Sanjukta Dasgupta writes

A Note on Indian Poetry in English

It is common knowledge that the advent and slow evolution of Indian English Poetry can be traced back to the Company poets of the late eighteenth century, thereafter to Henry Louis Derozio, Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu and others, all of whom wrote poetry in English during the days of the British Raj in India. 

After India’s independence, during the post-colonial period, Indian English poetry evolved from replication and self-fashioning, appropriation and abrogation, characteristics of the colonial period, to significantly map a liberated poetic journey that prioritized Indian culture, ethnicity, regional culture, ethnic linguistic patterns, metaphors and images. Nevertheless, the difference between regional language poetry and Indian English poetry, during the post-independence period, was primarily the latter’s representation of the culture of the metros, the culture of the cities and suburbs. Indian English poetry therefore exuded a pan-Indian flavour which attracted a pan-Indian readership. Soon after however, Indian English poetry did not remain confined within the geographical contours of contemporary India. Diasporic Indian poets began writing about their homeland through the emotive creation of a series of indelible memories of trauma, loss and longing. So in the twenty-first century and in the era of globalization a paradigmatic shift can be evinced in the writing of Indian English poetry, which is neither just local nor only pan-Indian, for Indian English poetry has now engineered a cultural bridge between the home and the world. 

In the ever expanding ripples of Indian English poetry which internalizes the local, national and global intimations of culture, we can often find evidences of the transformations in the urban, suburban and rural culture of India, as we familiarize ourselves with the refreshing new poems that are being written and published in recent times. Interestingly, through the past two or three centuries if not more, the multilingual, multicultural, multi-religious culture of India has consequently ushered in perceptible polyglot skills, cultural pluralism and linguistic diversity.  Among educated and privileged classes the use of three languages both for reading and writing is not considered unusual. Also, quite remarkably, the use of an Indian regional language meshed inextricably with the English language for reading, writing and speaking and often the use of English as the language of creative expression and not just communication, is not considered uncommon.

The Indian English poets who began writing around the nineteen fifties onwards, such as P. Lal, Parthasarathy, Arun Kolkatkar, Kamala Das, Nissim Ezekiel and Eunice Dsouza among many others, demonstrated that the English language for writing poetry was not a constraint but liberated the Indian English poets from binding themselves within the region-specific and culture-specific ambit. 

In the last three decades, that is, from the nineties of the twentieth century to the twenty-first century, Indian English poetry has shown significant promise, gusto and power and this has happened primarily because young adults, high school students, college and university students, researchers, young professionals from diverse sectors, have begun to publish their poetry with confidence. The cyber networks and social media have instilled confidence in young poets, who may be teachers, doctors, engineers and journalists, to share their work with the world. Many poetry clubs have been set up by young poets’ groups, who regularly meet to read their poems; they organize seminars and workshops and participate in exchange of ideas that germinate into poetic compositions. 

The following is neither a rank list nor a merit list but an alphabetical list of poets and their English-language books published during the first half of 2019 compiled with the help of Rhythm Divine Poets. 

SELECTED READING LIST

1. Amit Shankar Saha - Fugitive Words (Hawakal Publishers, June 2019)

2. Ananya Chatterjee - Un-Building Walls (Zahir Publication, February 2019)

3. Arundhathi Subramanium - Love Without a Story (Context, April 2019)

4. Gayatri Majumdar - I Know You Are Here (Red River, January 2019)

5. Jagari Mukherjee - Between Pages (Cherry House Press, June 2019)

6. Jharna Sanyal - The Nomadic Trail: seventy poems (Rubric Publishing, February 2019)

7. K. Srilata - The Unmistakable Presence of Absent Humans (Poetrywala, May 2019)

8. Kiriti Sengupta - Rituals (Hawakal Publishers, March 2019)

9. Nikita Parik - Diacritics of Desire (Hawakal Publishers, April 2019)

10. Preeti Vangani - Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions, February 2019)

11. Ravi Shanker N - The Bullet Train and Other Loaded Poems (Hawakal Publishers, April 2019)

12. Saima Afreen - Sin of Semantics (Copper Coin, March 2019)

13. Sivakami Velliangiri - How We Measured Time (Poetry Primero, April 2019)

14. Sumona Roy - Out of Syllabus (Speaking Tiger Books, March 2019)

15. Urvashi Bahuguna - Terrarium (TGIPC, March 2019)

This is merely a recommended reading list, not an exhaustive one.