"People said to the tanks, We are leaving westward
People said to the snowfall, We are going far away..
..People said to the trees by the road side
We are going nowhere, Nobody asks them if you come back?"
S. Joseph, on Russo- Ukraine War, 2022, translated from Malayalam
“Why does modern Malayalam poetry lack global outreach? Why is it confined to a niche local audience?” asks S Joseph, who founded Emerging Poetry, a platform for modern Malayalam poetry, in June 2022, along with poets Kalathara Gopan and Babu Sacaria. Dismayed by the futility of war in modern times, Joseph wrote the anti-war poem in Malayalam and translated it into English.
At its second meeting, in September, in Fort Kochi, the former HOD of Malayalam at Maharaja’s College, announced the setting up of a website - Emerging poetry.com- and reiterated one of the reasons to form the platform was, “modern poetry in Kerala survives in splintered subsets like Women, Dalit, Eco poetry, gay writings and such. New global stimuli like the pandemic and the current Russo-Ukraine War, affects all because of globalization. Emerging Poetry is an umbrella that seeks all poets in its shade.”
Though post - modern Malayalam poetry was formed during 1990s it faces challenges of “micro-politics,” lack of good translation, promotion and a platform like other cultural forms-art, music, theatre, film- have.
“One of the aims of the group is to introduce contemporary Malayalam poetry to Indian readers through English translation, as also Indian poetry to Malayalam readers through English/Malayalam translations. We wish to explore the potential for such an exchange at an international level, through English translation,” says Joseph disclosing that renowned poets like K Satchidanandan, A.J Thomas, E V Ramakrishnan, M R Renu Kumar, Nisha Narayanan and N G Unnikrishnan and many others from Malayalam, Jayanth Parmar from Gujarat, Noarem Bidyasagar from Manipur have already committed their support to the group and sent in their contributions for the website that’s being developed.
Dalit poets like M R Renukumar and MB Manoj, tribal poets Dhanya Vengachery and Sukumaran Chaligadha too are part of the group just as women poets like Vijayalakshmi, V M Girija, Ammu Deepa, Vidya Poovanchery and Chithira Kusuman are.
As the website is a work in progress, poets have offered to collect poems from other States of India and share their poems.
Many from the group have been publishing their works online on FB.
Micro-politics in Modern Malayalam poetry
Speaking about the “micro-politics” among the modern Malayalam poets, he says, that though it is poetry, it offers no solution to the politics. “There is the Dalit poet, the feminist, the LGBT voice, the elite male poet, the elite women poet, the gay political writer, so on and so forth. These subsets give importance to a group not the individual. The Dalit poet is always a Dalit, the woman poet is always a woman. The identity of a poet becomes secondary.”
“Human beings can stay in their genres but must go beyond their genres. Because poetry is written for the unknown reader too,” says Joseph.
As example he speaks of the domination of the elite class male poet, whose identity was never questioned. Elite class women poets such as Balamaniamma and Sugathakumari, were not considered as women poets but poets who are equal to Vallathol or Ayyappapaniker. As a result of feminist movement, these elite class women poets become women poets. They came down from the higher caste level to ground level but the revolutionary male poets who belonged to elite class, remained pure poets. The higher-class women poets gave up their so-called position and became women poets. But the male poets remained elite. The women were marginalized.
“So, I say we are all poets. Either Dalit, tribal or woman, we are poets,” he said.
The fathers of Modern Malayalam poetry like Kadamanitta Ramachandran, Prof. D VinayChandran, Balachander Chullikaad and K. Sachitanandan broke away from the traditional style of using the regular metre, highly Sanskritised idiom and stock imagery. Joseph looks ahead at more experimentation. “The strength of emerging poetry is in its experimentation. We experiment in form rather than content. Linear story telling is rejected. Form is the base of our concept and its themes are irrationally rational,” he says, adding “we are not against metre. But most of the metres in Malayalam cannot be applied in contemporary poems due to their old forms and rhythms. If the poets can create new rhythms and metres, we will appreciate them. Folk tunes are important to us just as the symbols are but not in the mystic perspective.”
The scope of Translation
The group has brought on board translators keen to join them, like Ravi Sankar, Radha Gomathy, Binu Karunakaran and P J Binoy. Babu Sacaria at the event said, “translators are not motivated because of a lack of inspiring modern poetry.”
Translation also faces the problems of conveying the right sensation, “especially true of tribal poetry,” because of limited vocabulary.
“Oral tradition was more powerful because it had the component of gestures,” says T M Shihab, a poet present at the meeting. He cited the example of A Ayappan, a modern poet whose powerful prose poems could be sung.
Poetry and painting
Another idea the group is toying with is to “visualize poetry with painting canvas,” an idea that Joseph shared earlier with different universities on his lecture tours. “I know poetry is important to artists, we relate with each other.”
Other topics discussed at the meeting were of starting a poetry festival in the lines of the Kochi Muziris Biennale and expanding the outreach of Malayalam poetry and of tribal poetry through good translations.
Poet Dhanya Vengachery who writes in Tullu and Ms. Sumi Joy , HOD of Malayalam, Maharaja’s College were present at the meeting along with 20-odds poets. The book, Mele Kavulu on the unnatural death of a tribal Madhu, in Attappady was released.
“We relate poetry with the life of people and would like all modern poets writing in Malayalam to come under one umbrella. The only politics I believe in is of poetry,” says Joseph