Robin S Ngangom takes a closer look at some of the poetry written in English language <\/p>\n
It would be pointless to ask the new generation of poets from the Northeast who writes in English why they have chosen the colonizer’s language. The politics of language no longer concerns them; linguistic quarrels for them might well have been consigned to the archives of literary history. On the contrary, the new generation writes with a confidence which would be the envy of their older fellow poets.<\/p>\n
In the English language poetry of the Northeast, one can discern an emerging tradition, an alternative to the poetry pioneered by the metropolitan poets of the 1960s and their present-day descendants. Schooled as they were in the Pound-Eliot academy, these metropolitan poets perfected a detached, formal, craft-driven poetry. It is a self-regarding, albeit passionless, ‘internationally minded’ pursuit, motivated by a fashionable philosophy of exile and alienation. The poetry of the Northeast, on the other hand, can be ‘statemental’ in comparison to the verbally-dazzling metropolitan artefact, rooted as against the alienated stance of modernist city poets, autobiographical as against the impersonal. The Northeast poets are also not particularly concerned with technique, form, and symmetry; they are not remarkable experimenters with metre or craft. Their verse often lacks the linguistic sophistication of the metropolitan poets, and read like ‘translations’, as someone pointed out. Further, instead of the expected radical break with the near past, Northeast poetry written in English suggests a continuity with the past.<\/p>\n
What are the distinguishing traits of Northeast poetry written in English? It is the native world, most of all, which comes into view in the work of these poets. A predilection for images and motifs drawn from nature is proof that Northeast poetry in English is deeply rooted in the land. ‘Nature’ is not an impassive witness to the existential despair of men and women as in the contemporary wasteland of modernist poets, but a living presence for the Northeast poets, where hills and rivers are also deities (‘Everything has life – rocks, stones, trees, rivers, hills, and all life is sacred,’ says Mamang Dai) and the fates of natives are inevitably intertwined with them. Thus, in spite of the trappings of modernity, the life of most communities of the Northeast is defined by their folk origins. The mythic world still survives at the frontiers of the civilized world, and the ‘folk’ still continues to assume the ‘intensity of reality’ for many. Myths provide a key to the cultural behaviour of a people, but when communities seem to be losing their way in the midst of cultural colonization, mythopoeic poets, out of a deep-seated desire, step in and try to emulate the traditional storytellers and shamans by recalling the lore of the tribe. The chronicling of contemporary events, the fallout of violence above all, is another important aspect of Northeast poetry in English. This has led to the charge that some Northeast poets are unduly obsessed with the poetry of politics and brutality. However, to be a tenacious witness to the agonizing and recurrent political violence without sensationalizing it, is also a risk that the Northeast poet has to undertake often. This is not the poetry of unquestioning ‘nationalism’ in the face of a fear of loss of identity and encroachment of territory and cultural values, but a nervous internalization of the increasingly complex politics of the region.<\/p>\n
Could there be regional varieties within English language poetry in India? Regionalism as a literary phenomenon seems to have arrived, the ‘regional’ often perceived in creative friction with the centre. If Mumbai and Delhi constitute the centre of English language poetry in India, Northeast poetry in English makes up the ‘regional’. The alternative tradition offered by Northeast poetry has perhaps created a body of verse that is more approachable. Northeast poetry in English has great variety, the region being the home of diverse communities, speaking different languages and embodying discrete cultures. The poets featured in the supplement represent this variety to an extent.<\/p>\n
A Poem for Her<\/p>\n
By Anurag Rudra<\/p>\n
These days are long and dusty
\nDo not blame me if I turn to stone
\nLike a false god. I have seen many a
\nSullen afternoon die a slow death
\nBaring themselves to the hungry night
\nLike unwilling women selling love
\nThis day, beloved, will it be any different?
\nToday, like other days, you shall not rouse
\nAs this indifferent commotion recedes
\nInto the lull of this sunlit funeral
\nToday, I shall roam these streets again, this
\nAncient burden of being a man, weighing
\nOn me, like an insipid, forgotten sin
\nAnd we shall remain mere tombstones
\nIn these dusty graves. Will this winter
\nPromise another bout of hazy memory?
\nOnly these lifeless lines shall banish us
\nTo the hope of this brutal love, and us.
\nStrangers in this tepid, misty rain<\/p>\n
Me<\/p>\n
By Aruni Kashyap<\/p>\n
Even I have words.
\nI can clay-mould them
\nI have languages, literatures
\nforest songs.
\nThey crawl back centuries,
\nearthquakes generational.
\nGrandmas circulated them; with betel nuts
\non courtyards under honeyed moons,
\nlike rains, they drench minds, and more—
\nWhen first-drenched ones are time-parched,
\nto the new ones who are parched for stories.
\nWith time, they have descended
\nLike seasons and mists, to rest with us.
\nI have tunes too, books
\nwritten on bark with earthworm`s blood;
\nthey are different,
\nindependent, like these rivers
\nin my chest, legends- laden
\nmournful, yet swelling with energy furious
\nLove-lost like singing spring birds
\nAnonymous, beyond the hills
\nWhere rivers and rains are born
\nTo flow down as legends, life-blood.
\nMy history is different, defined
\nby grandmas, rivers, hills,
\nsinging spring birds behind green trees
\nand seventeen victories.
\nMy words: they have legends in them.
\nThe way tea-leaves run in my veins
\ninstead of blood.
\nStories, of new-born speaking from backyard graves
\nAbout dogs transforming into man
\nMan to sheep, goats
\nAnd a girl, singing through lime trees,
\ngourds and lilies from backyards.
\nAnd I still wait, for a warm embrace
\nMy throat peacock-parched, in longing
\nAll the rivers from my land
\nlegends, rains weary
\nCannot quench my thirst, I need your love
\nDon`t you see,
\nI`m different?
\nEven I have words.
\nLanguages, literatures
\nAnd stories to tell you
\nAre you eager to listen, at all?<\/p>\n
In the Hills of Seven Huts<\/p>\n
By Ibohal Kshetrimayum<\/p>\n
In the hills of seven huts,
\nwhere WAR is either a place or surname,
\nand dreams are translated into numbers,
\nand a number became a gambler’s sad song,
\nI found God breathing through the pine trees.
\nOrchards in the hills shivered in winter’s palms,
\ngolden oranges plucked for city bazaars,
\na young leaf wanted to go along,
\ndiscontented orange tree held it back.
\nA fleeting rainbow across Noh-Kali-Kai,
\na glimpse of her precious final steps,
\nbefore she became a waterfall.
\nTwangs of hammer on hot iron,
\na dagger hissed in a bucket of water,
\nMylliem’s blacksmiths keep their tradition throbbing.
\nMylliem’s giant boulders,
\nmemoirs of the great earthquake,
\nwe were cast out recklessly-
\nsays a mossy stone.
\nSunday morning in the church,
\na pair of long legs walked past a pew,
\na clergyman sighed in agony.
\nChristmas in Shillong,
\nroast turkey on the table,
\nrush of stampeding shoppers,
\nmerchants carol their way to the bank.
\nA dog swallowing the moon,
\nbeating of empty tins, chasing the dog away,
\nI became a lunar-eclipse drummer in Shillong’s hills.
\nI went down on my knees,
\nand asked God for my Biblical rib,
\nand I found her snoring gently beside me,
\nin the hills of seven huts.<\/p>\n
Cyril’s Award<\/p>\n
By Nabanita Kanungo<\/p>\n
Are you sure
\nwhat left your bow of habit
\non the plains of the Surma,
\nwas a pencil and not an arrow?
\nWhat then spirals up from below
\nto sink into our hearts
\nthat poison-tipped story,
\nenough to curdle even your darling Europe’s blood?
\nTell me whether it was a Hindu or a Muslim night
\nwhen you flicked my grandparents to nearby hills..
\n….and destined dispossession for all times?
\nThey took only the names
\nof their homesteads and courtyards with them
\nbecause only names become of memories
\nand only memories can be fiddled around with
\nin a land of blasted palms.
\nSun-baked feelings, the nose of dung’s sweet wiped floor,
\nthe golden thatch of desh, nights of bari and bhite,
\nrustic Lalan* fakir songs are names.
\nBut the sun was killed after the moon
\nthey would have said if they lived to see our impotence.
\nFor only cartography drips from our retro-roof
\nand we try to plumb the rift with a gooey tongue,
\ngazing stars of bygone sixty, seventy and ninety year-old faces.
\nHistory kills slowly but surely.
\nCyril, who are you?
\nI am a twenty-seven-year-old refugee yesterday
\nstunted beneath blaming anyone else
\nand my cheeks are still bloody
\nwith the costly pinch of your charity.<\/p>\n
Note: desh refers to a sense one’s own country, bari means a home founded on one’s soil and bhite is the hearth therein.<\/p>\n
* Lalan fakir was a popular, almost symbolic figure who sang Sylheti folk songs with a sufi touch.<\/p>\n
North A.O.C.<\/p>\n
By Poireinganba Thangjam<\/p>\n
The toothless pimps smile at the passers-by
\nfrom the second floor of the three-storey building
\nlike wooden puppets in the market.
\nThen a wayward wind wafts in with such license,
\nthe income tax collector sulks in a corner.
\nIt swept the wine tumblers down like an invisible broom.
\nWhere its drops fell down the wooden floor
\nsomeone screamed just down below
\n“Blood, Blood”
\nand the homeland security drove in lazily with exhausted sirens
\nlike an experienced gambler lurking in rummy shades.
\nEverybody ran under the sheltering sky
\nas the search for a murdered corpse began.
\nSixty minute ticks of the weary clock and
\nthey couldn’t find a dead body anywhere,
\nso fired two shots on the ground floor making up for lost time
\nwhere the carpenter and his wife Seema rented a place to sleep
\nupsetting the Bihari coolis as they slept with their iron hooks.
\nThe sugar traders at the top floor with spring-board arses
\npounded buttocks over the roof-tiles, jumping over the other buildings
\nwhile the over-fed prostitutes chattered in naked Burmese
\nas the policemen drove away in their olive green combat vehicles,
\nand I, in my rickshaw, swollen-eyed cycled back
\nbelieving they had just killed my lover and his man.<\/p>\n
One Day, Ema!<\/p>\n
By Shreema Ningombam<\/p>\n
It will rain
\nAnd you will unbind your hair and wash it
\nIn the slow dripping from the thatch
\nOne day
\nThe flowers will bloom
\nIn your dark mystique bun
\nAs if they were never plucked
\nOne day
\nThe wind will carry the scent
\nOf your fresh steamed rice
\nThrough the corners of this ravaged street
\nOne day
\nThey will come
\nFor whom you have waited for so long
\nIn this life or in this death
\nOne day
\nThe rainbow will color
\nThe ashen shawl around your bosom
\nWith your darling shades
\nOne day
\nYour children will fling open
\nThe eternally closed gates
\nWith the cries of “Ema! Ema!”
\nOne day
\nThe kites will fly
\nIn your blue sky with tails of freedom
\nWith no one to harness them
\nOne day
\nI will garland your neck
\nWith the wreath so painstakingly woven
\nAs you walk past the triumphant crowd
\nOne day…Ema.<\/p>\n
‘Ema’:’ Manipuri word for mother.
\n(Robin S Ngangom teaches at NEHU)
\n <\/p>\n\n