Contemporary Poets in Indian English-1
Art is beyond time and space. Poetry too, being an intense form of art, has no boundaries. Poetry in English is ennobled not only by those whose mother tongue is English but by people from many Commonwealth countries too,who acquired necessary skill in the use of English language and stood in the international arena by their own right as poets. Many Indians, right from Rabindranadh Tagore till date have contributed significantly to English Poetry. Creativity in poetry and related genres and the volume of production made the world recognize Indian English as a standard variety of English Language and the Indian literature in English as Indo-anglian Literature. There are so many reputed poets like Arabindo, R Prthasaradhy, Dom Moraes, Kamala Das, Michal Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Meena Kandasamy and many more who are not mentioned here as this article is not intended to be an exhaustive work but an overview of modern English Writing in India. I write here about one poet a day.
AK Ramanajan, from Mysore, writes about “A River” in Madurai, a city of Temples. The perennial river dries to a trickle in Summer bearing the ‘sand ribs’ and none notices it. But when there is flood, old poets as well as new poets sing praising the beauty of it. They do not bother about the devastation the flood caused in the first half an hour by washing away three village houses, one pregnant woman and two cows named Gopi and Brinda. It is ‘usual’ for them. The irony is that the names of the two cows are mentioned but not the name of the pregnant woman expecting twins. Thus this humane poet highlights the insensitivity of fellow poets towards fellow human beings.
