This week, I have been reading poetry. I’ve always had a soft spot for this particular form of writing, preferring music with words to the melody itself, and poetry, when read in the proper setting — which in my case is with the heater on, the cold outside and a quilt pulled up to my chin — can be the most satisfactory reading there is.
Unfortunately, maybe given the fact that I go online for my poetry fix, I’ve never read much Indian poetry. In school, of course, they taught you some, but mostly, the stuff you have access to, your “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” stuff is all abroad, and all mostly English. Reviving my love for poetry this winter also made me curious about what Indian poets were like, having read very few, I thought I should make it a point to look at that side of verse as well.
I came across Interior Decoration: Poems by 54 women from 10 languages quite by accident, but once I began to flip through the pages standing up, I realised it was the kind of book that made me want to sit down and read leisurely. Always a good sign. With poetry translated from languages are varied as Gujarati and Telugu. Kamala Das, who I love, is part of this anthology, and other names that were familiar to me were sadly, only the poets who wrote in English. It always makes me wonder when I read translated poetry (including Pablo Neruda who I adore with a purple passion) whether the translator has to be a poet too. Must be, right, because the translated work has to be a poem too.
It makes me wonder too, as I flip through this book, whether women poets, like women writers, are thought to write of different things. Love, yes, everyone writes about love, but is their take on love any different? While men tend to focus all their attention outwards, even in poetry (again, these are only conclusions I’ve reached in my own very limited reading experience) women are all about the inward eye. Take this line by Urdu poet Bilqees Zefirul Hasan: Unfortunately I am a woman —not bad looking either
fairly intelligent as well — so this danger
increases a million times.
Stuff like this echoes through these verses, about studying, childbirth, children, mothers. Stuff that I don’t think a volume of finest male poets, for example, would contain.
I’m still learning about poetry, but this was a good place to start. Pick it up and read along with me.
The columnist is an author