topics: |  poetry | indian-english | art

Book review: Multisensory poems

kavi kala (kavi= poet, kala = art) was born out of a novel idea:

	What happens when amateur and professional poets, painters,
	designers, photographers, musicians and theater troupes put their
	heads together? 
	      - madness mandali Visual poetry project 

madness mandali, a group of maverick poets and artists, put out a poster where a bald moustachioed man speaking an avante garde hinglish, calls for poets and artists to collaborate on a project.

150 poets submit, 33 are selected. Each artist then selects a poem to work on.

this book is the result of that collaboration - every page carrying a B&W drawing specially executed for the poem. the sheer energy of the group made me get this volume... and i think the result is well worth it.

the poetic voices are all new; only a few of them have been published elsewhere. the poetry is often avant garde but of somewhat mixed quality.

(One artist, Kaveri Gopalakrishnan, also has a poem).

What works and what doesn't (A subjective view)

Many of the poems work very well for me, like Sharanya Manivannan's Mermaid or Menka Shivdasani's Spring Cleaning. The topics exhibit a fascinating variety, ranging from muslim prayer (Asma Ladha) to waiting at a bus stop (Samir Alam) to a tailor's visit (Himali Singh Soin) to the colour of emotions (Annie Zaidi). Poems on love are mostly about the pathos - Kadambari Sen compares a husband's leaving to the uncoupling of lego blocks, while Avinash Subramaniam's idealistic lover ditches him for a banker, and Payal Talreja writes on a middle-aged woman's discovery of a possible infidelity, and her attempts to spruce up for the husband.

As always, i am not excited by many of the poems. Several poems falter while trying to rhyme, "sits in front of me, a man", "Make me at night, my pretty cur/ In lovesickness to wail!", others in their imagery ("runny suns on a pan" for poached eggs). Some I find melodramatic (Eroteme, Suranga Date, Roshni Devi). However, many of these have their redeeming points, as in Raamesh Gowri Raghavan's poem on canine love, the only humourous poem in the collection. Others hold a lot of promise, as in Sudipta Biswas's Jungle Jingle, or Bhaskar Pitla's Homes, but the overall effect is somehow marred. Anoopa Anand's talented word-twister, may have done better with slight editorial input.

On the whole, a book worth having. Clearly a landmark work both for its innovativeness, and also for the quality of its poetry.

While the art quality is excellent, one wishes the book could have been better produced. many of the paintings have a feel of colour about them, but the paper quality and the gray-toning severely constrains the artwork.

Contents

	there are no page numbers; you have to search for a poem by knowing
	the ones before and after it.

 1. Dipalle Parmar-Haworth : If Your Desk is Blue Today 
 2. Paras Sharma : Immutable 
 3. Runcil Rebello : Droplet in the Sea 
	Few years down the line, my son,
	you too, will be a droplet in the sea.

 4. Eroteme : For The Love of Me	 		
 5. Trisha Bora : Cantos for Breakfast 		
 6. Anoopa Anand : Word Ogres
 7. Nickolai Kinny : Live On
 8. Raamesh Raghavan : A Song of Spring 	
 9. Amit Charles aka Scribbler : "___"
10. Sushrut Munje : Spurts of Red 		
11. Sudipta Biswas : Green Song 		
12. Mrinalani Harchandrai : No Kissing Allowed Medem
13. Sharanya Manivannan : Mermaid 		
14. Janice Pariat : Abandoned Trains 		
15. Kaveri G : Blue Whale in the Rain Speaks of No Trains 
16. Avinash Subramaniam : The Parting Shot 	
17. Annie Zaidi : Braille Rainbow 		
	"the sound of cheers is green"
18. Kaustubh Panat : Duniya Meri Nazar Se [Hindi]
19. Monidipa Mondal : Burying Love

	I have sat up with the dead
	all night, inhaling incense all night,
	an attempted illusion
	of flowers.
	[...]

	(washed artwork by rosh goes well)

20. Himali Singh Soin : Fabrications and Altercations 
21. Siddharth Bhatt : Interlude 		
22. Kadambari Sen : Playing Lego With My Son	
23. Vaishnavi Prasad : The Circus  		
24. Payal Talreja : Mrs Aggarwal Forty-Fied 	

	In the car, she found a hair
	loitering with indecent intent
	a strange perfume in the air
	seemed like a terrifying portent
	and so she started to fight

	the impending chin-sag
	revitalising creams at night...
	[loses weight, turns fashionable, becomes a "new" wife]

25. Upasana Mukherjee : Entwine
    	excellent artwork - pen and mixed - by George Supreeth
26. Samir Alam : It Will Pass 
27. Asma Ladha : Prayer

	When on the prayer mat,
	I am quite unlike muyself
	I forget,
	That the plants need watering
	That life is a non-renewable resource
	[...]
	For when i'm on the prayer mat, i submit.

28. Suranga Date : Thoughts at the Top 		
29. Menka Shivdasani : Spring Cleaning 		
30. Roshni Devi : Ripples  		
31. Sabina Yasmin Rahman : Your Calculated Triumph
32. Chaitali Kokate : The Castle
33. Bhaskar Pitla : Homes  		

Excerpts

5. Trisha Bora : Cantos for Breakfast

[...]
We squabble over
Rachmaninoff -- too
voluptuous for the time
of day, you point out -
and the idling strum of
the Blues - too evening
for the time of the day,
I maintain.  the eggs dry
and the beans choke. we
wonder why we even try.
in between we discover
the botter's gond sour, lying
green and cancerous
in its florid petrid dish...

6. Anoopa Anand : Word Ogres

I mix up words all the time.
Got thrown out of English class
for saying "accomplice" out loud.
while the girl in my head cried,
"Companion! Companion!"

Completely dyslexic
in the order of numbers while calling a lover,
the cacophony of cries while running for cover,
while quoting from poems, befuddled, I hover.
Completely dicklessic.
Like the friend who said he had penis ennui.

I limp through words,
lisp through life,
freeze over fricatives;
my diphthongs take lives.

When I bick the kucket,
having accidentally come in contact with a double-edged words,
they will berry my bones,
curry my poems,
write on my gravestone:
"Anoopa Anand. Born with a silver spoonerism in her mouth."

	[Is "come in contact with a double-edged words" deliberate?  Even if
	it is, I wish it was "word".  For me, the grammatical infelicity
	detracts from the spelling and other deliberate errors. ]

	(source)

7. Nickolai Kinny : Live On

Inflicted by pain
Embraced by rejection
Stabbed by one's sorrows
Butchered by hate
[...]
Yet we live on ...
Are we not immortal?

8. Raamesh Gowri Raghavan : A song of Spring

	[This poem, on the comic theme of dogs in love,
	 works well except for some rhyming inelegances, as
	 in the line "In lovesickness to wail".

	 The artwork by Anjora Noronha is simple and effective...]

I'm black and shine with pedigree,
Of pure-bred me're and sire
You mongrel of vague ancestry
Your the one I desire!

I see you scratch behind your ear,
Hindleg in comely poise,
You seize my heart, my dearest dear,
And of all the other boys

Your mangy teeth, flea-bitten fur,
The remnant of your tail,
Make me at night, my pretty cur,
In lovesickness to wail!

[...]

But now I see a rabid male,
His love to you offer,
Your manner's coy, you wag your tail,
Dost thou his suit prefer?

Alas bitchkind, heartless unkind,
Perfidious and unfair,
I start to grieve, but never mind,
At another I stare!

10. Sushrut Munje : Spurts of Red

In the mist of the Obvious
A blink of an Eye.
A spasm of Energy.
Spurts of Red, wings sprout,
Huge. Spine on Flames
Fire of Glee
Light of Mirth
the Soul, the Body
on a Flight of Ecstasy.

[...]
Spurts of Red on the pages
Speak of the World above
Speak of Me.

	source

11. Sudipta Biswas : Green Song

Jungle Jingle going guns
Mother's mayhem slaying sons.

That is the headline today at ten
Tape camera rolling pen.

Writer painter actors fall
Hungry homes media ball

That is the headline today at ten
Tape camera rolling pen.

Jungle Jingle going guns
Mother's mayhem slaying sons.

Hustle hiss and mercy miss
A major C sharp bullet kiss.

Jungle Jingle going guns
Mother's mayhem slaying sons.

13. Sharanya Manivannan : Mermaid

They found the mermaid the morning after.
She was the colour of homemade toffee, burnt
in places, mellow in others. Her hair fragile
as flax. Her beautiful, brittle fins. When the man
who found her, lifting the seaweed veiling her face,
knelt at her hip, his breath like broken glass, she
looked to him like she would crumble to the touch.

Around him, the shore lay shattered like the
heart of a woman who knows her mother has
turned against her. He traced with hands anxious
with liquor the aghast shape of her jaw. Her bones.
Her ribs like stacked haloes, her tough browned
skin. The delicate, exquisite patterns of her scales.
The sharp, ridged points at which her tail flared
into a crescent, a sinewed handheld fan.

His tears came slowly, at first, and then in little
detonations of despair. The first lesson of the ocean,
he had always known, was reciprocity. What the
mother took from mortals, she would return in
equal fervour. Her sleeping child coiled into
the tentacles of weed and debris, sucked deep
within the womb and expelled like so many other
bodies. He listened to her roar then and heard not
cruelty, not death, but hideous, intolerable grief.

	(source)



 
'stranded railroad car' - artwork by Sandhya Ramachandran facing Janice
Pariat's poem, Abandoned Trains  (source)

14. Janice Pariat : Abandoned Trains

abandoned trains
abandoned trains sit,
like unfinished sentences,
on unused ends of railway
tracks. they move no further.
unfettered prisoners,
incomplete messiahs,
stranded islands of skeletal
iron and steel.

long-winded burdens,
they press the air
like awkward
conversations.
half-formed thoughts,
coming–going nowhere.
only birds dash over
these lonely, impossible hurdles,

grass grows uninterrupted
between bone and wheel,
while rust takes over with
silent, spreading joy.

empty vessels, airy
tombs, their rows of
black-smudged windows
watch longingly
as others clatter past ~

as the dead must envy
our blood, and flesh,
and breath.

abandoned trains
sit, like unfinished sentences
	(source)

16. Avinash Subramaniam : The Parting Shot

they hung out
talked crap
didn't shave
shot the breeze
went places
made love
dreamt dreams
decided no babies
joined greenpeace
got arrested
smoked pot
got arrested
reached for the stars
got arrested
counted the stars
got arrested
did nothing
got arrested
made plans
rode bicycles
wrote poetry
petitioned the PM
went to court
took back the 70s
vowed to stay true
to the cause
to each other
until it was time
for her to wake up
and get married to a banker.

he shaved.

	(as printed, the last blank line isn't there.  but it's crying out
	for one.)

20. Himali Singh Soin : Fabrications and Altercations

My tailor - Aseem - has arrived.  He waits
In the verandah, behind dark green blinds,
And cools himself beneath the high white fan.
I bring him my grandma's saris to change
Their shape and form: a party dress perhaps.
He draws out my ideas with a quick
but flimsy hand, wearing, all along, a
Limp measuring tape round his neck. He
Counts my shoulders, my chest, my waist, hips, thighs,
Knees, ankles.  Then I run my finger down
My collar between my breasts to where the
Neckline should be. He looks away and
Increases my wishes by an inch. We proceed
To mould the past into an illusive,

Calculated, irreverent future.

	(this text improves on an earlier version at asiawrites
	but the last blank line and the  line-start capitalizations seem
	recidivist. )




 
two-page illustration for Kadambari Sen's Playing Lego with my son
artwork by Jasjyot Singh Hans.
(the poem in this image differs slightly from the book, where there is a
stanza break as below). [ source ]

22. Kadambari Sen : Playing Lego With My Son

he sticks two blocks together
red on yellow.  he looks
it over amid the panorama
of choice.  then
he takes off the yellow
and sticks on a blue.
why, i cannot tell.

now that you've gone
it suddenly strikes me
we're all lego blocks
now you're stuck
to someone else, how easy
it was for you.
why, i'll never know.

29. Menka Shivdasani : Spring Cleaning

That was your skull on the bottom shelf,
staring socketless at my ankle.
It was a surprise find among those
bunches of old clothes.
Once I would have screamed;
now I’ve learned to discard
what doesn’t fit, and especially, all that’s ugly.

Carelessly draped on a hanger, I found an arm
leaning bonily towards the perfumes;
in another corner, a dislocated knee.
Did you run away so fast, you broke your leg?
I wish you’d wipe that foolish
toothless grin off your stupid face.
You needn’t be embarrassed about
letting me down. Other men have too, and they
didn’t disintegrate like you.

What the hell
does one do with human remains?
Should I put them in the waste basket,
let the sweeper see? Or, struggling under the weight,
dump a gunny bag off the beach?

You really are a nuisance, turning up
on a lethargic Sunday. Now go away.
When I want to say hello, I’d rather
walk up to the graveyard
with a sweet-smelling bunch of flowers,
look sad, and pretend
you are still below the earth.
	from http://www.gotpoetry.com/Poems/l_op=viewpoems/lid=72194.html

33. Bhaskar Pitla : Homes

[...]
What happens?
To homes
When they are left
On their own
Long after we cease
To exist.

Do the walls turn?
An eerie shade of grey
Do they crack and crumble
In the heat
Of May
And what happens
To all our belongings
Who tends to them?

And the beds
We dreamed on
Made love
And hate, procreated
The future
Who sleeps on them?
[...]

And what about
The gods we bought
Little temples
We made
All the prayers together
What is their fate?



LINKS:
*  Indian poets go guerrilla:
  Desi poets and artists from around the world mix it up on Madness
  Mandali's poetry-art jam session.  - Mrinalini Harchandrai
* http://madnessmandali.blogspot.in/
* Joanna Lobo in DNA:
  the book is the first step towards getting ‘fusion artists to collaborate
  on a common project’. 
* Dhvani Solani in mid day:
	We are a little skeptical about the one man jury shortlisting process
	(a professor of English Literature for poetry and a girl who runs a
	design company, for the illustrations), but the 'visual poetry
	project' seems exciting, because it cuts off editors, publishers and
	retailers -- often the middlemen who stand in the way of directly
	getting us the creator's original works.


The original poster: