Yassin is an award-winning British born Somali poet and secondary school teacher based in Sheffield. She was a winner of the 2018 New Poets Prize for her debut pamphlet Tea with Cardamom (Poetry Business, published 2019). Her poetry has been published in journals like The North, Magma and Oxford Poetry, and anthologised in Verse Matters (Valley Press), Anthology X (Smith|Doorstep), Halfway Smile & Surfing the Twilight (Hive). From October 2020 she will be taking on the role of Sheffield Poet Laureate.

Warda has been commissioned as a poet to deliver poetry workshops. She is currently running the Mixing Roots project for young people of colour with Hive South Yorkshire. She has performed at various festivals and open mic nights including Ilkley Festival, Off the Shelf Festival of Words and Verse Matters, and has read with talented literary people such as Hollie McNish, Jean Binta Breeze and Kayo Chingonyi.

Winner of the New Poets prize in 2018

Devika

Devika chose the poet Mary Oliver, born to Edward William and Helen M. (Vlasak) Oliver on September 10, 1935, in Maple Heights, Ohio, a semi-rural suburb of Cleveland. Her father was a social studies teacher and an athletics coach in the Cleveland public schools. As a child, she spent a great deal of time outside where she enjoyed going on walks or reading.

Her work was inspired by nature rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary long walks.

In 2007, Mary Oliver was declared the country’s best-selling poet.

In 2011, in an interview with Maria Shriver, Oliver described her family as dysfunctional, adding that though her childhood was very hard, writing helped her create her own world. In an interview with Shriver, Oliver revealed  that she had been sexually abused as a child and had experienced recurring nightmares.

Oliver began writing poetry at the age of 14. She graduated from the local high school in Maple Heights. In the summer of 1951 at the age of 15 she attended the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan, now known as Interlochen Arts Camp, where she was in the percussion section of the National High School Orchestra. At 17 she visited the home of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, in Austerlitz, New York, and formed a friendship with the late poet's sister Norma. Oliver and Norma spent the next six to seven years at the estate organising Edna St. Vincent Millay's papers.

Oliver studied at The Ohio State University and Vassar College in the mid-1950s, but did not complete a degree at either college.

On a visit to Austerlitz in the late 1950s, Oliver met photographer Molly Malone Cook, who would become her partner for over forty years. In Our World, a book of Cook's photos and journal excerpts Oliver compiled after Cook's death, Oliver writes, “I took one look [at Cook] and fell, hook and tumble.” Cook was Oliver's literary agent. They made their home largely in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they lived until Cook's death in 2005. Oliver continued to live there until relocating to Florida.

Mary Oliver is the author of a guide to understanding and writing poetry, A Poetry Handbook. She walks readers through exactly how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, to sound and sense, drawing on poems by contemporary poets to illustrate her account.

Mary Oliver – A Poetry Handbook

In 2012, Oliver was diagnosed with lung cancer, but was treated and given a clean bill of health. Oliver died of lymphoma on January 17, 2019, at the age of 83.

The poem, When Death Comes, confronts death head-on with beauty and grace —meeting it not with fear, but with curiosity. The speaker of the poem isn’t paralysed by a fear of death but sees it as a call to experience everything that life has to offer

Oliver often turned to nature in order to meditate on life and mortality. She reminds us that grief is a process, and that one step in that process is anticipating the end of sadness. The knowledge that happiness is even possible can be its own form of comfort.

Especially these days, it can feel like there is an endless supply of distractions. Oliver’s poem is a call to pay attention, especially to the things you take for granted. If we pause for a moment, even for something as inconsequential as a few birds singing, we might find unexpected joy.

Devika herself has been going through a difficult phase after losing a dear friend and finding it difficult to accept the loss. This poem seemed apt for our poetry session.

Joe 

The Iranian poet Joe chose was in the avant garde of the current protest movement in Iran led by women chanting “Women, Life, Freedom!” or —Jin, Jian, Azadi. 

Forugh Farrokhzad was born to Turan Vezitabar and Muhammad Farrokhzhad Aroki, in Tehran but she spent the first six years of her life in Nowshahr, in the northern part of Iran. As a little girl she was a bit of a tomboy. Her mother, Turan Farrokhzad, was a doll collector. Dolls were later to be the subject of one of Farrokhzad’s most powerful poems, The Wind-Up Doll, which ends:

Like a wind-up doll one can look out

at the world through glass eyes,

spend years inside a felt box,

body stuffed with straw,

wrapped in layers of dainty lace.

With every salacious squeeze of one’s hand,

for no reason one can cry:

Ah, how blessed, how happy I am!

Forugh at the age of six came back to Tehran to attend kindergarten and elementary school, but finished at a technical school because she was interested in painting and sewing. As a teenager she fell madly in love with a neighbour, a distant relative named Parviz Shapour. 

Forugh Farrokhzad and her husband, Parviz Shapour

The parents were adamantly opposed, which made Forough attempt her first suicide. Eventually in 1950 they got married.
Their son Kamyar was around two years old when Forough published her first poem.

Forugh Farrokhzad from Wikipedia

She wanted to publish in magazines and went to the office of Roshanfekr (The Intellectual), one of Iran’s most prestigious magazines. She knocked at the door and handed three poems to the literary editor, Mushishi, and said that she would like him to publish these poems. The first poem he saw was called Sin, a startling poem, short poem, 24 lines in its English translation (only 12 in the original Farsi):

 Sin:
I have sinned a rapturous sin
in a warm enflamed embrace,
sinned in a pair of vindictive arms,
arms violent and ablaze.
…
I poured in his ears lyrics of love:
O my life, my lover it's you I want.
Life-giving arms, it's you I crave.
Crazed lover, for you I thirst.

Lust enflamed his eyes,
red wine trembled in the cup,
my body, naked and drunk,
quivered softly on his breast.

The poem didn't go down well with many readers who were shocked, although some loved the poem. Iran’s culture did not at the time allow confessional statements in poetry.

More outrageous than the fact that the poet sinned was her utter lack of repentance. The poem is about the awakening of a woman to sexuality, to the joy of physical union that she has never experienced before and now that she has, she's writing about it, expressing herself freely.

Her father was furious with the publication of this poem, and the husband could not show his face to the world. They later divorced and she lost custody of her son.

Farrokhzad's first collection, of forty-four poems, was called Captive (Asir) with an introduction by Mr. Chafa, published in the early summer of 1955. Significantly, the poem Sin which brought Forugh notoriety was left out from the collection.

Her five publications during her lifetime were The Captive (Asir) 1955, The Wall (Diwaar) 1956, Rebellion (Esyan) 1957, Another Birth (Tavalodi Digar) 1963, Let Us Believe In The Beginning Of Cold Season (Iman Biyavarimbeh Aghaz-a Fasl-eSard) 1974.

The theme of motherhood was central to her life in poetry. She chose to be immersed in poetry, saying, “I want to become a great poet. I can't reconcile with a life of domesticity and raising children.” However, the pain of being separated from her son tormented her.

After the publication of her next collection, Forugh attempted suicide once again. She was taken to a psychiatric hospital and given traumatic electric shock therapy. After that she decided to leave Iran and went to Italy and then Germany. But in 16 months she decided to return, missing her language and her country.

She was introduced to the Golestan Film Studio, belonging to Ebrahim Golestan, a pioneer of Iranian cinema. Soon afterward a passionate and loving relationship developed between the two, which continued until her death.

Ebrahim Golestan

In 1962 Golestan sent Forugh to a leprosarium to do a documentary. She filmed and edited a 22-minute short called The House is Black which has powerful visual poetry and won some prizes. She adopted a child of lepers there and came back with this adopted son, Hossein Mansouri.

Hossein Mansouri, son adopted by Forugh Farrokzad from the leprosarium with his mother, a single parent

Farrokhzad was killed in a car accident on February 14, 1967. Thousands attended her funeral. Her work survived, being passed around in secret after the 1979 revolution, when it was banned and then heavily censored. She is buried in Zahir Dowleh Cemetery in Tehran.

Joe read the poem Only Voice Remains.

For a capsule 4-min video biography by her translator, Sholeh Wolpé, see:
https://lookwhatshedid.com/story/sholeh-wolpe-on-forugh-farrokhzad/

Translation of Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad by Sholeh Wolpé:
https://www.sholehwolpe.com/sin-selected-poems-of-forugh-farrokhzad
https://www.amazon.in/Sin-Selected-Poems-Forugh-Farrokhzad/dp/1557289484/

Paris Review life of Forugh Farrokhzad:
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/11/19/feminize-your-canon-forough-farrokhzad/

Forugh Farrokhzad biography by Farzaneh Milani, narrated at the Library of Congress on August 27, 2014 as a video talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN1_mjWxO0A

Forugh Farrokhzad's grave at Zahir Dowleh cemetry in Tehran

Kavitha

The poem Journey by Mary Oliver is about the importance of taking charge of one's own life and leaving behind negative influences.We should continue persevering in our  own transformation. There will be obstacles, it will feel scary; but in the end, you will learn to hear and trust your own voice and your own path.  The poem tells of the emotional and mental turmoil we endure to end one unhealthy life and begin anew in a different world.

Mary Oliver delves into themes of struggle with strength and determination. These are represented through various symbols relating to a house, natural elements like the wind, and the landscape.

Kumkum

Meg Cox lives in a small hamlet in the North of Herefordshire is much published in anthologies and poetry magazines.

Meg Cox did not write poetry until she completed a degree with the Open University in her sixties. Since then she has attended many workshops with the Arvon Foundation and Poetry Business, where she learned, made friends and loved the give and take. She lives with a dog or two for company and has a beautiful view of nature. Thanks to writing poetry and the many friends she has made she has occasions to go out and read in public. She takes part in the Arvon Foundation which runs creative writing courses, events and retreats both in-person and online, tutored by leading authors.

Meg Cox spends much of her time reading and writing poetry. Her work has been widely published in magazines and she is a regular reader at open mics. Her chapbook Looking over My Shoulder at Sodom was published by Grey Hen Press in 2014, and her first full collection A Square of Sunlight (Smith Doorstop) was published in 2021. Her poem 1963 was the Guardian poem of the week on 24/5/22.

A Square of Sunlight ByMeg Cox, encapuslates a lifetime of loving life

Meg Cox says “just because I have written a poem, doesn’t mean it’s true.” Here is such a one

Very Small Italians
The first time I had sex in a car
it was in a Fiat 600 and I’m not short.
Me and my friend paid twenty quid, each,
To go to Rimini on a coach

We met these Italian men
And we saw Gina Lollobrigida in a café
And one of these Italian men had a very small car
And he and I had a very uncomfortable shag –
Only the once, and never again.

It’s perhaps what is left unsaid that has as much impact as the secrets she reveals, showing her wicked sense of humour and brilliant comic timing. You can her recitation on Youtube at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Nu9oPi0Uk


A Square of Sunlight by Meg Cox features a collection of forty or so poems. From the very first one, the title poem for the collection, the reader knows they are in for something out of the ordinary. A school girl comes home to find,

…her dad
in his cricket whites, prone and beating his fist
on the quarry tiled floor in a square of sunlight.

Meg Cox's 1963 is what we might call a ‘Memory Poem’. In it the poet recalls a day when she was in Paris, as a young girl. She could have been a student there, or perhaps on vacation from college in England.

She tells us about the ‘pension’ in Paris where she lived, that it was on a tree-lined street in Chatou, a suburb of Paris. She even remembers the noisy stag beetles “hovering under a fretted iron street lamp.”

There was a large kitchen, quite unlike the houses she had been used to. The kitchen walls were adorned with paintings, which drew her attention, so did the large windows “without mullions,” which looked more like doors.
The poet remembers little details, sitting on a polished pinewood table with her bare feet up on the dresser, painting her toenails and drinking coffee. She was reading a famous book of the times titled Bonjour Tristesse (in English, “Hello Sadness”), a novel by Françoise Sagan published in 1954, when the author was only 18, which became an overnight sensation.

Bonjour Tristesse – 1954 edition

The poet recalls fiddling with the knob of the radio expecting to hear Beatles's songs. Instead she heard some music by Bach and soon there was a solemn announcement in French that President Kennedy had died.

The news of Kennedy's death in the US electrifies her consciousness briefly, which up to that time had been immersed in mundane existence. She recounts other minutiae of her surroundings, mentioning a painting of a sparrow by Picasso, on a red mounting. A Frenchman had kissed her two weeks before, a passing event that didn’t make a lasting impression. Finally, she declares she was only 19 years old that day –– all of life ahead of her.

Priya

Janaki Srinivasa Murthy (Kannada: ಜಾನಕಿ ಶ್ರೀನಿವಾಸ ಮೂರ್ತಿ), popularly known by her pen name as Vaidehi (Kannada: ವೈದೇಹಿ) is a well-known writer of modern Kannada language fiction. Vaidehi is one of the most successful women writers in Kannada and winner of many prestigious national and state level literary awards. She has won the Central Sahitya Akademi Award for her collection of short stories, Krauncha Pakshigalu in 2009.

Vaidehi was born on February 12, 1945 to A.V.L Hebbar and Mahalakshmi in Kundapur taluk of Udupi district, Karnataka. She belongs to the Kota Brahmin community, a distinct Kannada community mainly found in Kundapur. She grew up in a very large family. She lived in a large traditional Brahmin house with many children, servants, guests and family friends. Her father, A.V.L.Hebbar, is a lawyer and her mother was a second wife of a Hebbar and focal point of the family.

Vaidehi speaks a dialect of Kannada, called Kundapur Kannada and uses this dialect in her works. Vaidehi's birth name is Vasanti. the pen-name Vaidehi was given by a Kannada weekly magazine Sudha, she sent a story to Sudha magazine for publishing, but few days later she sent a letter to the editor requesting him not to publish the story, as it was a real life story; however, the editor went ahead and published the story by changing her name to Vaidehi. Thereafter she became popular and is known by this pen-name, Vaidehi. 

She did her B.Com (Bachelors of Commerce) in Bhandarkar's college, Kundapur. Vaidehi was married to K. L. Srinivasa Murthy at the age of 23. They have two daughters Nayana Kashyap (née Nayana Murthy) and Pallavi Rao (née Pallavi Murthy). After marriage Vaidehi changed her name to Janaki Srinivasa Murthy and went to Shimoga, leaving her native place Kundapur. Later they moved to Udupi and then to Manipal. Vaidehi currently lives in Manipal. Vaidehi's daughter Nayana Kashyap is a translator, Kannada writer and English teacher. Nayana has translated many of Vaidehi's works into English, including five of Vaidehi’s stories. She has translated Vaidehi Kannada novel Jatre into English as A Temple-Fair. It was included in Five Novellas by Women which was published by Oxford University Press.

Her writings, generally described as post-modernist, depict the plight of women in an indignant and rebellious tone. In fact, it is told that her creative self blossomed as a result of her encountering patriarchy, in her search for personal freedom. For instance, daring to sit on a chair was, for her, one of the heroic feats she accomplished in her childhood, in defiance of the social injunction that girls should not sit on chairs in presence of the male members of the family, let alone male members from outside. She longed for the freedom that she was denied on account of being a woman, but enjoyed in full measure by her brothers. Her short stories and novels lament the discrimination and unequal treatment meted out to women in society. She successfully takes up cudgels on their behalf, using her pen as an effective weapon for social transformation.

Vaidehi has received many prestigious literary awards, such as the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi award, the M.K. Indira award, and the Katha award.

Some of the matter is taken from website: :https://www.loc.gov/acq/ovop/delhi/salrp/vaidehi.html

Here is a link to an interview of Vaidehi in The Hindu (behind a paywall)

https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-authors/writer-vaidehi-interview-a-womans-world-is-the-biggest-mahabharata/article19682465.ece

Saras

Balamani Amma, popularly known as the grandmother of Malayalam literature,  was born on 19 July 1909 to Chittanjoor Kunhunni Raja and Nalapat Kochukutti amma at Nalappat, her ancestral home in Punnayurkulam, Ponnani taluk, Malabar District, British India. She had no formal education, but under the tutelage of her maternal uncle she became a poet, taking advantage of his collection of books. She was influenced by Nalapat Narayana Menon and the poet Vallathol Narayana Menon.

At age 19, Amma married V.M. Nair, who became the managing director and managing editor of Mathrubhumi, a widely circulated Malayalam newspaper; Nair was later an executive at an automobile company in Calcutta. She left for Kolkata after her marriage to live with her husband, who died in 1977.

Malayalam Poet Nalapat Balamani Amma, with her daughter, Kamala Das, also a poet, but in English

Balamani Amma was the mother of writer Kamala Surayya, (better known as Kamala Das), who translated one of her mother's poems, The Pen, which describes the loneliness of a mother. Her other children include son Shyam Sunder, and daughter Sulochana.

Balamani Amma (19th July 1909 – 29th September 2004)

Amma died on 29 September 2004 after five years of Alzheimer's disease. Her cremation was conducted with full state honours.

Balamani Amma published more than 20 anthologies of poems, several prose works, and translations. Her first poem Kooppukai was published in 1930 when she was 21 years old Her first recognition came when she received the Sahithya Nipuna Puraskaram, an award from Parikshith Thampuran, former ruler of Kingdom of Cochin. Nivedyam is the collection of poems of Balamani Amma from 1959 to 1986. Lokantharangalil is an elegy on the death of the poet Nalapat Narayana Menon.

She received many literary honours and awards, including the Kerala Sahithya Akademi Award for Muthassi (1963), Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award for Muthassi (1965), Asan Prize (1989), Vallathol Award (1993), Lalithambika Antharjanam Award (1993), Saraswati Samman for Nivedyam (1995), Ezhuthachan Award (1995), and N. V. Krishna Warrier Award (1997). She was also a recipient of India's third highest civilian honour, the Padma Bhushan, in 1987.

On 19 July 2022, Google honoured Amma with a Google Doodle on her 113th birth anniversary:

Source: Wikipedia

K Satchitanandan, writes in his tribute to Balamani Amma in the JSTOR “Balamani Amma, even while being deeply involved with the problems of the world, was also detached in her own way, a detachment that enhanced her ability to look at reality with cool dispassion. This is a capacity found in the greatest of poets, from Vyasa to Kabir who belonged yet did not belong”

Vol. 48, No. 6 (224) (Nov-Dec 2004), pp. 125-127 (3 pages)

Published By: Sahitya Akademi.

Saras chose to read two poems by Balamani Amma, having listened to her poems as a child. She felt the translations have not brought out the poignancy of the grandmother's (Muthassi) feelings as expressed in Malayalam, which is probably a drawback of translations in general. The poems were translated by Balamani Amma herself.

Foreword of the translations of Balamani Ammas poems

Shoba

Shoba chose the poet Sugathakumari who started to write in the 1950s and in the following decades, not only wrote poems which pushed the horizons of literary idiom in new directions, but also amalgamated deeply lyrical sensibilities with an unwavering commitment to intervention in the world around her. Echoing some of the issues raised by the women’s movement of the seventies and eighties, Sugathakumari’s poetry mounted an increasingly feminist responses to social order and injustice.

Sugathakumari was honoured with the Sahitya Academy Award in 1978 for the collection of poems Rathri Mazha.  Rathri Mazha (Night Rain) the title poem, is soaked in melancholy and articulates the solitary musings of a distraught heart, but not without a haunting sense of feminist concern underlying it. Filmmaker Priya Thuvassery, whose stories pose similar concerns of environment, gender and community, reads this enduring poem by Sugathakumari (with an accompanying translation by Hridayakumari, her daughter) in this YouTube recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXZkyjzFdoo

Zakia

Hilda Doolittle was an avant-garde poet and novelist born in 1886 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Upper Darby. Writing under the pen name H.D., her work spanned five decades of the 20th century (1911-1961), and incorporates a variety of genres. In her own days she was known primarily for her work in the Imagist movement.

The Imagist model was based on the idioms, rhythms and clarity of common speech, and freedom to choose subject matter as the writer saw fit. H.D.'s later writing developed on this aesthetic to incorporate a more female-centric version of modernism

Glenn Hughes, the authority on Imagism, said “her loneliness cries out from her poems.” She had a deep interest in Ancient Greek literature, and her poetry often borrowed from Greek mythology and classical poets. Her work is noted for its incorporation of natural scenes and objects, which are often used to convey a particular feeling or mood.

H.D. found the stimulation that led to an artistic identity in her personal relationships, outside the family and classroom.

A charismatic figure, she was championed by the modernist poet Ezra Pound, who was instrumental in building and furthering her career.

Paralleling the paths of Pound, Eliot, and Stein, H.D. lived as an expatriate in England and Europe from 1911 until her death in 1961

By the time she married Richard Aldington, her literary career was already underway, her reputation as the best of the imagists well-established, thanks to the efforts of Pound and her own hard work


Oread
Oread was a nymph of mountainous conifers. This is crucial when analysing Oread because it explains the reference to the fir tree in Doolittle’s poem addressing it asking for it to come up to the land and smother it – but the imagery H. D. uses enacts this very desire, by describing the sea using land-based imagery (seeing the green waves as pine trees, for instance). Is this also a poem about sexuality, and perhaps even same-sex desire? It might be read as such, but equally, as an innovative nature poem

Sea Poppies
The poem tells the story of a poppy seed pod that is cast by the sea upon the shore and takes root in the sand. The wild fruit produces a strong, equally wild plant that is unusually beautiful and fragrant.

The poem may be an allegory for H. D. herself. Once, to the horror of on-lookers, she waded out into the ocean. Transfixed or in some kind of ecstatic reverie, she allowed the waves to buffet her until she was knocked unconscious.

Arundhaty

Warda Yassin

Sheffield 
My city is a dark murmur outside the window tonight
But I see everything,
How we came , where we settled , where we belong .
I see the fresh stamp on my mother's passport,
How she lit the Broomspring Centre crowned
In flowers ,
Held the hand of a village boy in Western Park
I see the arrival of us Jessop's babies.

That first icing sugar snow at Edward Street Flats
The moon , a halo over Tinsley Cemetry.

I see the mothers flocking the gates of Springfield Primary
Waving attendance certificates like flags.
Mr Cole's cloud-soft hair, as we curve around him like river beds .
I see the landmark places we came of age, London Road , Spital Hill,
Broomhall where we grew tall as Tower blocks.

I see the Ponderosa's Eid in the park
The rows of patterned prayer mats ,
boys in fresh new trainers
and grandmothers offering duas like sweets,
And the fathers carrying their daughters
high above our city streets,
I see it all tonight, how we came , where we settled, why I belong .

Devika

Mary Oliver

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

Joe

Forugh Farrokhzad, one of Iran’s most loved literary figures, died in a car accident in February 1967 aged 32

Only Voice Remains 

Why should I stop, why?

Birds have gone to seek their blue way.
The horizon is horizontal,
movement vertical—a gushing geyser.
Bright stars spin as far as the eye can see.

The Earth repeats itself in space, air tunnels
become connecting canals and day changes
to an entity so vast it cannot be stuffed
into the narrow imaginations of the newspaper worms.
Why should I stop?

The path meanders among life’s tiny veins
and the climate of the moon’s womb will annihilate
the cancerous cells, and in the chemical aura of after-dawn
there will remain only voice ––
                              voice seeping into time.
Why should I stop?

What is a swamp but a spawning ground
for corruption’s vermin?
Swelled corpses pen the morgue’s thoughts,
the cad hides his yellowness in the dark,
and the cockroach
... ah when the cockroach harangues,

why should I stop?
Printer’s lead letters line up in vain.
Lead letters in league cannot salvage petty thoughts.
My essence is of trees; breathing stale air depresses me.
A bird long dead counselled me to remember flight.
Fusion creates the greatest force—
fusion with the sun’s luminescent soul,
comprehension flooding with light.
Windmills eventually warp and rot.

Why should I stop?
I hold to my breasts sheaves of unripe wheat
and give them milk.
Voice, voice, only voice.
The water’s voice, its wish to flow,
the starlight’s voice pouring upon the earth’s female form,
the voice of the egg in the womb congealing into sense,
the clotting together of love’s minds.
Voice, voice, voice, only voice remains.
In a world of runts,
measurements orbit around zero.

Why must I stop?
The four elements alone rule me;
my heart’s charter cannot be drafted
by the provincial government of the blind.
What have I to do with the long feral howls
of the beasts’ genitals?
What have I to do with the slow progress
of a maggot through flesh?
It’s the flowers’ bloodstained history that has committed me to life,
the flowers’ bloodstained history, you hear?

(translated by Sholeh Wolpé)

Kavita

Mary Oliver as a young woman

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice ––
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do ––
determined to save
the only life you could save.

KumKum

Meg Cox

1963 
The house is in Chatou, a southwest suburb of Paris.
It has proper French tree lined streets and stag beetles
noisily hovering under a fretted iron street lamp.
The kitchen is three times the size of our kitchen,
and foreign, hung with paintings. There are three windows
all without mullions but they aren’t doors.
It’s dark outside and I’m alone in the house, sitting
on the scrubbed pine table with my bare feet up on the dresser
because I’m painting my toenails and drinking real coffee.

My book Bonjour Tristesse (in French) is open beside me.
I’ve turned on the radio hoping to hear the Beatles’ first LP.
There’s some Bach. I fiddle with the dial.
After more solemn music an announcement
Le Président Kennedy est mort.
Above the radio is a sketch of a sparrow by Picasso on a red mount.
I know now it wasn’t an original.
I was kissed by a Frenchman the week before.
I am 19 and this is just the beginning of my life.


Priya 

Vaidehi

Two poems by Vaidehi (Janaki Srinivasa Murthy)

Tell me, you who know . . .
Tell me,
you who know of poetry –
I know nothing of it
but I know what rasam is.

Do you think it’s a mere nothing?
It calls for a blend
of the principles of water,
aroma and essence –
a tempered state reached after simmering . . .
Thus . . .

There it was in the corner,
a container with rasam,
on a seemingly dead and ash-covered
coalfire, waiting and waiting . . .
Does it matter that it waits?

In the great durbar of meat dishes
seasoned with spices that sparkled,
of servers who danced as they walked,
of laughter and chatter,
it had waited, since morning,
the clear rasam on a seemingly dead
coalfire, simmering,
still fresh even at night.

You who know all about poetry,
tell me,
do you know what rasam is?
Forgive me,
I don’t know any poetry.

(Translation: 2009 by Dr Ramachandra Sharma)

She, He, and Language
She said, hunger, thirst.
He said, eat well, drink.
She wept.
He smiled.

The other day he said, window,
not door as she'd imagined.
Wall, he said.
She thought it was space -
was it because all is revealed
when a wall breaks?

She prepared his favourite payasam
What he ate was rayatham.

Why is everything so topsy-turvy?

Was there no air between them,
and so no waves either?
Heads down, words in water
send out a forlorn cry.

It was then that suicide was mentioned.
What did he say?
He found it funny, didn't he?

It happens sometimes.
The sea isn't the sea.
What one assumes to be the shore
is the mere hump of fish-back.

You say something
Another meaning unfolds.
The banter of words, you know.

She: Be honest and tell me,
Which one of us is more insane?
He: What did you say?
Which one wishes to die first?
She: It's hot. Shall I open the window for some air?
He: What? Hunger, thirst?

Saras

Balamani Amma

Two poems by Balamani Amma

Grandmother
As you sit on my lap and rest your head on my breast,
O dear child,
Bliss, long-forgotten, illumines my mind.
These eyes, with fading sight, linger
On your golden form;
But the inner eye of clearer vision,
Focus on other tender forms.

It was years before you came; child,
My life had been in full bloom.
And the essence of spring took shape as my children.

My children, who with mere touch
Awakened the maternal love,
That still thrills my dried-up body; T
he children who sought play-grounds of Karma,
Leaving me to fondle broken pieces of toys,
And sheets of handwriting
That measured mental growth.

As your tiny hands, like bunches of flowers,
nestle into my palms,
My heart gropes for other fingers
that had entered this nest of love;
Soft fingers seeking safety from fears
or asking for a caress;
Lovely lily-petals, dirty with dust, or ink stained;
Small fingers, soon to grow up,
and to free themselves from my clasp.
As you toddle, holding on my hand, child,
Imprints of your tiny feet,
Fade from my sight
Erased by the foot-steps of my children
Treasured in memory;
The faltering steps I watched with tears of pride;

The eager ones that ran to me
From the school;
Steady steps hastening to the future they aspire

Why did your dumb sorrow
put a weight over my fluttering thoughts?
O dear child!
How wicked of this grandma to babble something
counting her beads of memory,
And not to be intent on earning
your pearly smiles!

Do your eyes riveted on my wrinkled face,
Strive to shove away clods of senility,
To see the love oozing inside?
Or, do you search in me for the loveliness
That pervades your mother's being
Like blueness does the sky;
For the ripples of moonlight that dance along her eyes
As you embrace,
And for the nectar dripping from her thrilled bosom,
As your lips touch it?
Do you search for them in a body
Scorched by many summers
Yet, when you ask tor your share
of the treasures of my mind;
When you revive in me
that matchless bliss of long lost days;
When the pebbles scattered along
the path you toddle, pain me;
realise, my child,
that nothing is ever lost to Man.

There is plenty of wealth in my old heart,
To be squandered by you also.

(Translated by N Balamani Amma)


To My Daughter
Daughter, lying on a snow-white bed
far away in a hospital,
are you weaving midnight into day
with the dark threads of pain?

Don't be depressed.
When we, too full of life,
rush about too much and need
rest the Goddess of Creation offers us a sickbed.
Lie back, be refreshed; reinvigorate yourself.
There are so many steps still to be climbed.

Reading your poems in this dew-wet courtyard
I wonder whether the spirit in you,
which makes life blossom,
hurt you more than the body
that grew inside me like a flower.
These cocoons you've spun,
to put to sleep the worms
gnawing at your core,
burst open; and wings,
jostling, fluttering, rising,
Swarm my mind.

Your mind may grow restless with unhappy thoughts,
your body may be weary of household tasks
but I have no fears for you.
Your power to turn worms into butterflies
comforts me.

(Translated by N Balamani Amma)

Shoba

Sughathakumari

Night Rain 
Night rain,
Like some young madwoman
Weeping, laughing, whimpering,
For nothing
Muttering without a stop,
And sitting huddled up
Tossing her long hair.

Night rain,
Pensive daughter of the dusky dark
Gliding slowly like a long wail
Into this hospital,
Extending her cold fingers
Through the window
And touching me.

Night rain,
When groans and shudders
And sharp voices
And the sudden anguished cry of a mother
Shake me, and put my hand to my ears
And sob, tossing on my sickbed
You, like a dear one
Coming through the gloom with comforting words.
Somebody said,
The diseased part can be cut and removed
But what can be done with the poor heart
More deeply diseased?

Night rain,
Witness to my love,
Who lulled me to sleep
On those auspicious nights long ago,
Giving more joy than the white moonlight
Which made me thrill with joy
And laugh.

Night rain,
Now witness to my grief
When on my sweltering sickbed
In the sleepless hours of night
Alone I reel with pain,
Forgetting even to weep
And freeze into stone.

Let me tell you,
Night rain,
I know your music, kind and sad,
Your pity and your suppressed rage,
Your coming in the night,
Your sobbing and weeping when all alone;
And when it is dawn
Your wiping your face and forcing a smile,
Your hurry and your putting on an act:
How do I know all this?
My friend, I, too, am like you
Like you, rain at night.

(Translated by H. Hridayakumari)

Zakia 

Hilda Dolittle known as "HD"

Two poems by Hilda Doolittle

Sea Poppies
Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,

treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:

your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.

Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?

Oread
Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.