What is poetry?
Can I ever know for sure?
Can I ever know for sure?
What is This Book? (The Wind in a Seashell)
A 2014 Manifesto: The Poem Awake
"WINDOWS to the OCEAN"
its soft beginnings roaring in a shell...
From the Preface of the book
Windows
to the Ocean begins from hints. Immensity never
burdens us. The universe never becomes a weight, because it comes to us in bits
and pieces and through windows. What would it be like if we experienced and
perceived everything at once? Life is about minuteness, about our minuteness,
which ironically makes us moving- we think- to immensity. And yet, in our day
to day life, we are aware somewhere, instinctively of our vulnerability and
littleness. Life is all about escaping this littleness. When I write poems, I
try to get over my minuteness. I try to become immortal. And yet immortality is
only cultural. We can never know if we are always already immortal. Thus,
poetry in a big way is cultural but tries in a misinformed way to be universal.
Not only writing poems, but every kind of human attempt at knowledge is a
jostle with our minuteness and an attempt at immensity. In this sense, poetry
is like any other occupation. Only, it is not so conscious. There is more
serendipity in poetry than in ordinary knowledge. This is what creativity is
like. It is sudden, is a stumbling over, a chance meeting, and has a flow like
dreams.
This book is an impression of the minuteness that infuses
life with meaning through its meaninglessness. Poetry comes from what impresses
on the mind and the spirit making it both imaginary and prophetic. Imaginary
poetry does not mean that it is limited to the inborn and inherent creativity
of one’s self. Prophetic poetry, on the other hand, does not mean that it is
merely a communication from without; it can very well come from the prophetic
voices that are inside a person’s being and life. The poems in this book are
based on the minuteness of day to day life as perceived by limited human
perception. In an age which is philosophically scientific, but is becoming
philosophically imaginative, I indulge with poetry that is a mix of the two. It
is universal in tone and hence speaks to humans in general. On the other hand,
the poetry in this collection uses images that are personal and hence also
exudes personality of the author in particular. This collection lies somewhere
between confession and universality in its extent. Humans in general create the
world (that is cultural) to understand the universe. This book, too, is a world.
This world is both cultural and pseudo universal because the universe is seen
through the microscope of culture and hence is never a firsthand vision. The
world is a human creation to understand the universe. Thus all books are a
world in themselves. Something is always left out but isn’t the world
essentially incomplete?
The frailty of the
body, the limitlessness of the soul, the idea of the relation between the body
and the soul, but also the reversing of the ordinary notions of both the body
and the soul, I found later are some of the movers of poetry in my book. The
soul and the body of life come up in accidents. If there were no accidents, we
would not know either body or soul. How does the body and soul emerge in life,
is the root also of the emergence of poems in this book. The love poems in “I
Keep Realizing Love, Dispelling My Own Fears” begin from a personal experience
of love, but are not personalized. They move away from the soul, “the body is
pulled from the soul” and they open “windows to the ocean” where life began.
This book about the
bits and pieces of life ironically seemed complete in its sweep as I walked to
each poem. And after writing every poem, the world was suddenly incomplete all
over again. This kept the process of writing going. The poems came not because
I knew the truth but because I knew nothing about the truth. Every time I was
intimidated by a tree in a photograph, an empty cup or even colours, I wrote a
poem to record my awe. In these recordings, sometimes, I reached the
understanding of the objects and experiences I wrote about, but this
understanding was always partial because before I understood the universe, I
had to understand the sweep of language and what was in the human and universal
unconscious, and hidden from direct view.
My poetry from the
first collection has moved to this one in one major way. It has become
philosophical rather than merely perceptive of physicality. It has attempted to
enter the sphere of the unconscious more consciously. Often the meaning in
poetry does not come prior to writing, but after it. When the complete poem, if
there is one, is read, it seems that new meanings uncurl and the author’s
meaning becomes not ‘the’ meaning but ‘a’ meaning in the several meanings that
the poem takes on. A poem is inexplicable and has no edges like the constantly
expanding universe that we live in. For the author to contend that the poem has
specific meanings according to her and that she knows all the meanings of the
poem, would mean an arrogance that surpasses patriarchy and colonialism. Such
an author must be thinking that she is Divinity. On the other hand, all humans
in their respective professions are nanotechnologists. We are all shoveling
some kind of nanotechnology in our lives and trying to reach the immense
through the minuteness. Immensity is formed of molecules, oxygen is molecular,
and emotional arousal is cellular and molecular in essence. The smallest bone
in the human body is the stapes that is in the ear. Catch the poetry, sprinkle
it on the grave of the invisible and enter the mirror palace that stands on the
end of the world.
Mohineet Kaur Boparai
April, 2012
Another window looks on at the other end, the rolling sea...
excerpts from my interview- India's Rising Star-published in ZYMBOL Magazine
it can be found at: http://www.zymbol.org/uncategorized/mohineet-kaur-boparai/
 |
| Surrealist painting "Revolution by Night" by Max Ernst |
Zymbol: You have said about “Man Eater at Our Table”
that the poem stirs the inhibitions and insecurities in my mind about my
subalternity in several situations and at a larger scale my vulnerability as a
human on a Darwinian competitive earth, where one is attacked not only outside
one’s comfort zone but within one’s own home. That sounds like there is a
political edge to it. Will it be fair to say that “Man Eater” is a reaction to
attack on a local scale as a woman in a literary industry that continues to be
male dominated? Or do you believe there are global implications to subalternity
and competition?
Mohineet: Being vulnerable and being driven to some form of
inability to act in affirmation with one’s subjectivity to some extent spells
out my experience of subalternity. Poetry is for me affirmative action and is
beyond the field of inhibition. It is not a transcending, counter-reaction or
an act of desperation. Rather, it is an action complete in itself, replete with
a distinct sensibility and thought (that may be clear or unclear, conscious or
unconscious). Even after the poetic act, subalternity resides in my existence.
Poetry is only like a quantum leap out of my body. The electrons of
subalternity suddenly step out of my being in space and time and enter the
page, computer screen or my finger tips. They are, however, at two places at
the same time. All the time that I think subalternity has now flown out through
my poems, it is still very much present in me. This is a form of double
existence to our slow human brain. When I talk of my subaltern experience, it
is in the wider sense of being a human or a woman. As a human, the constant
struggle with nature, my environment and the malice of my body, the constant
learning of survival and the endless encounter with failing to survive make me
get a taste of what subalternity means for those who exist at the lowest levels
of society. As a female I feel powerless in another way, in a much stronger
way, in the form of cultural constraints and the culturally conditioned role
playing. I find myself outside this attitude and want to establish my own, and
not merely counter roles. Women take on patriarchal roles and consider them
almost universal. Some form of patriarchal ideology and an ingrained
inferiority is at work here. I find myself in double trouble as a woman who thinks
differently from both men and women who have internalized patriarchal values.
There is no fitting in and an endless uncertain space that I must traverse as a
human being different from anyone else. Ordinarily speaking, the solidarity one
feels with women and other humans comes from the similarity of our experiences
and the collective experience of being a subaltern. For me, the very act of
being different from everyone else constructs bonds of solidarity because in
viewing my difference I also view that everyone else is different too and hence
they must be respected for it. Ultimate difference seals our bond because it
makes us all the same. For me sameness ends solidarity because it is
superficial and hence short-lived. The idea of solidarity can only exist in the
consideration and acceptance of difference.
Zymbol How has your academic interest in subalternity
and literature affected your choices as a poet? Do you often address social
issues in your poetry or do you find your work to be more personal? Do you
consider yourself a cultural ambassador for Indian literature in your
international publications?
Mohineet: Subalternity is over-apparent in the landscape in
India and hence is not apparent. It is as if too much of it makes it invisible.
Being a part of the subaltern world, there are, nevertheless times when one
actually sees the subaltern from a distance and speaks about her or for her and
in this sense gives her a new garb. The body, however, disappears from the
table before one can dissect it. Or it is too dissected already and one does
not want to put another knife to it. The subaltern is in a zone that is far
from being comfortable. When one exits one’s comfort zone (which is initially
the womb), one is bombarded with questions that must be answered. These may be
about what undermines one in life; what is the meaning of these events? How to
come out of one’s subaltern status and prevent the undermining events from
occurring again? Some of my poems are initiated by these questions and the
larger question, “what is life?”
Subalternity
resides in a pallid space, in what is discoloured for us or we are colorblind
to it. Subalternity is difficult to speak about because for the subaltern the
answers to it are evasive. It is something that we as humans cannot include in
our personal framework of justice. This jostling with life at the mental level
is like a Big Bang theory that merely simplifies but does not answer. Hence
there is an endless theorizing; the theories of oppression can momentarily
satisfy us, but in the long run, we must look for more answers. Oppression
initiates a process that goes on till infinity. Agency is never final and must
be continually recreated and reestablished. The trauma of oppression changes
one forever and there is no turning back. Oppression is at one level as
constriction of voice and even when the subaltern becomes an agent, her voice
has changed, for better or for worse- we cannot decide. The voice is unfamiliar
and the subaltern “cannot speak” as before.
A
residue of subalternity resides in me and I am moved towards finding a voice in
life and as a poet. The subaltern does figure in some of my poems, but my
poetry is more about the miniscule in life, and the experiences of different
things and beings, in a complex world that however, seems simple as we go about
our routine lives. My work is not personal in the traditional sense of the
word, though I love to write poems on love and other personal things and
events. My third book, Lives of My Love
(2012), was largely personal, but even in these poems the metaphysical thought
does enter and sometimes even becomes ontological. Thus, even the personal
moment in my poetry has a strain of philosophy entering the unconscious of the
poem. Poetry then operates at several levels. There is never a clear
demarcation between social issues, the personal and philosophical because they
coexist in my mind and are not clearly demarcated.
My
poetry might have qualities that make it closer to the style of Indian literature
than American or British but it is not limitedly Indian. Both American and
British literature have had a great influence on my writing because I grew up
reading and still read English and American literature. My American publisher
told me that my poetry has a sensibility that is more soulful and balanced and
carries a sense of wisdom, than American poetry usually does. In one sense,
then, I might be carrying the burden of Indian literature as a literary
ambassador. I enjoy the feeling that I am representing India in my
international publications, but I cannot say that I have been only molded as a
poet by being an Indian. The Indian sensibility does come in, but so does the
global. There is something in poetry that makes it transcendental and not
limited. The very moment of its production is free and is not limited to a
cultural expression. Someone who writes novels based in India can more readily
become a literary and cultural ambassador than a poet because the cultural
effect even if present in poetry is ultimately diminished in its universal voice.
I speak from a place, nevertheless; I am sitting here and writing and I cannot
just say that I am nowhere or that I am everywhere when I write. And this here,
where I sit is what comes into my poetry. How I see this place can be affected
by what I know of other places and how I juxtapose the global with the
national. In the process, the place India has been changed. Since India is
culturally a sprawled country, even as an Indian ambassador, there are several
sub ambassadors I can consider myself to be. Indian literature is a complex
formation that has several sub-formations over time and space. Historically and
spatially speaking, there is no single Indian literature, but Indian
literatures. To unify these under one head is impossible and to gain from all
its forms is impossible too, because it is written in several languages. This
deters a tight theorizing of Indian literature. This is where comparative literature
departments come in. Thus, I am only a part ambassador because the very
definition of Indian literature is ambiguous.
Zymbol: In the states, poetry journals are not what the
average person buys at her local bookstore. But, even though poetry is not
mainstream, there is a very active literary industry and a proliferation of
publications, conferences and readings. It can be a cliquey and exclusive
scene. What is the poetry scene like in India?
Mohineet: Poetry is
not what the average booklover will read in India and therefore the bookstores
that are usually overflowing with prose, particularly novels, have a handful of
poetry books. The literary industry on the whole isn’t very active in India for
poetry. There are a few well acclaimed poets writing in English like Jayanta
Mahapatra, Arundhati Subramaniyam, Jeet Thayil, Keki N. Daruwalla and Adil
Jussawalla etc. There are I believe many more poets writing in the English
language but they are backgrounded into oblivion and never make it to the view
of the literary public because of the dearth of opportunities to learn, publish
or be recognized. There are few poetry readings and there is hardly the
opportunity to be exposed to the actual poet. Also, there isn’t any university
that I know of in India where creative writing courses are offered. On the
whole, the very focus of culture is on other art forms, like music, dance or
films that are more performative. The poet in India is neither an icon nor a
celebrity for the larger public that nevertheless sees the poet shrouded in
mystery. This is because poetry remains less talked of and less acknowledged as
a form of artistic expression. There is at the same time a reforming of the
writing scene than what it was like in only the last decade. With the writing
scene being globalized, there are now several journals and publishers both home
and abroad which provide an opportunity to Indian poets as never before. The
internet keeps one “in touch” with the global literary scene. Also the easy
availability of several translations of poetries from around the world provide
a range of reading experiences that help in widening one’s poetic
sensibilities. That Indian poets read these is another story. There is a wide
space in the poetry scene in India where one can fall and keep falling without
something to hold on to. The channelizing of one’s poetic ability is tough in
such a scene without any solid ideas on how to write well.
Zymbol: On your blog, you highlight quotes by Frida
Kahlo. Andre Breton famously said, “The art of Frida Kahlo is like a ribbon
around a bomb.” Is this the effect you aspire to when you write? What about
Frida draws you in?
Mohineet: The
confessional and personal strands of Frida’s painting draw me in as do the
unruly images which are her very own. Their everlasting freshness, the coming
together of Frida and nature and at the same time her questioning of nature
that constrained her motherhood are all bold attempts to come to terms with her
incompleteness. In one painting she is a wounded deer. In another she grows
roots and stems. What her body puts on is terrible and yet so colorfully
portrayed. It is almost like she carries on her pain into her paintings but
refuses to let it overcome her vivid sensibility. The pain that ticks on
towards its outburst on the canvas is not aesthetically presented but is
starkly ugly. There isn’t much of aesthetic representation in her work. Her art
is an art for a reason, for representing some deep feelings and attitudes. The
depth makes it disruptive of a clear confined idea of life. Her surrealist art
tries to shock the public out of their readiness to accept life as it is. It is
the very bursting of ideology and provides a counter and closer experience of
routine life and at a deeper level the bourgeois culture itself. My poetry, I
believe has some form of shock value too and the images I use are for a
shattering the mirror effect. It tries to exaggerate the normal and to see it
in a new form as being far from normal.
Zymbol: “Man Eater” has the images of the gothic and
the grotesque about it. What would you say is the purpose of the grotesque in
poetry?
M: Poetry and
some form of imagery are inseparable. The influence of poetry depends on how
images relate to the voice and ambience of the poem. The form and content in
good poetry have a dialectical relation. The form comes from the content and
the content comes from the form. They create each other. For instance an
alliterated phrase does its work through the image produced by it.
Grotesqueness is an exaggeration of images to produce a heightened and
sometimes comic effect. Grotesque images are preeminence, also, of the content
over the form, because the very intensity of grotesque content makes the form less
prominent. It is as though the form is carrying out its work under the covers.
The
world we live in is not seen as such to be grotesque, though in reality it is.
Grotesqueness of our lived day to day experiences forms a blurry background. It
seems to be ordinary and natural, till it is foregrounded by art and regains
its shock value. Poetry operates at a certain level of heightened
consciousness. There is a certain pleasure in poetry and it’s not merely the
pleasure of beauty but the pleasure of discovery, the pleasure of finding
something in the image or through the image. Poetry transports us from our
terrestrial worlds, as if, into the realm of the aquatic or even the universal.
It takes us beyond our limits into new territory and yet that territory may not
even be directly inscribed in the poem. Poetry is therefore, endless creation.
It is like meiosis. It keeps on disintegrating into parts that in turn become
complete wholes. The grotesque is a transporter in poetry and other art forms
to the hither to unseen-ness of the world. It unveils the ugly and irrational
part of existence. It seeks the unrealistic or even magical and juxtaposes it
with ordinariness. It places these two together on the same canvas.
The
grotesque in poetry has existed since a long time I guess. It has existed even
before it was possible to record it in the written form, perhaps even before
the Hindu and Greek mythologies. The Mahabharata and Ramayana feature grotesque
action, images and characters. Their very religious power on the masses comes
from the magical and inexplicable in these epics. The grotesque actually
explains the unexplainable in daily existence. The grotesque and unworldliness
of these epics is actually a reason for their credence. There have been several
projects to prove that these texts are historically set and their events can be
proved scientifically. This can be seen metaphorically as a juxtaposition of
facts with the imaginary in the “witches’ cauldron”. There are several examples
of grotesqueness, both comic and not so comic in English literature. There have
been Shakespeare’s clowns and fools, Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Coleridge’s
use of grotesque imagery in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The purpose of
grotesqueness has been to unveil some folly, or to draw moral conclusions from
the grotesqueness in the narrative. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is replete with grotesqueness, though at a serious
level. It can be seen as a move towards the deep-seated and unconscious. The
grotesque, thus, also brings out the animalistic in human existence and in this
is a move to undo the binaries.
Zymbol: “How You
Found Me”, a love poem contains an interesting mix of natural imagery, and
technology (oxygen mask, sonar). Were these metaphors an intentional
juxtaposition on your part?
Mohineet: This poem sees two worlds in the same frame. It
dashes into the space between separation and union. It is about how two people
came together and how their union was waiting for them in the background. At
the level of the background there is a coming together of two worlds like the
two lovers. It is as if a page that must be torn into two neat parts is kept as
one. One part of the page has a tree and birds while the other has technological
and artificial symbols like ships and an oxygen mask. Binaries are nullified in
the process. The bird too, is seen as a part of a series of metaphors and not
as a single self. There is a stealing and reclaiming. Distances are bridged in
imagery and simultaneously between the lovers as they come together. The
nullification of binaries that props up in the poem becomes a structural
technique to substantiate the theme of union or unison that is already present
even before the union. The union that comes about is superficial because the
inner harmony was always already present between the lovers.
an INTERVIEW
Coffee with the Poets; WITH Christina Finlayson Taylor
Hi,
Mohineet! Congratulations again on your relatively recent marriage. It was
evident to me in publishing two poetry collections for you in quick succession
that your life currently is full of love and poetry.
MKB:
Thank you Christina. I published two books last year with you and it was the
first year after marriage so it was full of discovery and loads of newness and
freshness. My book Windows to the Ocean is dedicated to my husband
Guramrit and my brother Fateh, because I felt they were most important to me at
that juncture. After marriage one begins a whole new life; the past suddenly
becomes more clear and important because it is something we’ve been somewhat
misplaced from. At that point, my husband was the discovery and my brother was
the nostalgia; I had always felt that Amrit and Fateh shared something but I
couldn’t pin point it, maybe it was how they lived their lives and hence, my
dedication “Who carry a tune in their hearts when they walk”. The second book Lives
of My Love is about how I experienced my love life with Amrit and is
dedicated to my niece Abeer. Her name means “fragrance” in Arabic and “festival
color” in Hindi. My dedication reads, “When you blink your eyes, a solitary
leaf dances in the wind”. On the surface, it is about her eyes, but the impetus
behind it is more than description. Her eyes are natural, they are innocent and
the movement in them is patient, almost like the effortlessness of the seasons.
Thank
you for sharing that heart-warming personal insight. I have been intrigued by
India for a few decades now as it seems like a place of such creativity, color,
beauty, vitality… What is it about your culture that sparks such fine creative
expression?
MKB:
I believe that living in India has given me an experience of living in
diversity. The number of languages spoken in India is 438; there are several
religious beliefs, and cultures living under a homogeneous governing system.
There is so much to learn and observe, not only in people but also in the
geography. There are the Himalayas, Ganga-Brahmaputra plains, the vast Deccan
plateau that covers most of southern India and the Thar desert; Tropical,
alpine vegetation and xerophytes; maritime climate as well as the severe
seasons of north India; metropolitan malls and slums; local artisans and
foreign brands. Living in such a space, there are so many different things to
experience. I am particularly drawn to the landscapes and the colorful tribal
people. The diverse cultural intermingling motivates creative expression
because there are so many different cues to catch when one goes about
perceiving the land.
You
are India’s gazing bright star. How do you define poetry, and who or what
inspired you to understand what poetry is, what makes it poetry?
MKB: Poetry is an overflow, and hence it begins from some kind of
containment of what is within. And because it is within and accumulating, it
has a certain impetus to come out. At
the same time it is fluid, liquefied and
must be solidified. I believe, in this process something is always lost,
something is gained and something is revealed. So poetry is in many ways is a
discovery of the self, society and the universe. A discovery also of a certain
type of emotion that I think poets only experience when they are writing. I
believe that it is an emotion that feels like some form of saturation and then
slowly it begins to disappear and when it is finally lost, there is nothing
more to write. It is like playing hide-and-seek. First you face the wall and
count (one faces the commonplace); then you begin your search (which is the
challenge, the looking about and looking for) and the search involves some
chemical secretions in the body, maybe a little bit of adrenaline too (and you
are enjoying the whole process). It is a process that involves the head and the
heart that ultimately lead to some hidden acumen and acuteness. And the whole
time that you are writing, you are also being insightful and imaginative, and
the hidden is being revealed one by one, coming out of the hiding place it
inhabits, into the scorching heat of the summer holidays that are past with
childhood.
To the second part of the question, I think I’ve been writing
poetry since a very long time, since I was a teenager, but in the beginning it
was not even perception, it was merely a rhyming of lines and a collection of
images. But I store my poetry in diaries and on the computer and therefore I
remember the poems I wrote as a twelve year old. One was about birds, another
one was written after I saw the movie Titanic, and another one was about a
scary night in a palace. So as a child, what inspired me to write poetry were
my childhood whims, all the things that somehow caught my imagination and
loaded me with their immensity. The inspirations have been the same ever since-
things that are massive and mysterious, things that I must understand. The inner
inspirations, however are never all intrinsic, there is always another side to
them- the overt, the things we catch from the outside like birds who later want
to break open their cages. The external inspirations are events and people.
There must be a long list of people who inspired me. My parents firstly,
because they were always the first ones I took my poems to and the fact that
they were excited and overwhelmed by my obscure, childish attempts at poetry,
they encouraged me to write on. Then, when I met my husband he and our family
became the driving force. His patience motivates my pen and my second
collection is about what I feel about him and what turns my life took after
meeting him…he dives into my work, he takes it on his tongue and plays with the
sweet sour lollipop that my poems are. Metaphorically, it’s as if we plant
seeds together, not in the soil but grafting them in the roots themselves.
Inspiration comes from observing the spontaneity in people, their venerations
for different things and an acceptance of their idiosyncrasies. Then there are
so many friends and mentors who’ve motivated me. That is all how I get
spontaneous, involuntary inspiration. But poetry is also a conscious process
and hence I must look for inspiration. This I find in the environment and
other poets. I search for it, by being open to observation and discovering new
poetries. I have been inspired by the unfussy depth of Wislawa Szymborska,
Sylvia Plath’s immense heart and the metaphoric life of her poetry related to
painful realities, poems by Siegfried Sassoon, A.K. Ramanujan, R. M. Rilke,
Pablo Neruda, and most recently I am discovering the German expressionistic
poets like Gottfried Benn and Else Lasker-Schuler. These poetries are like
riding a giant wheel, like going up and coming down in a circle, dangling your
feet that won’t touch the ground and being awed by the enthusiasm of these
poets.
I
must say I find your poetry awe-inspiring! When do you feel that you write
your best poetry?
MKB: My most satisfying poems come from phases when
I’m vexed. I think it is because we usually indulge in masking our emotions.
When I experience strong emotions that have not had an outlet, I sometimes
write poetry. My most cherished poems ironically belong to such phases. It
might be because at that time I’m true to myself, or maybe because my brain is
working in a different way. But emotions alone cannot generate poetry. There
has to be something in store in ones perceptual space and philosophical core
for the poem to shape up. When I write a poem under the influence of emotions,
I usually don’t know what I’m writing about. The first few lines are
spontaneous jottings and then the poem automatically begins to shape up into a
more or less coherent whole. Then, I come to understand what is within me and after
the initial spurting beginning, I get a middle and end that I can use to shape
my poem. It is here that I understand what is most prior in my thinking.
Talking of a poem, we usually don’t divide it into a beginning, middle and end.
These categories have been traditionally reserved for drama and sometimes prose
too. Poetry is a breaking of barriers. It is free and hence it should not have
structural constraints. The beginning, middle and end in a poem for me, does
not mean a sort of structural division, but a division in the change of mindset
when one is writing. The workings of one’s psyche shift and reshape as one
writes a poem. This reshaping has a flow and hence the allusion to Aristotle’s
dramatic beginning, middle and end.
Excellent. We could go in a hundred
directions with that. Would you care to share one of your own favorite poems?
Alone
A door in a frame lies by the roadside,
Twisted at an angle, like a convex glass,
Only, it is too full for the sun rays to pass
But somehow the air focuses its lens on it
And burns it from the inside
People see and think that it is termites eating wood
This door is sans house, or hands to open
It, or footsteps to walk through it
Now and then some wind comes
And opens a crack between the door
A smile twisted into smoke
Comes out and the wind mourns
Dust collects on it, it endures rains and
No one comes to fix it back
Because it is skin shed from
Muscles and bones
But there is always something left behind
Here is a door with its eyes waiting to
Thread dreams walking through itself
Very nice
selection from Lives of My Love. Something unique about this particular
collection is that you included a few of your own bright symbolic watercolor
paintings to accompany some of your poems. Do you find it more likely that your
poetry inspires you to create visual art, or is it more likely that your art
inspires a poem as you paint it, and why do you think that is?
MKB: I think in my case my
poetry usually inspires art, rather than the other way round. I paint the image
in the environment that triggered the poem and at the same time try to bring in
the thrust of the poem into it. When I paint an image after writing a poem, I
have dwelt on it, given it a linguistic form and solidified it; then only the
space and colors need to be consciously thought of.
Your poetry is alive and blossoming with
imagery. What do you consider most inspiring visually or otherwise, what
sprouts your imagination?
MKB: In writing my poems I lay a lot of emphases on
figures of speech. It’s probably to do with my painting; because when one
paints one begins to observe. Somehow I think we derive pleasure from beauty.
In the case of poetry this pleasure is extended to the not so apparently
beautiful. One begins to see beauty in many ordinary things. I incidentally
find some works of literature very inspiring simply because of the beauty they
infuse into the images. To name a few that come to the mind: Arundhati Roy’s The
God of Small Things, Toni Morrison’s novels- especially Tar Baby and
Sula, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The
Wasteland”, Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, the expressionistic poets etc.
Images whether in literature, movies, paintings and most commonly in day to day
life, are very inspiring for me; they somehow infuse me with imagination
because as a poet suddenly I’m reading new meanings into things that were not
even in my creative radar.
What I respect
about your poetry, even beyond your fine natural balance of heart, mind and
soul, is that it contains genuine depth - it rings true to your truth with
nothing hollow. (I trust that you can elaborate on this; choose your angle.)
MKB: Poetry
cannot be shallow, because then it will lose its strength. It is jam packed and
heavy but has lightness enclosed in its heaviness as its other Janus face. I
think the natural balance we are talking about in my poetry comes from
spontaneity, from scribbling the first draft completely from within, without
much second thought; and yet it’s not like free association. Then, when I read
what I have written, I understand it from several perspectives- from the
original perspective, but also from several other viewpoints that have
unconsciously propped themselves in the poem. This makes up for one truth
leading to another. And because the truths are mine, they are interrelated. The
truth, and the voice in poetry go together. And since the truth is so difficult
to comprehend, since it is always transforming, evasive, its immensity
engrained in minuteness, it is deep. When I tap immensity or the minuteness
that carries it, the poetry automatically gets its depth.
You’re
right, and your response brings a few thoughts to mind: Firstly, some of your
poetry sounds dream-inspired. Do you pen your dreams into poetry? If yes, then
how important do you feel this is, and why?
MKB: I feel poetry is inter-textual and like other literature, it
is connected to other disciplines, because it is related holistically to our
experience. Your question reminds me of psychoanalysis, especially Freud’s
dream interpretation. There have been several studies I believe on the
coexistence and relation of art to dreams. I do pen my dreams into poetry,
parts of them, if not the complete dream. In my poem, “The Years without You”,
from the book Lives of My Love, I remember a dream from early childhood
that I could not forget because it was almost like living paradise:
There
is a fairyland, in a dream I have not forgotten
Flowing
slow fountains on its body
Where
flowers suspend from the sky in a rain
The
grass is blue and there is a tinge of pink in the sky
Every
monsoon I relived the dream
Until
your eyes blinked open in its sky
And
the colours came back to their place
Lovely;
my mind sees something akin to a Joseph Parker painting…
MKB:
I feel myself lucky if I remember my dreams and if they are emotionally
intense; but that is occasional. My poetry is dream-like because maybe it has a
lot of symbolization and that makes it like a collection of anecdotes which is
also true for dreams. Also, my poems are somewhat less than natural. They aren’t what reality is to our
usually busy senses. Rather, they are like an unconscious delving into the
superficiality of what we take to be reality. Beneath the superficial, reality
has another life. It is almost like delving into the unconscious that is
deep-seated and like an iceberg, is beneath the surface and only a tip of it is
available to sight. What lies beneath the ocean is massive and that is what
poetry should fathom. This reminds me of my first collection with Middle Island
Press, Windows to the Ocean; maybe that is where my poetry follows dream
and trance.
Responding
to the second part of your question, I think all poetry essentially requires
mazes and incompleteness, a middle of the road termination too, so that we are
almost always ready to relive it. Like dreams, our poetry is spontaneous and
effortless. It just comes to us, sometimes, we feel, from nowhere. This birth
from nowhere is like a seed hibernating in the soil. We don’t see it unless it
props up like a shoot. Also, if a poem speaks too directly, either without
symbolism, imagery, metaphors or such devices, it loses an essential part of
its suggestiveness. Thus dreaming literally or metaphorically is at the core of
good poetry.
Exquisite, Mohineet! Thank you. Secondly (back up a few paragraphs), I am drawn to
your statement “…because the truths are mine, they are interrelated.” My mind
sees a web with you at the center, reminding me of the creative arachnid
symbol, and I feel that you have justified yourself as a poet in the most
beautiful subjective way in what you so naturally stated. Your poetry is a
solidified matrix of you. Would you mind sharing another poem?
MKB:
Thank you for the wonderful observation Christina. That’s true I believe. The
self, establishes my poems on a plinth of the external. Thus what is within and
what is without come together when a poem is being written. The ‘I’ can never
really exit completely in a poem, and some amount of deep role playing while
writing a poem happens. It is like drama; you play a role but every actor would
play the same role with idiosyncratic stamps. Coming to truths, I believe that
there is no single truth over time and space that is true for all human race.
The truths of a poet while writing are much different from the truths we carry
with us in routine lives. This is because, as I have mentioned earlier, the
truth of poetry is very intrinsic and deep-seated. I would love to share a poem
with you:
A
Love Story
You
birthed me an organ from your arms
You
endured the pain of the sky pushing its way out
-The
infinite- that once hibernated under my tongue
Now
wishfully enfolds me into a fire ball
You
carried the heat on your back
To
rejuvenate the dying winter
Its
juices seeped into your spine and
Collected
into an ocean
From
where a story may emerge
Suddenly,
in a whirlwind
And
sweep the city clean
But
we’ll always be in its single monster eye,
Rooted;
while the city floats, cracks like a dream
In
its gorilla embrace
All
stories come glowing out of your sun
With
you, my shadow widens into a shade
Then
into a dream with no ends
The
dream of sunburnt soil begins from the feet
And
now we realize, only to forget again,
“The
garden is never grown from above,
It
is always waiting below with closed eyes”
You have a list of honors and awards
to your credit that is no less than astounding. What do you feel has been your
greatest academic or literary achievement?
MKB: Thank you Christina for the
wonderful applauds for my literary achievements. I believe there is still a
long way to go and my achievements are merely a brushing of some archaeological
pits in me. The big achievements are still to come as (I hope) my poetic side
is slowly and continuously revealed to me. I am always extremely happy on
publishing a book. I published my first when I was 21; and though it was highly
experimental, I was so enthused by it that I slept with a copy under my pillow
for several days.
That’s adorable. :) What is the
title of your first book, and can it be found online?
My first book is Poems That Never
Were, published in 2007. I’m sorry, it’s not available online for purchase.
So Poems That Never Were is
unavailable. How humorously apropos, the title. I can respect that, though. What
are your long-term literary aspirations?
MKB: In the coming years, I plan to
publish more books of poetry and get some more strength and sound into my
poems. I want my poems to be enthused in a reflexive, relaxed way. At present I
feel my poetry has more pace than I love. I also plan to complete my PhD in the
next four years; it would make me more critical and give me a wider evaluative
space to understand poetry.
Certainly, and I wish you the
strongest wings for your developments. Your ambition is incredible and I am
certain that you will arrive where you wish to be, that you will continue to
dream your dreams into reality.
MKB: Thank you Christina, it was
such an insightful talk.
[Christina raises her mug to
Mohineet who takes her cappuccino “…with extra chocolate powder on top.”]
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