Self Reflective Essay

The two major reasons that initially moved me to opt for this course while trying to figure out the possible electives I could opt for during early January winters at the start of this year were selfish to a degree, one might argue. Given that this was my final semester, I wanted to opt for a course that wasn’t as heavy (which is obviously a very subjective matter) as some of the other elective courses being offered. The only other intention was to take this course in order to try and somehow deal with the haunting absence of written creative output in my life owing to countless reasons over the last two years; a lack of a will and way to express just how I’d been rummaging through every day unwillingly over this period without having written a single song or poem as I’d been doing for well over a decade.

To provide an honest and self reflective look on my journey through this course using each of my weekly submissions as an indicator, the changes, in not just the expression of my thoughts, ideas and emotions, are quite visible to a keen eye. And genuinely, as I had hoped for but not entirely expected from the course, I could find myself discovering and gelling within a space to share how I felt through my submissions and in-class discussions which without a doubt turned into cathartic and therapeutic processes. And the midterm reviews that I’d received on my submissions until that point have now completely changed the way I went ahead with writing poems; the feedback, online and in person, has helped me find new ground as to how to talk in a similar voice, but one that resonates more with passing time. So as I listen to a classic Norwegian Black Metal album (Bergtatt – Et eeventyr i 5 capitler by Ulver) about a maiden who gets lured into a forest by trolls, I’m going through my submissions and at the same time looking at the large number of poems (and fortunately, a few songs) that I’ve been able to write over the past few months.

From mes pensées sont française to How to Remember a Love (a response to how to cut a fish by Nitoo Das), for me there is a visible change in writing how I’ve felt at the moment of figuring out how to speak through my poems. Even the manner in which I have expressed my feelings over the twelve required poems has matured and become less clichéd (or cheesy) to some degree. To write mes pensées sont française for the first week of the course, under Love Poetry, had made complete sense to me in starting out to reflect on myself and just how I had set myself in a strict and repetitive pattern that only resulted in frustration and sadness. And I figure, remembering now how I felt back when I first wrote the poem, I wanted to keep it as personal and vulnerable as I could and that probably happened to a greater degree once I edited the poem after the midterm submission.

Most of my submissions over the course of this semester have been experiments to try and be as open, vulnerable, self reflexive and honest as I could, which is where A Faun Sighs at 3 A.M.  stands out because not only is it the first ever ghazal I wrote but also because I tried to project two personas onto each other, and surprisingly it’s stayed like an ever blossoming flower giving new meanings and interpretations to each different reader, which honestly I’m proud of. To work around the rules of constructing a ghazal is what I really enjoyed; to test myself to a set pattern and create something that would make sense and convey emotions was quite an invitation to a creative wellspring. And eventually, in a later ghazal, with It’s Somebody’s Special Night Tonight, But Screw That., I really let myself go and finally embraced my sense of humour within the form while still being sad as ever.

It was around the time we started to write City Poetry that I first encountered a somewhat grave problem. I happen to relate to Delhi not in the grand romantic way one might relate to the capital at all; I live in small moments and do not find myself even now to view the city as one being that I feel connected to. Luckily, I was able to write The Car Path from Saket to the E.R. (previously titled For a Few Cheetos More) over an Uber ride through south Delhi and I’ve found myself going back to this submission over and over, because I’m really happy with the shape the poem finally took after I incorporated all the suggestions that I received. Car Path reminds me of the countless emotions that run through me every time I travel alone in this lush, melancholic and transient city. The problem of finding a suitable subject to write about was actually somewhat solved towards the end of the course when we went to Old Delhi railway station as an exercise in Place Poetry, which is what had happened earlier as well with the Uber ride, but that happening has strangely gone unnoticed by me till this very moment.

The week on Political Poetry was difficult as well. Given how I have been overcome with certain motivations, or dominated by certain set of thoughts that have inspired a majority of work that I’ve written over the past few months, it was difficult to occupy a space and a mindset where I could be politically reflective. Love, or separation, or anxieties over abandonment aren’t political. Maybe they are, and I might come across as naïve or obtuse but I haven’t given much thought to these ideas as political, so it might be wrong to comment either way. Taking some inspiration from the title of a song by one of my favourite metal bands, The Lotus Eater by Opeth, I wrote I Devour Lotuses as partly a caricature of myself, willingly avoiding political debates whilst being affected and bothered by the same. I Devour Lotuses, for me, ends up echoing countless political songs I’d been writing years prior, inspired by bands such as Black Sabbath, Lamb of God, Rage Against the Machine, Gojira, Tool, Megadeth, Metallica among various others only this time, the repugnant subjects pointed at included me.

The independent submissions i.e. I feel I’ll sleep tonight, My Left Arm and Cocoa (along with It’s Somebody’s Special Night Tonight…) are some of my shameless plugs where I just wanted to be as raw and emotive as I could within set ideas of what I wished to present to the readers. I feel I’ll sleep tonight was changed drastically after I incorporated changes suggested during the midterm review, and honestly, it turned into one of the more beautiful poems that I’ve written and just the way it looks on paper increases the sentimental value it holds for me. My Left Arm has been the most ‘biology heavy’ poem I’ve written so far in my bid to humanize psychosomatic tremors and aches, something that I’ve tried to highlight through most of my works over the semester but nowhere as openly as in this submission. Cocoa is a collection of images that haunt me from time to time, never menacingly though, but there’s not much that can be said about this.

Moving on to the villanelle Melaina Chole, I was deeply moved by Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art and how it conveys countless things that it doesn’t even say. I tried to create something that would resonate on a similar plane as her work, whether I’ve been able to achieve that or not is subjective, but I find Melaina Chole as a mantra to calm and hold myself in place since I’ve written the villanelle. Again, testing myself with particular emotions and a set pattern really helped me bring out the best I could at that time. The next poem, いちきゅうはちよん (Ichi Kyuu Hachi Yon) is a direct retelling of an incident I was a witness to whilst getting a haircut somewhere around a decade ago. I believe Ichi Kyuu Hachi Yon stands out as a better Place/City poem in terms of grounding a particular incident to a particular place, which unsurprisingly is relatable to a number of middle class Indian individuals, and the incident which gets mentioned within the prior incident was very important to be put out in the world as a question on the continuous violence we as Indians, as North Indians, as Delhiites, North Indian/Delhi males, as humans have exposed everyone else to.

Finally, to discuss the responses to Nitoo Das’s poems, the two workshops with her; Jokhini has stayed with me since the first time I read it, and not just due to my interest in the occult or supernatural, but because of the innocence and naivety that humanizes our young witch in the tree. I chose to respond to poems other than Jokhini because I feared I’d end up turning it into something campy (case in point: Aatanki Halwa); I responded to The Poetry of Everyday Life: I as an ode to a few essential and unnoticed objects (barring the photograph) that just seemed necessary. The other poem that I responded to, i.e. how to cut a fish with How to Remember a Love was written over two weeks of constant head scratching and late nights (rather super early mornings) in a dark room. The content of the response is self explanatory and I’ve tried to incorporate as much as I could of myself whilst also trying to create the poem into a recipe for memories and sleep.

I feel I should say something that concludes this collection of disjoint thoughts. I feel I’ve half-assed my way through this essay that exceeds the word limit and says little about the creative process and my experience of the course. As I inch closer day by day to graduation and the inevitable uncertainty of eventual ‘adult life’, I really wish I could’ve opted for a course like this every semester and stayed in a perpetual bubble or a loop of creative exercises, shuffling words and emotions.