Mihir Vatsa talks to Usha Akella about his chapbook, Wingman, the scene of poetry publishing in India, and the necessity of FIVE.
Read a poem from the chapbook |
USHA AKELLA
|
I'll start by a very obvious first question. Why Wingman as a title? You've specifically anchored the collection to this poem.
|
MIHIR VATSA
|
I knew I wanted Wingman as the title. I liked the sound of it - still do. But there was this brief period, I admit, during which I also tried a longer, more complex-sounding title. It was a half-hearted effort. I was quite relieved when Ishita picked Wingman, and not the other one, to put
on the cover. The poems in Wingman were written during a period of transition. The first book was out. I was no longer a student. I also had a taste of a foreign country. I was working a job. You could say that I was taking my baby steps into the “real world”. In keeping with the spirit of change, I was also trying for my poems to be different from the ones that I had written before. In retrospect, I think I may have tried a bit too hard… And failed. I kept returning to my people, kept returning to my Delhi/Hazaribagh existence, and I kept returning to the relationships that I had forged in the process. So when the time to compile the manuscript arrived, the collection for me was essentially a bunch of failures. That despite my conscious urge to be different, write different, live different, I was writing about the same things. Like the opening line of the poem - I’ve heard you are falling in love / again - I was falling in love with the same damn things. Again. |
USHA AKELLA
|
For me, the best part of your work is when you collide the intangible with the tangible or use tangibles to convey something suggestive. For example: raindrops lonely in a closet, leaves adopting patience, road blocked by an anthology of memoirs… Is this use deliberate or a happy accident of the creative process?
|
MIHIR VATSA
|
Thank you, I am glad you noticed. They are deliberate, mostly, but at times also accidental. It’s like working in a mine. I know I am looking for coal and that I must extract it through the day, but once it is done and I am on my way back, shiny flakes of unexpected mica stick under my shoes and I unwittingly bring them home.
|
USHA AKELLA
|
As the co-inventor of FIVE, you have (along with Nandini) earmarked poetry publishing in India with the concept. Why did FIVE become such a necessity? What message does it send out? How else can poets find their voice in a climate of elitism, and big-publisher politics.
|
MIHIR VATSA
|
Nandini and I were inspired by this marvelous publication called New Generation African Poets. It is a set of eight poetry chapbooks and we wanted to replicate it. I was personally thrilled to see the emergence of a new format in poetry publishing, which sprouted from a non-white milieu like ours, and there was a sort of kinship which we immediately felt with it.
Through FIVE, we wanted to accomplish two things. The first was to create a space for constructive criticism among participating poets. The importance of the critique is massively unrealised in our country, and many of us still feel personally attacked by good-intentioned criticism. Nandini and I were wary of the trite charade of appreciation which we saw around us, and through FIVE, we wanted to change that. We also knew that none of us were trained in the discipline of workshopping, so we had to leave concerns like publication credits, seniority, what-will-they-think-of-me aside and work from the same level. The second thing we wanted to do was bring the intangible solidarities which we exchange on social media and elsewhere to a very tangible end. In an environment where we are increasingly being divided along idiotic lines, FIVE was an effort to remind ourselves that we should get to work. And we should get to work together. Empathy doesn’t emanate by merely writing the word down. It is realised when diverging ideas are negotiated with to create something beautiful. When we exchanged mails, when we expressed disagreements, when we put our belief in each other’s work, we ceased to be poets and were humans again. Our vulnerabilities were for everyone to see. We allowed each other to look into our darkness and we allowed each other to illuminate it. This was precisely the kind of solidarity which Nandini and I had hoped to grow through FIVE. Elitism is real. We are all a part of it. Networking is also real. When I had started writing, I was encouraged by poets on Facebook who were way senior to me. Their contribution has been immense. It will always be, and I can never forget their kindness. I say it from experience that we, who wish for this kind of engagement, need to be persistent in asking for feedback. And, if you write good poetry, readers of good poetry will find you. I fanboy any no-nonsense poet who is attentive to their work, despite the distractions of “maintaining visibility”, “being in the scene”, “having a presence”. A vacuum also exists now, and it is of the loss of the editor-poet relationship, something which today sounds almost mythical. In the absence of a designated editor, your alternative editor may be a full time History professor, or a call-centre executive. They may be a marketing professional, or a medical representative. You need to respect their time; send reminders if they take longer to reply. Big publishing houses… well, they could certainly print more titles. Their apparent apathy towards poetry, along with the unique nature of our project, was one of the reasons why we decided not to approach a major publishing house for FIVE and to publish it ourselves. Still there are a few heroes who publish poetry: CopperCoin, Poetrywala/Paperwall, Writers’ Workshop, i write imprint, Almost Island - they keep poetry in circulation and we are thankful to them. |
USHA AKELLA
|
What's really bothering you about Indian poetry publishing? It seems established on the Western industry of publishing - readings, retreats, festival circuits, university readings, contests. In some sense it is forcing the landmarks on a poet's career even while opening up avenues like never before. Are there native cultural expressions of promoting poetry we are losing?
|
MIHIR VATSA
|
I wish commercial publishers would give our young poets a chance at publication. And when I say young, I really do mean young. 18-30.
Start a young poets series, commission some work, appoint a guest editor, print less copies but print nonetheless. Stop thinking that young means immature - to think that is to deny the youth its merit. Stop waiting for your poets to turn forty or fifty so you could print the same old collecteds, selecteds, and the new and selecteds. There are so many institutions for poetry in India today, so many awards too: Srinivas Rayaprol, Toto Funds the Arts, Raedleaf, The Great Indian Poetry Collective’s Emerging Poet Award. Even if you don’t do anything, you have at least four to five poets winning these prizes every year. They are hard-working, they are ambitious, they are the archivists of our present - their work needs to be published when it is relevant. I do appreciate it when a major publishing house brings out a work by an established poet as a token gesture of keeping poetry alive, but we must understand that every poetic generation writes reality differently, especially the young, and we need to hear their stories before they are forced into believing that poetry doesn’t matter after all. That would be a shame. The cloud around writing and publishing, yes, the readings, festivals, retreats - I think along with being western (which I don’t think is a problem), they are also very urban (which I do think is a problem). There is an inherent urbanity to Indian poetry in English which is tough to liquefy across our smaller towns. Partly because the language’s relationship with the city is quite tight in India. Our centres are rigid - Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore - and of course small towns or villages are for retreats. These are also the venues where poets meet, where events take place, email IDs are exchanged, friend requests are sent. There is a sociology to it. Publishing houses are in the cities. Good universities are in the cities. Infrastructural support is in the cities. It depends on the poet, then, how they treat these landmarks. Personally, I love university readings because they give me the chance to talk to students. I had a poetry reading at the university here in Hazaribagh and I was both surprised and delighted by the response. Maybe Indian poetry in English is not that tier-1 urban after all! Native cultural expressions. This is a good one, and a bit tough to articulate too. Poetry has always had a connection with the ritual. We turn to poetry to mark an event, sometimes personal and sometimes public. For me, the cultural expression of poetry in English has been the typed word, which can then be read aloud, uploaded, or shared through email. Very academic and structured too - school to college. Criticism to practice. File to submission. Quite uptight. I dare say this culture is what I have also made native to me - I don’t know any different. On the other hand, when I think of poetry in Hazaribagh or Madhubani, and poetry which is not the written text but exists purely as memory, a practice, I am able to appreciate it for its connection with the society at large. For example, at the mundan of my cousin a few years ago, the women in the house suddenly broke into a song. The little boy’s maternal uncle was to arrive shortly, so the ladies, in the spirit of a banter, made a caricature of the him in the song. The figure of the uncle was reduced to this clownish man who didn’t wash his face, who never had money, who was a miser. When the uncle arrived, he grinned sheepishly at the mockery, playing his part, and when the song was over, everyone went about their work. Now this is a stock song, which is sung at all mundan ceremonies across Mithila by the women in the house, and yet the uncle’s surrendering smile was enough to say that he identified with it and reacted to it. I miss exactly these kinds of expressions in English poetry in India. This playfulness. I think there is a lot of interiority to it right now, it is still a function of the individual. It still feels the need to announce itself as poetry, to exist on the page; unlike the poetry of our vernacular languages, which, besides the interiority and besides also existing on the page, has managed to emerge as the poetry of community, memory, familiality. To put it differently, for every rhyming and succinct "बुरी नज़र वाले तू ज़हर खाले" at the back of a truck, we have only hit the level of a bored "horn OK please" or "dad's gift". We will reach there, eventually. |
USHA AKELLA
MIHIR VATSA
|
Back to your poetry - what are your own aspirations as a poet? What kind of a poet do you hope to be? Are you there yet?
I suspect that when I am older, I will become a localist.
The title poem, “Wingman”, was inspired by the migration of birds to Hazaribagh Lake in winter. The last poem, “Poem for a Future Breakup”, was inspired by the dry Siwane river which semi-circles the town. Hazaribagh is a significant part of me. I am invested in studying its history, its landscape, its transition from an aging hill station to an imminent full blown city. The railway has arrived. The airport will too, someday. I’ve begun to view this change, this “development”, through my own aging, and I want to observe the unfolding of this town in relation to my own unfolding in this country. Some experiences I write into poetry. As a poet, I want to do justice to the truth of these experiences. And like everyone else, I want for my poems to be read. I want to be rooted, I want to be relevant, I want to be critical and informed. I want to be able to tell when the weather will turn. I want to be on the top of the ivory tower for gratification but I also want to have enough sense in me to climb down afterwards. I am ambitious in the way that I wish to create such a strong memory of Hazaribagh that it becomes impossible to separate me from the town. Like Sappho of Lesbos, Mihir of Hazaribagh. The 21st century bard, who likes dog memes. This is what I am aiming for. Am I there yet? Ah, I wish I knew. |
*