Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Smita Sahay served as Associate Editor for ‘Veils, Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women’. Her works have appeared in national and international journals, newspapers and anthologies. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Usawa Literary Review, and the Poetry Editor for SPEAK, the Magazine. A visiting faculty of Creative Writing at Whistling Woods International, Mumbai, she is often examining her experience of growing up across mining towns in Jharkhand, India in her writings.
Of the numerous hells that exist in our world the underground fires of the Jharia coal mines, often referred to as ‘inferno’, remind me the most of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The uncertain lives of miners, their perilous occupation, their families, births, weddings, mythology, folksongs constitute a universe of their own, far removed from what others perceive as reality. The landscape, unreal, treacherous and violated, is home to innumerable tragedies, often overlooked, often erased. The three poems in the trilogy ‘The coal miner of Jharia’ attempt to tell the story of a miner who loves, loses and hopes, while around him are events unleashed by mining companies, the government, and the landscape.
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