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.
