Your poems are not typically soaked in beauteous nature descriptions or eulogizing women. How would you describe your style?
I try to write as honestly as I can. I know that sounds like the kind of thing everyone would say but it is as close as I can get to describe my project. Perhaps because I was born and raised in a city, I find nature interesting only in as much as it seems to be struggling against the city. And as for eulogies, I don’t think I could write one. I am a journalist too, and journalism is born out of skepticism. Although I do believe that I write my poetry from a different part of my self, I don’t think the two parts are completely, hermetically sealed from each other.
What are the two occurrences that bother you in today’s world?
I believe that we are now living in a unipolar world, one that is dominated by a certain way of thinking. That bothers me. I believe that we are now living with compassion fatigue. That bothers me almost as much.
Who, or what has been your inspiration behind the poem “Bedside”?
My mother. She spent many years of her life suffering from a bipolar affective disorder.
Does Jerry Pinto prefer penning down his immediate responses to experiences, or does he recollect them in tranquility?
As soon as one is asked that, William Wordsworth springs to mind, does he not? And with him, the whole Romantic enterprise with its baggage. I like the Romantics, perhaps because I did not study English Literature at the college level but I am not so sure about Wordsworth’s formulation. I can’t say I understand my own process and I don’t think I have ever wanted to. I can only say that sometimes poetry happens and then it’s all about the agonizing decisions of craft.
Ranjit Hoskote states similarities between you and Nissim Ezekiel. How would you distinguish your style and themes from the latter?
I am honoured by that remark and I think it may well be true but I’m not sure I could enumerate the ways in which I am similar and the ways in which I am different.
How would you explain the appeal of poetry amongst the battle of more popular genres like fiction, drama, biographies etc.?
Poetry is words set to music. That’s why we love it. That’s why we respond to it. I believe it has a certain sacredness to it too.
Please share your views on some aspects of contemporary poetry that has been instrumental in stirring the poet in you.
I remember the moment when I thought that poetry might matter to me in some visceral way. I was in the tenth standard and we were studying Futility by Wilfred Owen, a British poet of the First World War. The poem moved me deeply. ‘O what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break earth’s sleep at all?’ is a line that has haunted me ever since. And I thought to myself, I want to say something like that. I want to say it as sparely and crisply and angrily and movingly.
Where do you see Modern Indian poetry going from here? Do you think there is an adequate interest amongst the readers to whet a poet’s thirst for criticism?
I believe that poets don’t have a choice. They do not write poetry because there is a market for poetry; we are often told there is no market. We write because we have to. Even if tomorrow, everyone stops reading poetry all together, all at once, there will still be poets working on their poems, agonizing over line lengths and trying to get their rhythms right. Because poetry is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Art is a necessity. When life was nasty and brutal and short, cavemen took time off to paint their walls. They may not have thought they were creating art, they may have simply been recording their kills, writing their calendars, putting down their history…but surely all these are also the functions of art.
Interviewed by Devapriya Banerjee
Designed by Subhadip Mukherjee
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