Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Volume I | Issue 5
In August, by a happy happenstance, we present the work of four poets who seek the ineffable even as they unpeel the everyday and quest on: poems by Changming Yuan and Yahia Lababidi and Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded in Ranjit Hoskote’s translations.
Both Changming Yuan and Yahia Lababidi who live in North America, are Pushcart prize nominees, their work is translated in many languages.
Changming Yuan’s work is influenced by Buddhist philosophy and his version of chen meditation. The exploration of inner realities in terms of light and darkness is a recurrent theme in his thought and poetry – which is deceptively simple in the manner of the wise. ‘For me,’ he says, ‘every reading (of the same work) is a new poem. Each time (my poem) is read, it may look more like a monster’s mouth, a dream vision, a meeting line between sea and coast, or a limbo between hell and heaven, depending upon the reader’s frame of mind’ – which reflects as much the Buddhist law of impermanence as his avowal of the landscapes of individual vitalities.
Yahia Lababidi writes from the intersects of where seeking the Beloved meets The Arab Spring as philosophy, the inhabited memory of books and faith in the human spirit to triumph over disharmony is viscerally dragged through the live moment. ‘It is not enough to bear witness to Now; journalists, to an extent, do that,’ he states. ‘Poetry lends us a third (metaphysical) eye, one that collapses distances, at once reminding us of our essential selves and who we can become. This vision provides more insight than mere sight.’ Yahia Lababidi polished verses pulse to the call of the luminous as he examines – and equally demands that we eviscerate – the immediate with understanding so that we shed our amnesia to recall our true nature.
Ranjit Hoskote is as much an enchanting translator as essayist and poet. His pared, ruminated translations of the Kashmir Saivite mystic Lal Ded resonate with courage – stanch to the idea of the mystic as rebel – to touch her star-strewn visions and divinations of the self in the world. In an excerpt from the lucent introductory essay from his book, I, Lalla, he writes, ‘Revelation comes to Lalla like a moon flowering in dark water. Her symbols and allegories can be cryptic, and yet the candour of her poems moves us deeply, viscerally.’ Then there are the poems.
Quest on.