Hay Festival Kerala 2011 No.6 - Andrew Miller, novelist, reads from his latest novel 'Pure'

 Andrew Miller, novelist, being interviewed outside

Miller was interviewed by Lorna Bradbury, a literary journalist from the Telegraph, London. He has written many novels; Ingenious was his first, and the others are: Casanova, Oxygen, Pierrot, etc. The novel he read from and discussed was his latest, Pure.

Jean Baptiste is the hero. He is educated beyond his class, like a superior servant. But he can't belong to the class of people he works for. He asks Armand, the organist, whether he is of the party of the future or of the past? Must look like the future. Hence, he buys a new suit in green. He is a man fragile in his own identity. As author, Miller, was interested in that. Jean is a man of reason, an engineer. These props fall away and he is no longer supported by a “convincing sense of himself.” Cast around him are people on the edge of insanity. That is like Samuel Johnson himself, The epigraph of the novel quotes the Marquis de Condorcet, “One day the sun will only shine on Reason.”

Andrew Miller with KumKum at the Hay festival in TVM 2011

Miller began reading, “A girl was crossing the road … a little auburn-haired emissary of death … ” Lorna asked how much research he did, since the cemetery become almost like a character. Miller replied it is mostly smoke and mirrors, with a little research to ensure he had not made glaring errors in dates and geography and personages at that time.

Lorna asked if Miller's aim with prose is to create the quality of poetry. Miller said he liked the care and attention that poets bring to their work. “I like worked prose that delights in beautiful sentences,” he said.

Joe asked if people in those times really believed that Reason had the answer to all the problems of life – love, living, death, suffering, etc. Miller replied that little change for the great majority of people. But for a small elite, for the duration of a glass of wine, things changed.

Andrew Miller inscribes for KumKum

Miller said it was by writing six novels that he came into his own, and realised what his interests were. People have a difficulty to express their emotions and he didn't anticipate he would be interested in that. His writing became more sensual (what it smelled like, what it looked like, etc). Miller said he tries to have a strong sense of the physical. 

For a fuller account of the session, click below ...

Hay Festival Kerala 2011 No.5 - Kamala Das remembered

 Kamala Das

A session in honour of Kamala Das, who died last year, became an occasion for several poets to recount the influence she had on them.

Satchidanandan quoted this poem, which is her manifesto in An Introduction (from Summer in Calcutta, 1965):

I am Indian, very brown, born in
Malabar, I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one. Don't write in English, they said,
English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak.
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone...

She ends:

I have no joys that are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.

Arundhati Subramaniam, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, K. Satchidanandan and Anamika speak about poet Kamala Das

Satchidanandan recalled that he used to wait to read her Malayalam stories in the Mathrubhumi. Until the time of KD, Indian poetry in English was ornamental, said Satchi, naming Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu. 

 Poet Rukmini Bhaya Nair with KumKum and Talitha

Rukmini Bhaya Nair said it was in 1986 in a bookshop in Singapore she came across the poems of Kamala Das. Nair wrote a poem for her with these lines:

Sleek pigeon, cooing, from her Cuffe Parade
Heights, those afternoons the predators came,
Attracted by the pheromone scent of your poems.

…..

Arundhati Subramaniam, poet, says Poetry has to be crafted, it doesn’t flow

Arundhati Subramaniam said she always feels the ache in KD's poems. There are startling images, luminous and radiant that set her off. Arundhati went on to recite Advice to a Four Year Old Girl on Her First Day of School, a rant about her own school days, when she was “simmering silently at the unreasonableness, the regimentation and straitjacketing that seem to be part of the institutional fabric of even the most enlightened schools.”

Poet Anamika is serenaded by Welsh poet and singer Twm Morys

Anamika recited a poem of hers about Kamala Das. The burka-clad image of Kamala Das is etched in the Hindi poet’s mind. “Like most women, Kamala laughed her agonies away,” she added.

Hay Festival Kerala 2011 No.4 - Cat Weatherill tells the tale of the Sien Wife by Italo Calvino

Cat Weatherill combines her fiery female energy with wondrous tales and has a beautiful singing voice

Cat Weatherill is a professional storyteller who came to her art via a stage career. She combined the two practices in a gripping tale by Italo Calvino, called “A Siren Wife.” A vengeful husband in the story casts his wife into the sea, because she was unfaithful to him when he went off to make his fortune to foreign shores. The sirens who live in a magnificent sea-floor kingdom rescue the woman and rename her 'Froth'. The Siren wife never forgets her husband; in an effort to rejoin him she brings doom and destruction upon the sirens.

Weatherill would at points break out into song to reinforce the pitiable state into which Nina, the unfaithful wife was cast:

I can't fight the ocean

I can't fight the sea

For it's ageless, fathomless and free.

 Cat Weatherill tells the story of the Siren Wife by Italo Calvino

The husband would give no thought to his wife, Nina, whom he was leaving behind. She would labour ceaselessly in her garden where the fragrance was like a bower to the god of love. One day, a prince called Orlando came visiting and was taken with her looks, for she was luscious, bright as pearls. Under his touch she opened to him like an oyster. Orlando took her away and she led a life of leisure, and he waited on her every desire, and would not leave her side. She grew tired of endless attention and returned to her house. But when the husband came back he smelt something amiss. The story goes on. You may read more at:

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-11-18/kochi/30414329_1_storytelling-fairy-tale-sirens

Talitha, Joe, and KumKum watch Cat Wetherill

Weatherill has no qualms about changing the story to suit their own taste. In Liverpool where she comes from there is a tradition of telling stories. Unlike an actor who is enslaved to a script, storytelling is more free. She uses the actor’s skill to convey the action and the feeling in a story. She said she loves Indian stories, but thinks she cannot bring to them the necessary colour they need. Women are living longer and the tales of their middle years need to be told. The next day Weatherill would be telling stories for children. “The most important thing is to enjoy your story,” she said.

Hay Festival Kerala 2011 No.3 - Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, translator

Arvind Krishna Malhotra

AKM is a poet and translator of poets. He lamented that his book, The Absent Traveller : Prakrit Love Poetry From The Gathasaptasati Of Satavahana Hala, is no longer in print in India. All the poets are male, but there is no aspect a woman's sexuality that these poets do not cover.

The poetry is stark and spare, laconic even, but has the ability to surprise like haiku. Take this for instance:

                Her anger's a fistful of sand

            Slipping through fingers
        When she sees him. 

Note the compression, as though the poet has said as much as he needs to say and leaves the reader with an image sufficient for further understanding.

 KumKum gets a book signed

Mehrotra confesses he does not know Prakrit, and makes no apology for it. He noted that we translate very differently in India than in the West, where faithfulness to the original is cardinal. Joe commented that someone said, the worst translation of poetry comes from poets who want to make the translation a vehicle for their own new poem.

To read a full account click below ...

Hay Festival Kerala 2011 No.2 - Malayalam writers M.T. Vasudevan Nair and M. Mukundan in conversation

 M.T. Vasudevan Nair and N. Mukundan

MT, as he is called is a path-breaking fiction writer who wrote about changes in Kerala society as it evolved from older matrilineal forms. He and Mukundan both hailed from modest rural families and had to go to great lengths to satisfy their thirst for literature.

M.T. Vasudevan Nair autographs a book

There was no TV, no radio, etc said Mukundan so only reading was available. MT spoke of how difficult it was to get published. When the poet Vallathol asked money for lunch at an appearance, they made fun of him: “A poet, and he asks for money?”

KumKum enjoyed

A writer in those days had to write about society, not himself, or psychological ruminations on a character. In those days the Form vs. Content argument was won by Content.

KumKum and Talitha relaxing

Mukundan said he read Maupassant for the drama in his short stories, and Chekhov for his novels filled with mystery and a problem to be solved. 

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Hay Festival Kerala 2011 No.1 - Outline

Kanakakunnu Palace

This was the second year KumKum and I were attending the Hay Festival in Thiruvananthapuram, and we were joined by Talitha from the Kochi Reading Group. Indeed, we stayed at her lovely secluded bungalow, a short walk from the Kanakakunnu Palace where the event was held in three concurrent sessions daily from Nov 17-19, 2011.

 Peter Florence being interviewed for TV

The chielf Hay festival organisers, Peter Florence and Lyndy Cooke were there; Peter had handed on his interviewing responsibilities for the most part to other capable people, but what a pleasure to hear him quietly walk the authors through their stories, their novels and their life adventures. We met poets from several countries: Simon Armitage from Yorkshire, Twm Morys from Wales, Carlos Aganzo from Spain, Arundhati Subramaniam from Mumbai, Anita Thampi from Kerala and many others.

Bright young faces from local colleges mixed with participants from the world over.

A lass from Kerala

 A fashionable lady  of the world

Simon Armitage, the poet, gave us this line: "You are beautiful because your politeness is instinctive, not a marketing campaign."   To be among book lovers is to be among those who make the world safe. 

KumKum with Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Productions

In the next dozen posts I will give an account of what went on, selecting four sessions on each day.

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis – Dec 2, 2011

The original cover

KRG Readers were lucky in the choice of the novel for the December reading by Thommo and Priya. Can a fifties novel still entertain and amuse us? To hear the chuckling and laughter at the Yacht Club Library during the reading of a dozen passages was to have the question answered resoundingly with a 'yes.'

Priya

The story goes that Amis was visiting his friend, the poet Philip Larkin, at Leicester University, when he passed by the common room of the faculty and imagined a story lurked there. When he wrote Lucky Jim it became a hilarious send-up about university life and the intrigues among the faculty. By exploiting the enormous material for comedy that lay hidden amidst the chicanery and incompetence within the university, Amis gave the world a novel whose mirth will last a long time.

Zakia, Priya, KumKum, Talitha, Thommo
(note on the table the Banana Raisin Cake which KumKum made)

Comparisons with P.G. Wodehouse arose naturally. The novel has many similarities: improbable situations, the build-up to a climactic accident in a chapter, polysyllabic humour, and people who are ridiculous foils for the comic anti-hero. Dixon marches doggedly through a sludge of difficulties that would damage irreparably the self-esteem of an Oxford don; and here he is, a mere lecturer at a provincial university.

Talitha, Zakia, KumKum, Priya, Thommo, Gopa, Mathew, Verghese, Joe

(the merriment had not subsided)

Imitations of various accents by Dixon are a source of much farce in the novel, and readers took on the challenge. Gopa even did a fine imitation of Dixon muddling through a madrigal by opening and closing his mouth, sans sound, in unison with the other singers.


To read more, click below.

Poetry Session – Nov 11, 2011

 Thommo, KumKum, Talitha, and Soma

Ten readers recited verse by poets of six nationalities, three each from India and USA, and one each from Scotland, England, Palestine, and Chile. Only two (from Scotland and India) are contemporary poets, the rest belonged to the twentieth century, with one exception.

Sivaram, Gopa, and Zakia

Readers introduced poets of rare skill who are not widely known outside their circles; this contributed to the exhilaration of hearing novel voices.

Talitha, Soma, Bobby, Sunil, and Mathew

Here is the happy group at the end of the session. Bobby was behind the lens.

Sivaram, Joe, Soma, Zakia, KumKum, Talitha, Gopa, Thommo, Sunil, and Mathew

To participate vicariously in the recitations and discussions that took place on the once-in-a-century day, 11/11/2011, click below.

Animal Farm by George Orwell – Oct 28, 2011

Animal Farm First Edition Cover

Animal Farm is perhaps the most popular and widely translated of the books by George Orwell. Its relevance continues unabated because leaders in democracies, no less than in autocracies, continue to behave in the ways satirised in the novella.

 Priya and Soma

When his first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, died in 1943, Orwell left London and went to the Hebrides Islands and worked there on Animal Farm from Nov 1943 to Jan 1944. He published it (after initial rejections from several publishers) in 1945 as the war was coming to an end.

Mathew, Sunil, Samuel, Bobby, and Sivaram

The themes of Animal  Farm cover a large canvas: Rebellion, Regime Change, Propaganda and Duplicity, Violence and Terror as Means of Control, Exploitation, Human Rights, Obsequiousness, Silent Acceptance of Despotism, etc. These themes were discussed, with illustrations from global and local politics.

Priya, Thommo, KumKum, and Talitha

 KRG welcomes four new readers in our midst. Here they are with the others gathered for a group photograph:

Thommo, Talitha, Soma, KumKum, Priya, Gopa, Bobby, Samuel, Sunil, Mathew, and Sivaram

To read a full account of the discussions and the readings, please click below.

Postponed Poetry Session held on Sep 29, 2011

The attendance at this session was scanty, although it had been postponed once for the same reason. However, the session was extraordinarily intimate. Two English poets, an American and a Spanish poet were recited; three were men, and one a woman.

KumKum, Talitha, and Thommo

We are resolved to get a few more committed readers in order to enjoy the customary liveliness the sessions have always had. The next will be on Oct 28, 2011 to read Animal Farm by George Orwell.

The question of art and science, and whether a scientist may have the same refined appreciation of nature and poetry as an artist came under discussion. Eugenics too was a subject of debate. Here are the foursome at the end:

KumKum, Talitha, Thommo, and Joe

In order to read the complete account click below ...