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| Poets Nabina Das and Smeetha Bhoumik |
On Sunday, November 6, 2022, under the
aegis of poetry forum Women Empowered (WE), Smeetha Bhoumik, founder of WE,
curated an evening of poetry and conversation. Over the years, WE has grown
into a vibrant community of eclectic voices exploring new forms in poetry and
expression. On this evening, poets Nabina Das and
Lina
Krishnan met
online and
talked of work, fun, dreams, personal and professional dilemmas and more in
their creative journeys. Some edited excerpts:
Nabina: Such a pleasure to be back on WE.
When it began, it was like a poetry carnival, a dialogue. But Smeetha, you have
sustained this. Drop by drop makes an ocean.
On
being a woman and a writer with strong views
Nabina: As an individual and a woman in this fraught democracy, how do you extricate yourself from all the negativity? I went to watch a play after work. Everyone was with somebody, I was with nobody. I felt that the attention was on me: Woman. Alone. Drinking tea. How long will she stay here? (That is a difficult space but)… there are others who have it worse. We have bullet trains but little girls are still scavenging garbage; what is their childhood compared to boys? As a writer, I have to keep that focus; I can only deal with it by writing. Writing is my tool, my implement, my artist’s brush, my song.
Smeetha: And that’s the only way to put all the things out there so that it’s not normalised. In your writing, in your work. That’s the only way.
Smeetha: I like what you’re saying, that creative anxiety is actually a spur, and used well, it’s actually a motivating force, to use if you want.
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| Lina Krishnan |
On Recent work
Anima Writes a Letter Home
I,
Anima, stand bewildered in the midst of a midnight’s jowl.
Why
is it that for many there’s no home? Although it is chaand raat, the night of
the moon? And a child’s tearful whisper: take me to
Eid tomorrow, Ma, take me to Eid. I, Anima, ask you to wait for me to find the
answer out when I carry the grasshopper home. I, Anima, stand bewildered in the
midst of a midnight’s jowl. What is it, why is it that for many there’s no
home? Although it is chaand raat, the night of the moon? And a child’s tearful
whisper: take me to Eid tomorrow, Ma, take me to Eid. I, Anima, ask you to wait
for me to find the answer out when I carry the grasshopper home.
Nabina: Anima has been in the making for the last five years. And there’s a bit of my art here. It’s a germinating seedling, that I was teaching my daughter about. It’s the woman’s perspective, looking at the world.
Only
a diminutive granthi was present, fanning a very large book, covered with a
gorgeous bit of brocade, with a peacock feather. He did not seem put out to see
a bunch of tousled kids troop in, and merely smiled and said in a gentle voice
in English, “Bachhe
(children), cover your heads and come,” pointing to a boxful of scarves kept
near the entrance.
[An excerpt from Tamil Sikh, A Fragment of Memory, From 1984, Lina Krishnan’s memoir essay in Himal Southasian, June 2022, https://www.himalmag.com/tamil-sikh-fragments-of-memory-2022 ]
Smeetha: It’s such a beautiful essay,
especially the childhood parts. There’s a lot of simplicity and the innocence
of that era coming through.
All afternoon we read poems
Outside, a bleak sky
Looks as though
It would like
To come in, and read a bit
All afternoon, we read poems
And drink tea. After a month
Steeped in Shahid's heartbreaking verse
I
need the peace of Qabbani's rose
Words flow between us
Like swirls from a thousand continents
Saturdays should be like this.
[Excerpt from Lina Krishnan’s All Afternoon We Read Poems, from Love Is So Short, an anthology of female love poetry,
Blank Rune Press, Melbourne, 2017]
Smeetha: In 2017, in the Global Poetry Writing
Month, it was you, Nabina, who introduced us to the sestina. And I was captivated! I wrote a
sestina to the six words you had given, and that remains my favourite sestina.
In search of a
golden glow half imagined, is there a cess
on it? The forest
is all dark and thunder rolls, an old trick
to frighten even
the bold, the darkness is a blindfold really,
you walk on,
trembling, hanging on by a thought so dulcet
so dear, that maybe
you then shed your fear, and are mixing
visions of utopia
with whatever is at hand, before it can clot.
[Excerpt from Glow, Smeetha Bhoumik's verse (a
sestina with the six words - cess, trick, really, dulcet, mixing, clot), in Witness,
The Red River Book of Poetry of Dissent, Red River, Delhi, 2021]
Smeetha: You started us off, showing us the
importance of voice and re-writing women’s stories. And since the conversation
is going from women being disruptive to women questioning, Nabina's sestina
says:
‘It’s
actually funny to hear I look like a Mexican or one of those folks who
regularly climb/over the fences…'
On the Writing Life:
Nabina: The writing life is full of
rejections, but I won’t call them downs, it’s a journey. At times, one feels, “Am
I writing enough, or being heard enough?” ; that anxiety is also creative and
that should be there. But as a writer and poet, I’ve only looked for that
happiness, that ecstasy…a little self-centred need to be recognised.
Smeetha: Lina, what inspires you most, poetry or prose? Or is it realism or fantasy?
(Lina reads her poem Sangat from the
book Witness, edited by Nabina Das. An excerpt:)
I recall my mother’s favourite
Kanjeevaram in mango. A green
border
As vivid as her occasional smile
And then there was Ghalib, afraid
Its succulent season would pass
While he remained in debtor’s
prison
Imbibing tea with a contemplative
friend
Silences more than speech would be
The mellow cups as companions
Beauty in a strand
Kashmiri crocus, saffron
That most precious spice
The Buddha’s embrace
Of the bhagwa of renunciation
Enabled the Sangha to grow
The lotus outside , reluctant at
daybreak
Its petals half asleep. The still
pond, waiting
For the miracle of opening
Nabina: And then, the everyday pleasures, I
was telling my kid, look at the sunset. Take pleasure in the pink and orange.
The other source of encouragement is friends like you who are always up to
something. The pandemic years were really tough, but most of us kept in touch
and stayed with poetry. And when someone reads us, then it is like the laya
of dhrupad; you go through rigour to ecstasy. At
the end of all the hard work, one feels a sense of celebration. Like this
evening, it’s also a celebration!
Bio Notes:
Nabina
Das is a poet and writer from Assam, now based in Hyderabad. Her new poetry
collection Anima
and the Narrative Limits
is just out from Yoda
Press. Her other
collections are Sanskarnama,
Into the Migrant City, and Blue Vessel. Her debut book was Footprints in the Bajra, a novel; and her short
fiction volume is titled The
House of Twining Roses:
Stories of the Mapped and
the Unmapped.
Her first book of translations Arise
out of the Lock: 50 Bangladeshi Women Poets in English appeared in early 2022 from
Balestier Press, UK.
Smeetha
Bhoumik is a poet, artist, editor. Founder of the WE Literary Community, she is
also the editor of
the Yugen Quest Review and author of two poetry
collections. She has been instrumental in establishing poetry awards like the WE Kamala Das Poetry Award and WE Eunice de Souza Poetry Award among others.
Lina
Krishnan is a poet,
writer and abstract artist. Small
Places, Open Spaces,
her chapbook of nature verse, was published by the Blank Rune Press, Melbourne
in 2018. Her paintings, poems, and
non-fiction writing have found a place in literary journals and arts magazines
such as the Shot
Glass Journal,
Husk,RIC
Journal,YAWP and
in twelve published/forthcoming anthologies of poetry.
