Strip the flesh, Salt the wound. (Chant of a Masochrist)

STRIP THE FLESH, SALT THE WOUND

His wounds

Like parted lips kissing

The coffin on his back.

Strip the flesh, salt the wound.

Crack of leather discipline,

Whips through the arid air

Caressing the skin with scars.

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.

Above his brow

Rests a crown,

Thorns prickly sweet.

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.

Mallet crashes from on high

Nail driven through flesh

Wood suckles like a hungry babe.

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.

Behold his form

Stretched against the oak

Revel in the pain

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.

Sin shalt only be cleansed by pain

He suffered so we did not,

The selfish prick.

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.

The Salesman

THE SALESMAN

Hello,

May I bother you for a minute?

I sell in fake smiles.

It will cost you nothing,

On my honour I swear.

The trick is

To pull your lips back,

Just so.

Expose the first molars,

Just so.

Notice

Just how my canines

Show the fierceness

Of my joy.

If you wish you can,

Use your fingers

To pull apart the sides,

Just so.

It may be hard to talk,

However,

The pure beauty of it,

Is you don't have to talk

At all.

reflective essay

Reflective Essay

I really found this course to be very productive, I believe it taught me many valuable skills to help me progress with my thinking skills about poetry and of course in my music. This course is set out clearly and logically and has all the information necessary about poetry. It was really a well-structured course and here I also got to know how things take shape and how things structures step by step. It was a great experience to see a small exercise converted into poetry. Initially, I don’t have any idea that how we would do this but gradually we start getting the idea. Our knowledgeable faculty Mr Akhil Katyar who were able to balance constructive criticism with positive encouragement. They have been very supportive throughout the year. I've really enjoyed learning from faculty and getting their professional perspective on my thinking, I now feel that I have the necessary knowledge to develop some ideas about poetry.

I am not from the literature background and never  wrote poetry in my life and here I got chance to learn poetry and the lovely part is I am also getting love towards it. I think I will never stop writing poetry from now. Basically, I am a music practitioner, I have learning Hindustani music for a long time and Hindustani music is something where we more emphasis on swars rather its lyrics but now after did this course I am thinking about its lyrical value too. And not only this there were many things which I have never thought but after being the student of performance studies and crafting poetry student I am able to think towards those words and areas. This course not only limited to poetry rather it was a whole package of many different skills.

I really enjoyed the teaching method here and the way faculties treat us. In our initial classes, we did some discussion on love poetry and sir said that love poetry is a way to get in the poetry world. Being a student of music I have heard lots of poetries but never think about the genres of it here I learn about a big world of poetry and its grammar. this kind of poetry is really new for me I am really thankful for this course for introducing me this kind of poetries and method.

I really like the way when we read poems in class and discuss it together in small groups that really helped in connecting with the poems and with my classmates. And the way they give us freedom for thinking on it and also doing it freely really helped me.

As I reflect upon on my strengths and weaknesses as related to this course; my greatest fear is the public performance and in this course, we have been performing in front of the public which I found helpful to overcome from my hesitation although I performed so less in this course I learned so many things about performance. There were many different stages of the course where I enjoyed so much one of them was writing gazals. Gazal is something which I have been listening for a long time but I have never thought of writing it, this course made me do it. When I was writing, I was in a big confusion that should I write in Hindi or English? Although I choose to write in Hindi and translate it. and  other difficult thing for me was to write political poems. As the major part of this course based on different genres of poetry because of this, I could understand different dimensions of it.

 Somewhere I have regret because I missed many classes due to my other engagements and responsibilities I didn’t want to miss but I had to I am really thankful to our faculty that they understood my problem supported me.

It was not just a course for me rather it was an experience of life which taught me many different things about life, about people and most importantly about music. I am from a music background and this course was connected with music in a different manner but that manner was new for me and that’s really an interesting part for me. I have been trying to take practical courses from the starting of my second year. First I took materiality and performance that was also very interesting and my experience was really good. And in this course crafting poetry, I got through many different dynamics of life, Music and professional things. It was a fully practical course which made us more knowledgeable and opened more paths in arts. I have to say that I changed after this course. I did many things here which I never did in my life. 

In closing, I would like to add that I have really enjoyed the experience of this class. It has been good for me to learn with experienced faculty and my lovely cohorts. Thank you for your help and patience.

Pitter Patter Poetry - Reflective Essay

" Click click. Tick tock. Words drop. Tongues suture. Time flows. You try to leash it. You try to box it. You try to restrain it. You try to reverse it. You try to hold it dear, deep within the recesses of your phone’s gallery. Filled with screenshots of unfinished conversations. Vistas from untouched lands. Fragments of incomplete rants. You scroll up, and down. But the pictures never change. The conversations remain half-said, and full dead. The vistas remain immobile. And the rants still make you self-conscious. I have been in this city for nearly nine months now. Each day the city shrinks in its capacity to contain or offer. And I sit here, writing about the mundane experience there is to know. About living in a third world country. Having boys barely out of school, come and deliver drinking water to me. Other boys offering to pick up my garbage every morning. Other boys preparing tea by the sutta shop. Other boys beeping their rickshaw at me. And I sit here, soaked up in my privilege. Cocooned. Insulated. Isolated. Cordoned off. In a world of make-believe threats. A world of major digressions. A world of microaggressions. A world of inequality. A world without humour. A world without light. A world without adventures. A world with just enough to keep you alive. I sit here, pretending that I philosophise, I call myself a writer. I am deeply self-reflective, but just reflecting on the hollowness that exists is only making me hear the echoes better. Echoes of not conforming. Echoes of not living a life deeply. Echoes of the past; echoes betrayed by my memories. Memories which smoothen out the creases. Recollections which straighten up the clutter. Reminiscences of catastrophic lethargy and indifference swept out. Harking back to instances of humiliation - the first slap, the first rejection, the first inquisition - promptly expunged. Poetry brings these memories back. In fragments. In metaphors, images and epithets. Like summoning half-forgotten dreams. Distilling experiences. I attended a political meeting recently where a professor just before reading his poetry said, “Poetry is a luxury where action is necessary.” Poem implicates like news reports explicate. To survive in a world where educated children are human resources. Where wind and water are natural resources. Where all modes of kinship with objects both inanimate and animate are reduced to their material value. We need poetry. To name the nameless so it can be thought. Think the thoughtless so that one can act. Act impossible to know the constraints of possibility. To subjectify the world around us. Not to colonise."

response poetry

Pencil…

In the context of a sketching artist

Since the beginning of that sharply beautiful art

It made many masterpieces to comes alive

It doesn’t belong to eternity itself

But on the contrary, whatever drawn by a me

I can make that piece of art eternal

response poetry

Scissors…

When I cut, I do cut

When someone runs me in vacuum

I don’t cut at all

But the latter process is prohibited

People say this would start a fight in their family

And my whole existence is confused

Since they have this credence

Am I a scissor or a hoodoo?

political poetry

In my dreams - political poetry

Lustres of dream

Kept wide open for you to enter

Remember when I said, we started out so nice?

When I wake up each morning and open my eyes

And the world is again opened in front of me

For me to search for in it

Me

I see it as a murder scene

With blood spatters everywhere

I don’t know which one to clean first

I see a building then, in the distance

Half done

With hollow concrete walls that are so dark

You can’t stop looking at them

Your dark eyes pierce right through the hollows

Into myself, into nothingness

I don’t mind the break

I don’t mind the fragility of my mind

I don’t mind the craziness

After a long night

I don’t want the empty lanes

The disillusionment with caught feelings

To live in the luxury of feeling your presence all the time

For every tune and every melodious word

And every noise to

Remind me of you

The lustres of my dream

I want them to speak of you

Every thread, every smell.

independent

poetry- ek khoj

मैं तो बस तुम्हें खोज रहा हूँ

तुम हो के उसे खोज रहे होl

वो भी जानता है वो किसे खोज रहा है

प्रत्येक उत्तर से परिपूर्ण है हृदयl

लेकिन जिस्म पर केवल प्रश्न टंगे हैं

मिट्टी की देह में कहाँ छुपी बैठी है आत्माl

उस आत्मा में कहाँ विद्यमान है परमात्मा

और यहाँ कौन है जो उसे खोज रहा है?

independent poetry

नज़्म- कोरे कागज़ पर  

रात के वक़्त रखा था कोरे कागज़ पर

ख़यालों का एक बीज,

खिड़की के करीब रख दिया उसको

वहीं रखी है तुम्हारी तस्वीरl

रात में बारिश ने बूंदें गिराई

सुबह खिड़की से धूप आई

ख़यालों के बीज में गज़ल छुपी थी

कोरे कागज़ पर गज़ल उग आईl

तुम्हें गज़ल भेज रहा हूँ

उसको पढ़कर मुझे बताना तुम,

गज़ल कैसी है? तुम कैसी हो?

If I am slippers, you are hands for me

If I am slippers, you are hands for me.
If I am a nose-pin, you are like feet.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

If I am ketchup, you'd be khichdi.
If I turn vegetarian, you'd be the meat
If I am slippers, you are hands for me.

If you be a broom, I'd be a clean dormitory.
You're the last person in an empty room I'd greet.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

You might be honey, I ain't your honeybee.
I am a red mark and you're a clean white sheet.
If I am slippers, you are hands for me.

If I am fire, you're definitely not ghee.
If I'm a sweater, you're the scorching summer heat.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

I now suggest, you let this matter be.
I hate it when I have to repeat.
If I am slippers you are hands for me.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

OCD

Who put my honour between my legs?

I'm sure as hell I didn't.

You know my OCD quite well

and I expect you not to fiddle.

I assigned it to my indestructible head

or my fiery heart within.

But never did I place such a valuable thing

in my flimsy sheet of hymen.

I want to write a verse today

I want to write a verse today.
Art wishes to run its course today.

I want to break the boundaries of this cubicle.
This computer feels like a curse today.

I want to paint these blank white walls.
I wish my colours would disperse today.

I want to break this deafening silence.
I wish to freely converse today.

Don't want to deal with numbers anymore.
I wish to play with words today.

Change in Hanuman

Have you caught a glimpse of Hanuman lately
on blackening walls and the back of cars?

Oh man, has he reinvented himself or what!
He just does not seem like the Hanuman I knew as a kid.
The one my mother told me to look up to.
The good-humoured one
with a humble smile
and gentle manners.

Now he looks like someone I was warned about.
More butch
and somehow, more angry.
Blood shot eyes
knitted eyebrows
a threatening frown.

It almost doesn’t seem like him.
Maybe this one’s an evil twin.
It looks like the dark side caught up with him.
Or maybe it’s just protein and gym.

Whatever it is, I have to warn.
The Hanuman we knew, is certainly gone.
He is offended easily and losses his calm.
He is out to slay his “enemies”, or well
Ram’s.

Coffee Mug

Early soapy bath
out of the cluttered sink.
One teaspoon sugar
Two tablespoons milk.
Some scented brownish powder
water up-to the brim.
There now,
I'm ready for our morning kiss.

How to get ready for a date

Treat it like a performance
you got to play your part.
Make sure
you take a longer bath.
Scented soaps, scented sprays
a neat and tidy bun
no hair astray.
A skirt above the knee
a lacy prickly bra
Hide that zit!
It won't take you far.
Conceal the razor cuts
and you're good to go.
No, not that red a lipstick
you'd look like a whore.
Practice your smile
don't make it too wide.
And DO NOT forget pepper spray
it's late in the night.

Reflective Writing

I had always been very hesitant about showing my prose writings/poems to people. Given my involvement with theatre, and the fact that I’m primarily an actor, dramatic writing—I think—came far more easily to me. Asking people to read my plays, therefore, was easier and did not involve me breaking into a sweat, and wanting to crawl into the earth and bury myself there permanently. If I trace this feeling of nervousness, I find its origins in my second year in Kirori Mal College, from where I had been pursuing my bachelors. I had written something—which was terrible—and I gave it to one of my professors to read. He was a professor of English and a man whom I greatly respected. However, he was also known for his short temper and the fact that he never minced his words.

I don’t think I was ready for that.

Anyway, when I went to the staff room the next day to find out what he thought of my written piece, he looked at me and said, ‘Basak…Get a life.’ Of course I was mortified. Now, however, it reminds me of a conversation that I had had with another playwright last year. We were at a party and he said, ‘My greatest fear as a writer is that I produce something and people look at me and go: what is wrong with you? How could you have even written this?’ I understand that this came from the fact that the playwright I was talking to never ‘played it safe’ and always ventured into contentious territory in his works. But this also informed me of the inherent vulnerability of the artist when he/she shows you his work of art. Or maybe I’m wrong. There’s a famous story in which Faulkner, after having written As I Lay Dying, calls his editor and hands over the copy and says: I think it’s the best American Novel yet written! And he was right. It was indeed. So maybe there’s no point in generalising. What is true however is that when the professor said, ’get a life’ I questioned my very existence. Now that I think of it, I over-reacted, and the many subsequent artistic failures (and a few successes) over the next years hardened me towards criticism. However, for the next four years, I continued writing prose poems, on and off, but never showed them to anybody—other than my parents who I knew thought of me as the next Kafka.

So the first time I actually showed my written material to people was in the Crafting Poems class. Indeed when people discussed A Moment of Violence (Title needs to be changed) I could hear them analysing, critiquing, decoding what I had written and—I don’t know whether people noticed this—I shut my ears and closed my eyes in order to block out all voices. When discussion began, I was ready for people to struggle to find words that would do justice to the horrible and horrific thing that they had had the misfortune of reading. But when the discussion didn’t turn out like that, when the criticism was more tempered, and people didn’t ask me to get a new life altogether, I was surprised and I felt the dizzying nervousness subside. 

And I learnt of my adjectival excess. Of how, often, the adjectives that I used would slow down the pace of the piece and how sometimes it would seem like a pointless exercise in sesquipedalian obfuscation. How the adjectives, instead of enhancing the descriptions, would render it opaque. Of course my influence was coming from a writer called Cormac McCarthy. He has a distinct writing style and is known for often using an odd and unusual vocabulary. And my writing style, was also shaped by McCarthy’s—if you read him you will see how greatly it is derived from his and how I wear his influence on my sleeve. Of course whereas he deployed the style to talk about the violent, biblical, psychedelic, hallucinatory, western outback, I used it to talk about the city at night.  

So when I was charged with the crime of overusing adjectives, I went back and read a few of my favourite passages from McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and saw that the adjectives had been used, but economically and precisely. Now you may say that I am over dependant on McCarthy. That may be true, even though I have had other influences that have dictated the particular kinds of world that I want to build. But what has interested me always is the sensory experience of writing, something that hypnotises you with the rhythm and the sound of the piece, and there is a particular piece in Blood Meridian—a page long sentence—that seems to be the absolute culmination of this particular kind of writing. Nothing more hypnotic seems possible. And every time I attempt to create this kind of language, it is always that passage that has served as a lodestar.  

What I struggled with, however, was precision, and often my writing seemed to go all over the place. This became a particular challenge when I tried the Ghazal and The Villanelle form. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and was never satisfied with whatever I produced. It all seemed like nonsense. What was tough was to say what I wanted to say, sans adjectival excess and the freedom of not being restricted within a form. It was like trying to walk with no legs. This made me realised that I had sealed myself shut in a very particular kind of writing style—the McCarthy-esque writing style. For these two forms were such that they did not allow for a grand and extravagant kind of writing geared towards world building. I realised that I needed to explore other forms, do other things. So the recent poem that I wrote—Bombay 1947—is devoid of excessive adjectives and is replete with surrealist imagery which came as a conscious break from the kind of writing and the kind of worlds my previous poems tried to build.  ( I haven’t uploaded the ghazals and the villanelle yet, because I am not satisfied with them.)

The prosody workshop was particularly important for me, for it helped me articulate what I had always sensed—the consistency and inconsistency of rhythms. Always, while reading my own writings, I always ‘felt’ or ‘sensed’ that something was off, but I couldn’t exactly pin down what it was. And so, when I found out that it was a question of syllables, life became easier. And in many ways, life became easier, and tougher after the course. When I get back to my writing after my Masters is over, sit down at the computer, and write every day, five hundred words minimum, I will be writing from a perspective that puts precision on the same level as affect.

And, also, I will show my writings to as many people as I can.

Thanks

I miss Sunrise

As tall as ambition,
towards my left they
have erected a monument to people
living as strangers

The roseate of the dawn
my daily reminder that I'm reborn
as lost as a hiccup, hiccupped.

Now
my first glimpse of the star of day
is a blazing, angry noon-face.
So
I wait an extra hour and 27 minutes
to see the moonrise these days.

The Maker?

Your identity, like this leaf
floats in front of you
in your hand
within your control
does it, like this leaf,
come from a seed, a tree,
a season and a gale which
brought it to you?
Its in your hand but
you look like the keeper,
not the maker.

Self reflective piece

Writings is an escape to another world. It helps us express our thoughts and feelings. We can also create our own imaginary world through our writings. 

    Though literature was not my major, I often read poems and used to admire how Poets use to describe vast things, precisely and can give shape to emotions and thought. With that thoughts in my mind, and willingness to learn and taste the work of art and literature I took up this course as one of my elective paper. From the very first day of my class I was feel with excitement and nervousness as well. I was excited for choosing this course and getting to learn more about Poems . And on the other hand, I was nervous as this was the first time where we share our thoughts and express our feeling about the poem we read. I was also surprise to see how my fellow mates can share their thoughts and express their views and ideas so well.  Taking up this course literally took me up to another new level as I get to learn so many things and getting to learn those various forms of poetry.

      Coming to my poems which I’ve wrote throughout my course, the first one is City Poem, “Hail to the city”. Coming from a countryside with not much experience about the city life helps me open up to see the complete different world. Through this poem I express and give praises, how busy the city was and gives no place for the night or moment of solitude. Also, with its continuous advancement this city offers so much of knowledge, fame, fortune and dreams to pursue for younger generation. And I as one among them who came to this city to pursue my knowledge.

       The Political poem “She continue to pursue” is a kind of relevant to my city poem. In this poem, I express my experience which I’ve come across in this city. How I feel myself insecure though the city offers so much to learn. In this poem I use the line ‘she fails to posses the face of that city” to express my difference and our uniqueness. And how that difference makes her feel alienated from the city. Many a times I got so many comments (Chinky, Chinese) on my looks and differences. In this poem I also want to express my grief and spread awareness for a better change.

       Ghazal poem was very new to me, I came to know it through the course and taking so many examples and research I penned down my simple Ghazal Poems “Hush to Hello”. Recalling back those past experience how a simple “Hello” can mean so much and build such a strong bond between two persons. And how such an immature love can end miserably and brings about regrets for the exchange of “Hello”. 

       "Still loving you" is a love poem expressing the love and recalling those memorable time spend together with her love ones and how she beg for her love to come back. 

     Also, in this course I was also given the opportunity to write my independent poems. In my first independent poem "Nothing holds permanent”, is a simple and short poem where I’ve express my views, how everything can change with the passing of time like the passing of season and that of laughter, sorrows and feelings cease and holds no permanent in this world.

       Another independent poem with the title “Gerbera”. In this poem, it  talks about how I was so much attracted with this beautiful flower. It muses me to penned down a few line about the beauty of this flower. And how this Gerbera can give a pleasing sight in one eyes with its alluring petal.

         The third independent poem “The death bell”. In short, it talks about how often we hate and fear about the death, we will eventually meet death one day or the other and that we have to accept death as we grow older.

        “Sweet Serenade” is one of my fourth independent poem, in this poem I talks about the serenade that I once heard on one early morning that warms my heart and lifted my mood. And it took me the imagery world to write this few lines by making a comparison with endearing love, battlefield and that of seasonal harvest.

        “Mother’s love” was my first ever villanelle poem. It is a poem to express my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation towards my mother. In this poem I make a remark that no loves can compare and measure beyond from our mother’s love. Also how deep, rare and far beyond the price of that rubies. 

         In the Performative poems, “Fading with the time” I express how times runs and fade so fast and how ones life is fading with the passing of time. No matter what we cannot stop the passing of time, as for every seconds counts and those of the smile, tears we own now will vanish someday with the time.

      In response to Nitoo Das everyday life poem, I wrote about “Pen”, expressing about the necessity of a pen. And how a pen played an important role in our daily task. Also, in this poem I also convey the mindfulness and carefulness of using our pen, as once what we penned down cannot be easily erase and disappear. 

        In the second response of Nitto Das poem, I choose to write “How to grind Rice”, as I remember how I as a small girl learned to grind rice from my mother. In this poem, I have relate the history and traditions bonds during our forefather’s days and their ways of grinding rice. And how a girl child must learn to grind rice as rice is one our daily food. I have also mention the process and procedure of grinding rice in this very poem. 

              

Self reflective Essay

It was with a lot of excitement that I took up this course since this was the first time that I was actually going to learn how to write poetry. Up till this point, my poems had developed from trying to get the lines to rhyme, to expressing inner angst and finally to spoken word poetry where the focus is the sound and eye-catchy metaphors above everything else. That was what I tried to do for the first submission, which was a love poem. Even though it had strong and interesting metaphors, it could not stand the scrutiny of the entire class, looking at me to explain why I put in a certain line or a certain word in a certain place. That is when I started to realize that a brilliant image or metaphor cannot sustain an entire poem, there has to be more finesse which has to go into it. It was the first time that I edited a poem and restructured it significantly to get a particular result. I tried to keep the first few poems as short as possible so that I could edit them properly. I also began to put more thought behind my poems since they were not intended for a one time consumption.

As the teacher had put it, “the poem has to be good for the stage but should also work on the page”, and that leads me to the second realization that I could play around with line breaks, punctuations ad spaces to create more meaning. This was something which I had never experimented with much and it was only after I had written a couple of poems that I gained the confidence to try it out myself. The villanelle was the poem where I tried to make extensive use of the punctuation marks and though it might not stand out among the other poems which were brought up during the weekly peer review, it was a personal milestone for me. It was the first time that I found a rhythm and repetition intoxicating since there was not much need for new fancy metaphors than creative and inventive manipulation of the existing lines. Due to health issues and family problems, I had to miss out on a lot of classes, which I deeply regret. One of these was the class where the ghazal was discussed and that was probably the reason why I messed up the rules to be kept in mind while writing one. However, as I realized during writing the villanelle and the second ghazal, poems which have a predetermined repetition need to be edited for much longer to find the perfect combination.

I have also realized over the course of writing these twelve poems that the initial thought in my mind about what the poem has to look like cannot and should not restrict me from changing its course while the writing and the editing is taking place. The ghazal for instance, grew from a thought where I wanted to express an absurd thought about whether the stars we see in the sky aren’t lights in a huge grid, set up by the governments as a ploy to make us believe that there are other worlds out there, the research of which needs to be funded. However, the poem turned out to be quite different, about a person struggling with mental health issues and drug abuse. The initial idea, as fascinating as it seemed to my mind, did not materialize when I began writing and the second idea made more sense but still left something lacking. The next morning I altered the narrative to that of a war veteran with PTSD symptoms. A particular set of words in the second sher still gnawed at me and I changed it after almost writing the second draft. This ever-changing relationship with my poem is something which is quite similar to a relationship with other people. Thus, in a way editing made the poem come alive for me.

If writing and editing forced me choose the words carefully, the class discussions and the background readings forced me to choose the topics on which I wrote very carefully. The poem is not just about expressing what I felt, it was also about leaving the reader with something which they could carry away from the poem. In every discussion, we were asked to pick a line or a set of lines which stayed with us and while writing, it was there at the back of my mind that would the reader actually have something which would stay with them after reading it. The trajectory which I see in my poems, from “The address” to “I am Not” and finally to “Razer way shun”, I can almost see myself trying to get accustomed to my own voice, my own identity.

The response to Nitoo Dass was another interesting exercise, which could have been more interesting had I been able to attend the discussions of her poems. But it was still a delightful experience since I decided to try something which I could never have thought of, had I not come across her. The glossary poem was born out of a curiosity to see whether I can make the glossary into an integral part of the poem, in a way that it does not explain so much so as completes and complements the meaning, as a response to Nitoo’s stance on the use of glossary in poems.

There is a vast number of little things I have gained over this course, and not all of them is about writing good poetry. As once said during the class, the expression itself is not the only thing which needs to be worked upon, in order to become a good poet. The quantum of knowledge has to be constantly increased in order to become a better poet. And I believe that my quantum of knowledge has certainly gone up a few notches along with gaining a few more techniques over this course.

Reflective essay- My journey as a budding poet and as a performer

It’s been four months since I joined this elective and needless to say I experienced the freedom to express my thoughts by carving it through the means of poetry. Even though I had participated in various poetry events, I wasn’t a regular performer and was an amateur. I explored different forms of poetry like ghazals, villanelle, city poetry, political poetry, object poetry, how-to poetry and prose poetry. The journey so far has been a beautiful adventure because of Akhil’s method of interacting and communicating with the students. Through mutual interaction and the use of visuals and sound, I was able to grasp and understand the meaning of the poems. Furthermore, my journey as an aspiring poet and as a learner was difficult too. With forms like Villanelle and ghazal I was unable to construct and craft a sensible poem at first but through mutual interaction and communication with my classmates I was able to understand the form and write a villanelle. As someone who’s trained in Indian classical, Ghazal wasn’t something unfamiliar but the style and form was explored and magnified in this course. I never thought I’d write an English ghazal someday but I believe I crossed those hurdles that prevented my expression. The course helped me express and channel my thoughts and experiences through the medium of poetry. It has been a beautiful journey because of the mutual co-operation by the students and Akhil himself. The space in which I learned the poems turned out to be a space containing a plethora of ideas, emotions and expressions and at the same time I was glad that ideas and expressions weren’t snubbed or mocked. I’ve read war poetry and am familiar with ghazals. However, this course was like the ocean in a drop. Within a span of 4 months I learned new forms of poetry that I had no clue about. These novel forms not only helped me engage with literature and poetry but also understand the background and the space in which it were written. Out of all these poems, by far my favorite is The Art of Losing by Elizabeth Bishop. The manner and style of discussing poems and working on them was very unique as it allowed most of us to engage with the poem with respect to our own experiences. The style of approaching any poem also helped in drawing the meaning and the depth of our experiences that’d further be the core essence of our individual poems. The space became a cathartic and a therapeutic experience for me where I could engage with my thoughts, emotions and connect it to my poems. I was able to draw out the core essence of my poem from my subjective experiences and through this practice I was able to write poems. As an amateur poet I used to ( and even now) write my poems in an unstructured and a fluid manner. I learnt the dynamics of writing poetry such as prosity, syllable count, metre and line breaks that facilitated in structuring my poem.

I enjoyed revisiting some ideas and the poems that I previously read as a student while I was doing my Bachelors in English. The use of visuals- photos, videos- and sounds while teaching a particular form of poem actually enhanced the process of learning the new forms and styles of poetry.

From writing poems to performing them, I have always been skeptical about performing my piece in public but then the opportunity of open mic gave me a platform to express my anxieties, my repressed emotions, my fears, my beautiful memories and my rage all together with the help of my crafted poems. I’m glad I was a part of this course and that I got to learn so much within a short span of time. I’m glad I was able to construct my poems well and work with a collective of creative individuals who respect their fellow poets. But I’m kinda sad also that this journey is ending too soon. However I’m happy that this journey has been a fruitful one in the sense that I met new people, learnt new forms of poetry, explored different ideas in a creative space and expressed my ideas and emotions through poetry. Lastly, I’d like to thank Akhil for encouraging everyone to write poems and being humble to each other. Thank you for this lovely journey. I shall take it forward in my life.

Gerbera

Sweetly bloom for mankind.
Of different colors,
with its alluring petal
Catches every bit of eyes.
Oh that beautiful one.
With its long stem,
Stand firm and tall
Bloom your colors out.
Some likes red, some yellow,
Some pink and some white,
Still you pleases all.
Oh Gerbera, for lovers.
For friendship or comrades.
Gifts of asylum,
Brings blissful moment
To the lonely ones.
Chasing away solitude,
You will every heart.
Nah, never stop blooming.
For lovers and comrades,
They long for thee.

Reflective Essay

During my literature classes in school, poetry use to be the hardest classes. Figuring out what the poet meant used to take seemed much harder than comprehending the key points of a short story or passage. Still continued even in college- the courses on poetry seemed to take up too much effort. Poetry then, for me, was not the cathartic or romantic experience that many of my friends who do write poetry describe it as. Reading poetry was hard enough, I couldn’t even imagine writing some.

After my Bachelor’s in English, I decided to do my Master’s in Literary Arts instead of in English because I wanted to focus on my writing. Since I had always preferred prose over poetry, I only wrote prose. In my last semester of the course, I decided to choose the Crafting Poetry elective to force myself to go out of my comfort zone and engage with this form.

In the early classes, the sheer amount of love my classmates already had for poetry took me by surprise. In a way, it was intimidating and made me question whether I was too cynical or too ‘unromantic’ or something to appreciate poetry. I got scared and started comparing myself to a classmate I had in school who could not understand or appreciate fiction or rather, the entire concept of reading books voluntarily.

The fear of not being considered poetic enough, or that my poems would look like prose on the page made me ensure that I only wrote poems that rhymed. A strict rhyme scheme or stanzas that looked similar were initially very important to me; in a way to overcompensate for this insecurity of mine. That is why, even though it was difficult to come up with words that rhymed, the ghazal and villanelle were exciting challenges for me. In a way, I thought that if my words rhymed, I could somehow call myself a poet.   

Since I had never written poetry before this course, my focus for when I wrote a poem was always my ideas. There are some students who claim that it is the sound of the words, repetition or structure of the poem that enthralls them, for me, it is always the idea and the imagery used to describe them. In a way, I was still stuck in my school literature class, comprehending poetry by unraveling similes and metaphors, using dictionaries to understand the meaning of the words used. I’m not trying to say that in a negative way, this is just the way I like to read poetry. I can appreciate repetitive sounds in a poetry, but consistent revisiting and unraveling of a metaphor in a poem and a strict rhyme scheme (the rhyme scheme can be broken, but only if the break is scheme is reflective of the mood or concept being explored in the poem) are the things that I enjoy the most in a poem.

The day the form of poetry really inspired me was the day when we focused on enjambment. Enjambment was something that couldn’t be used in prose, and I saw the possibilities of how the form itself could lend emphasis on the concept I was trying to explore in the poem. Before that, I think I was focused too much on the concept and simply thought about how I could hammer it into stanzas and lines. This is especially true for the poem Mother Earth to Sita. What the poem intended to say was clear to me from the very beginning; it was the sitting down with dictionaries of synonyms and figuring out the rhyming words that was the majority of the effort.

An interesting exercise I did with enjambment was when I took some dialogues by Lady Gaga and cut them and structured in my poem Dear Stefani Joanne Germanotta. It was interesting to note how cutting her statements into lines of a poem gave a different note or in way, heightened her anguish compared to when she says them herself in the documentary Five foot two. 

After being so taken in by enjambment, I actually started marrying the concepts or intentionally clashing my concepts to the structure I wanted to write them in. For example the poet persona of Blood! Blood! Blood! is supposed to be an obviously masculine voice, a powerful patriarchal one which is chanting it to a mob almost. It is supposed to be stoic, the repetitive structure supposed to reflect the same age old things men say about violence. The words of the poem are however, not supposed to be repetitive age old things one would say to a mob rather, the implicit conditioning everyone receives about blood, especially women. The aggressive voice is supposed to explicitly acknowledge and self reflect on taboos, castesim and how it glorifies violence.   

In The Typewriting Mouse I have tried to invoke the feeling of the nursery rhymes that we used to read in school. Featuring an whimsical anthropomorphic mouse, his story is supposed to be an adventure with a happy ending, but not only does it not go there, the poem tries to hint at plagiarism and question the responsibilities writers ought to take upon themselves.  

This treatment of poetry continues in the poems I submitted as ‘satellite poems’ for my Strategies of Writing memoir. I think I enjoy writing accompanying pieces for my prose much more than ‘stand alone’ poems. Perhaps it is due to the slight confident I feel writing prose (writing anything cripples my confidence anyway).

At the end of this course, I will not venture to call myself a poet, but I will definitely go on writing poetry, mostly to act as a nucleus or a essence for prose pieces.

The Death Bell

Death never cease his love for me.
Day after day his love increase.
My hatred towards him was measureless.
But as I grow old my hatred die out,
Like I drank the love potion,
Cannot resist him.

When the death bell ring.
The pale ridden and I will be one.
Like that of true love fade.
At the end of the day,
Death and I will be together,
When the Death bell ring.

Mother's Love

Mother’s love is a never ending love.

A heart filled with much love and tender care

This heart is so pure and measure above.

Her love for us is so kind and so brave

The wage and the struggles she holds and bear

Mother’s love is a never ending love.

This heart is so pure and measure above

That of Rubies are far beyond compare

Else more precious than the stars high above.

Oh mama’s love is pure and white as dove

She guide us with her outmost tender care

Mother’s love is a never ending love.

This heart so pure and measure above

Her love for us, that so rich and so rare.

For none can take away a mother’s love.

Let us be thankful for the gift of love

She is the real reason you stood up there.

Yes, Mother’s love is never ending love

This heart is so pure and measure above.

How to grind Rice

Grind rice?

Back in our forefather’s days

They grind their own rice.

A large wooden structure curve 

inside a shape of bowl.

That’s where the rice is put to grind.

It pass down from our ancestors.

Old tradition bounds a girl

Cannot find a groom and married off,

Lest she knows how to grind rice.

I remember my mother taught me 

How to grind a rice.

First, the rice need to dry on a daylong sunny day

And in the evening,

I was taught to tight a scarf around my waist

That holds grip and strength to crush enough grains.

I’d to Put the rice in that wooden structure curve shape bowl

To start the grinding.

I was told to lift a heavy wooden rod  

With my leg set apart avoiding any mistake of hurting my small feet

And grind the rice back and forth

until it looks well crush.

Later,

I’ve to winnow the chaff from those piles of rice.

Until I find the whole fine grain.

And thats how I learned to grind rice.

Pen

Yes, I’m a handy possession

That you always carry.

I let you express what you cannot speak.

I go through many task.

I shed and sacrifice

To create and write your heart’s out. 

You let me sign on life’s changing decision.

When you’re bored use me

Scribble on that blank sheet.

You may go easy on me

But once I left my impression.

I cannot be erase easily

Use me wisely,

Till I run out and bleed last.

A Walk on Cake (Performative Poetry)

You curse my education.
"Gender Studies? It won't involve much.
You would have all the time in the world, right?
It's just a cake walk".

I listen.
Innumerable accounts of loss and pain and death and dearth
"Cake walk"

Sir, Ma'am, if years of my tears, my midnight sobs,
My teeth-jittering evenings,
My futile complaints
My marginalisation, my annihilation
Is walking on the cake,
Well then I might be.

If my sister's labour in a claustrophobic kitchen
Her sacrifice on harrowing nights
Her tendency to drink tears
To convince a family they married
A laughing clown
Is walking on the cake,
Then I might be.

But I hate to admit this
It has been a cake walk.
To undo the atrocities on my कौम
To fight, to write, to sigh through sleepless nights,
To hope to once give back
To the struggle that brought you and me here.
I love to walk this cake, if cake it is.

Fading with the time

Fading with the Time.

Walking onwards to where the road bent,
Closer and closer with each passing day,
Leaving a little bit of my life's scent:
That would moulder away.

Days have come and years elapsed,
Gazing at the blurry memories,
Discarded dreams and twisted maps,
That has led me into such a plesant reverie.

Time oh Time; won't you slow down,
I've just learned to love,
Won't you wait to see me in my wedding gown?
And my elegant fingers in the white gloves.

For every second the clock ticks away,
All the precious things that i own,
The smile, the tears and today,
Into an old grey tombstone.

Sweet home and mama,
I won't wave a goodbye,
For life is just a drama,
To be told in the next life. Aye!!

Self-reflective essay

My roller-coaster affair with words, started when I was about eight or nine years old, and I always favoured prose, because to my young brain, poetry was all about having rhyming words at the end, and that was something I was terrible at. I did develop an interest in reading poetry, thanks to Emily Dickinson, and John Keats, but I did not attempt to write my first poem when I passed out from school (considering those juvenile attempts at ten, with all rhyming words do not count). I mostly wrote to help with my ever-growing anxiety issues, it helped me calm down, penning down a few lines, also helped me breathe when faced with anxiety attacks, so I clung on to it.

When I opted for this class this semester, I had been having a writer's or more aptly, a poet's block, for a significant period of time. I had been able to pen down rants with flourish, but in terms of poetry, it was a dry, dry, spell. I was a little hesitant at the thought of joining a poetry workshop course, because I had always known that my poetry was still something that needed a lot of work, and something I was extremely conscious of. A friend pushed me to opt for the course, convincing me that it could only do me good, so I gave in and took a plunge.

Our first assignment was to write a love poem, and to be honest, I just picked out one I had written some time back, edited it little, and submitted it, but then I went through the other poems some of the other students had posted, and I realised, I might never be as good as any of them, but I definitely needed to put in more of an effort, if I actually wanted anything out of this course. So, with the ghazal, I tried long and hard. It was a form I was not familiar with, to be honest, ghazals in English, seemed like a terrible idea, but then we read Shahid's 'Tonight', and I knew it was something I had to at least attempt. As mentioned before, rhyming and I, aren't on the best of terms, but with the ghazal, it somehow did not pose to be an issue. Whatever Shahid was talking of, the emotions, the struggle, I could largely relate to that, so it was not as gargantuan a task I had expected it to be. The ghazal's form gave me a restraint that I desperately needed. When it came to the villanelle however, I struggled and struggled, and then mostly, gave in, and try to do the best I could. The form frustrated me, and all my peace with rhyme schemes was forgotten, and we were back to waging wars. I was almost in tears, because the restrictive form kept me from saying all that I wanted to, I felt like, it was either my emotions or the form of the poem, it could not be both, not for me. Upon reading my villanelle, my struggles will be clearer.

Coming to what I am most thankful for, which is the political poem, because it made me realise, that poems did not have to be only about abstract emotions, they could be about concrete experiences, not only as the thought behind the poem, but actually in the poem too. That is something that our professor kept reminding us too, that our poems only needed to make sense to us, that they did not need to be explained, constantly reminding us to ground the emotions we were expressing. With the political poem, I expanded not only my subject matter, but also the vocabulary I used in my poems, being assured that words from our native tongues, had a place in our poetry, for they were a part of us, just like the experiences or memories behind the poems. It is something that I have tried to make us of, but of course, as most things, it will take time, and I have to remind myself that it is okay to not use just English words, but I still ending up using words from Urdu and Hindi in a few of my poems, using words like 'azaan', or 'matam' or 'moortis' had never seemed to be an option before. Also, Nitoo Das taught us an important lesson, that we did not need to necessarily use capitalisation or punctuations, which was something I had seen other poets do, but I had not really dabbled with, but I have attempted to do it in my later poems, and I find it quite liberating. There is a certain thrill in beginning a poem with a lowercase letter, using capitalisation only to empasise, similar is the thrill of ending a poem without a period, but I am still too new to this to take it that far.

The one on one review with our professor, reinstated my own fear, that I needed to learn to edit, to learn to let go of lines, to not explain myself, to not be repetitive. Honestly, it's all a little much, but I am taking baby steps towards it, trying to carefully weigh out each word, and refrain from using cliches, but it is something that will take time, but at least, this course, has helped me start the process.

I am really glad my friend pushed me, for otherwise, I would still be writing never ending love lorn poems, with no personal substance, with all lines capitalised, and each line ending with a comma or a period, and not even realising that anything was wrong with it. I am also so thankful for my introduction to Agha Shahid Ali, because that really made me see how different English poetry could be.