PRIYA SARUKKAI CHABRIA |

PRIYA SARUKKAI CHABRIA

Priya Sarukkai Chabria is an award-winning poet, writer, translator and curator of eleven books that include four poetry collections, two SF novels, translations from Classical Tamil, literary nonfiction, a novel, and edited two poetry anthologies Winner, Muse India Translation Prize, Kitaab Experimental Story Award, Best Reads from Feminist Press and awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Literature by the Indian government. Residencies/ presentations include Writer’s Centre, Norwich, Sun Yat-sen International Writers Program, Guangzhou, Commonwealth Literature Conference, Innsbruck, Alphabet City, Canada, Frankfurt Book Fair, UCLA, JLF, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, etc. She has curated seminars for Sahitya Academi, Raza Foundation- PIC. Priya collaborates with photographers, dancers and filmmakers and channels Sanskrit aesthetics and Tamil Sangam poetics into her work. Anthologies publications include Another English Poems from Around the World, Asymptote, Consequence Forum, Kenyon Review, MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture, PEN International, Post Road, PR & TA, Reliquiae, South Asian Review, The British Journal of Literary Translation, The Literary Review(USA), The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction I &II, Voyages of Body and Soul etc. Founding Editor, Poetry at Sangam. Priya is on the Advisory Council of G100, India, and WrICE Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange, Australia. www.priyasarukkaichabria.com
Photo Credits: Madras Bloggers

Poet’s Reflections

It’s said when you’re in love, you see what you love everywhere, in everything. That happened to me.

In Dante’s Comedy I saw fantastic reflections of sacred Tamil songs that I’m immersed in translating. Phrases and parallels in the oeuvres and hagiographies of Karaikal Ammaiyar /Karaikal Pey (6 CE) and Manikkavachakar, whose ‘words are rubies’ (9 CE) fell like a spell to meshed over the later work.

Ammaiyar, Siva’s ‘demon’ devotee haunts hellish cremation grounds – wasn’t that like an Inferno setting?

Manikkavachakar, meets her, he looks to her as guide …like Virgil leading Dante…

Ammaiyar apparently climbed Mt. Kailash … which can be adroitly associated with Dante’s mountain in Purgatorio, place for purging sins.

Divine Siva Anbu/ Siva’s Love, Manikkavachakar’s spiritual heroine leads him towards grace in Thirukovaiyar/ Sacred Love Songs …like Beatrice does Dante in Paradiso amid a sky washed with stars.

Footnotes tend to be frowned upon in certain circles of poetry. This presumes either the reader’s familiarity with the text or arrogance to mine depths sans the throbbing world of contexts.

In subcontinental practice, commentarial notes are often incorporated into the text.

My poems, I decided, would be thick with annotations and asides, which a poet friend remarked, ‘works like a Mobius underside,’ swooping in and surfacing. I hope it works for you too.