Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Volume XI | Issue 1
Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Founding Editor
Mrinalini Harchandrai and I wish you a very good 2023!
In this issue I go with requests by some of the Indian contributors to the international anthology Divining Dante from Recent Work Press, for which I was India Editor.
The anthology commemorates the 700th anniversary of the death of acclaimed Italian poet Dante Alighieri; it succeeds in showing how Dante’s masterwork, The Divine Comedy influenced the sensibilities of poets around the world. Paul Munden and Nessa O’Mahony, the editors, devised a brilliant scheme that pivoted around the number 7 and its multiples. 7 contributing poet-editors each commissioned 10 poets from their geographical regions to respond, making it 70 poets in all. A 70-word line limit was also set. The other poet-editors were Moria Egan (Italy), David Fenza (US), Paul Hetherington (Australia) and Alvin Pang (Singapore). Each poet was invited to contribute three poems that reflect on the three books of the Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. The result is a dazzlingly diverse anthology.
Dante wrote the Comedy in exile, after falling foul with the Papacy and his Florentine political rivals. It moves through scathing political satire in Inferno to his concerns for immediate political and religious reform in Purgatorio to divine enlightenment in his voyage to Paradiso. He rejected the Latin for the Florentine vernacular; and wrote in terza rima which has the rhyme scheme (aba, bcb, cdc, ded), a form Dante invented for written poetry, though it was probably earlier used in snatches by troubadours.
My choice of poets was largely driven by those who worked with history and mythology, and nurtured a strong sense of place, so crucial to Dante. I wondered how they would transpose the external and internal geographies of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradiso to an Indian context. How would each poet juggle with time, and the book’s arc from biting satire to graced journey? I wondered how close each would keep to the original, and how far they would wander.
In this selection, Medha Singh possibly references the Comedy most closely in her invigorating and inventive take; quite a feat this. Tabish Khair too directly references Dante, talking back to him with a mix of the quotidian (precisely measured), and satire, sadness and wisdom in terse poems of depth and resonance. Ranjit Hoskote’s fierce and buoyant triptych also skirts the Comedy, to acrobatically encompass a visionary circus of time’s games, plangent pointers to paintings and our dazed gaze, but not without a lining of grace. Smita Sahay had once mentioned to me that visiting the coal fields of Jharkhand was like slipping into the Inferno; her love story set here sears as it collapses into brimstone, flood and heartbreak. I thought Suhit Kelkar aka Suhit Bombaywala would riff on Jaina mythology which he was researching; instead he pulls out a delightfully tongue-in-cheek and formally accomplished poem on the Paradise Theater. Mamang Dai, I knew, would set her beautiful, lyrical poems in the folklore and eco sensitive culture of Arunachal Pradesh; I was again enchanted by her work, and anguished by what it sang about. From Mani Rao I imagined her offering would be spare, flaming and luminous poems–which they are–but didn’t expect the setting to be Kashi’s burning ghats; Mani’s work never fails to wound and heal. Vivek Narayanan, I thought, would weave incidents from the Ramayana; instead we receive the Mahabharata done with imagination and emotional power, moreover in terza rima; Vivek is the only Indian poet here to attempt this. I didn’t know quite what to expect from Irwin Allan Sealy except that whatever he contributed would be piercing, reflective and exceptional, which it is, as it moves through time and spaces of his life. My poems emerge from my translations of medieval Tamil sacred poetry; I found surprising correspondences between two poets there, a ‘demon’ devotee and another mystic poet who is our Dante stand-in.
You can get Divining Dante here: https://recentworkpress.com/product/divining-dante/
We thank Shane Strange, publisher and poet for permission to share this work, and for other marvelous titles from Recent Work Press.
Till the next issue I remain,
Priya at Poetry at Sangam
Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Pune
Founding Editor: Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Deputy Editor: Mrinalini Harchandrai
Poetry at Sangam is supported by art and cultural organisation Raza Foundation and Padmini Divakaran
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