Writers K. Satchidanandan, Anjum Hasan on words as weapons of hope

Among the many events planned for their 20th anniversary, Toto Funds the Arts had organised Words Matter, to celebrate creative writing. On the occasion, winners of the TOTO Award for Creative Writing in English and Kannada, Aparna Chivukula and Dadapeer Jyman respectively, gave selected readings of their work.

The evening also saw poet K. Satchidanandan and novelist Anjum Hasan engage in a discussion which traversed the role of poetry and language in the areas of modernism, democracy and creativity. Their talk traversed large swathes of the literary landscape which included the likes Sartre and Camus as well as Kabir and Akka Mahadevi.

Anjum: Since you have been associated with poetry in so many capacities — as a poet, translator, editor, listener — I would like to talk about the idea of bad poetry. How do we use our judgement to discern?

Satchidanandan: All of us have different ways of understanding, appreciating and judging poetry. It is difficult to remain fresh with the abundance of writing that is now found, courtesy of the cyberspace opening up. Advancing on a blank page is the most difficult challenge any young poet faces, especially as there are very few blank pages left to be filled or over written. It is extremely hard for new poet to fill a page with meaning, relevance or freshness.

I look for works which produce a sense of wonder in me. It could be the product of many things — the way you engage with language, how you produce images or find apt words for your experience and the way in which you fill the blank spaces with meaning because I believe poetry to speaks not only through words, but also through silences and that’s what makes it different from other kinds of writing.

The concept of good poetry keeps changing, just as the concept of poetry itself keeps changing. These are some of the qualities I generally look for when I read a new poet.

Anjum: We need a shared sense of what is good and bad, a shared sense of standards to operate in any kind of context. Yet, how do we navigate through the overwhelming number of contexts that we have? How do you connect that reality of context to your own journey as a poet?

Satchidanandan: When I started, something new was beginning to happen across Indian languages. The Navodaya movement saw new kinds of novels, short stories and poetry being written in most of Indian languages. A new avant garde was beginning to appear in contexts, largely to challenge the father figures of poetry in these languages.

It was the Tagore syndrome in Bengali, Vallathol and Bharatiyar in Malayalam and Tamil — metaphysics, romance, patriotism and an elevated element of mysticism were evident in their work. We want it to renew the language or create a new kind of poetry in a language which was more contemporary, which spoke of our own personal experiences as well as the social experiences of those times.

It was our duty to challenge the established norms and notions of poetry in the ways in which it was conceived or written. The fight for freedom was a matter of pride, but it also brought a lot of despair because Gandhian values were being fast abandoned by the new leadership. Our dreams of an egalitarian and casteless India was not being fulfilled and felt as if we were regressing.

As poets, we had to express that kind of hopelessness without losing our hope within, despite being dismissed as spoilt children who were unaware of the classics. We were looking for like-minded people, someone who would motivate us and create a new language of speaking through images.

Anjum: Poetry is seen as something that’s breaking with tradition. Modernists were able to recognise the contemporary moment and seize the day. American writer Susan Sontag had said the 60s were one of the few eras completely free of nostalgia. You began in that period and are now still very involved with the poetry scene in an era that is quite removed from the modernist era. How does one respond to the old in the present moment, how does it compare to the modernists?

Satchidanandan: The history of poetry has moments of break and moments of continuity. During that period when you are breaking with tradition trying to create something new, you feel completely disenchanted with the past, which is necessary at that point of time. But gradually, you begin to grow and then you go back and read the older poets, and perhaps even try to revive them at some point.

This happens across all languages and genres; you go back after a break. You develop a sense of respect, reverence and understand that they too, were trying to address some of the issues of their generation and that was their reason for creating that kind of poetry.

During the lockdown, I was translating the Bhakti poets and found Kabir talking to me. Though he was addressing his contemporaries, in today’s atmosphere of extreme hatred, jingoism and narrow mindedness, Kabir was telling me what spirituality really is. I find the voices of poets such as Basava, Akka Mahadevi and Mira truly contemporary.

Modernism to me, is not a product of a particular time, but perhaps the ability to talk to generations. Modernity is an inherent quality that is within poetry and is not something you create. It is something that has the ability to sustain itself and makes you think about what’s happening around you as well as what is happening to you.

Anjum: U R Ananthamurthy said if you emphasise on diversity in India, you notice there is an underlying unity. But if you insist on unity, then immediately fissures start to show. How did it come across to you, especially in relation to pan-India poetry and emerging movements in poetry?

Satchidanandan: It is an extremely meaningful paradox and a dialectical way of understanding Indian literature. At a time when the emphasis is on all things singular, I stand for diversity, which is sometimes misunderstood. During the freedom struggle, we stood together even though we belonged to different walks of life — diversity is not an enemy of unity.

Diversity is the underlying source of the richness of Indian culture, without reducing it to singularity. Destroying this plurality destroys the very core of our culture. More than an understanding of unity, it was an understanding of diversity that I got by being involved in literature from across borders. Though there were differences in style and tone, the creative minds of the time were speaking about a country that they would love to create; there was an aspirational unity rather than an existing one that belonged to the future

A nation is not something already out there; it is always in the making. Democracy is the process through which invisible sections of people become visible, and we begin to hear the voices we have never heard before. Democracy is a process, a nation is a process. They are not a final product, they are aspirational.

Anjum: On the topic of silence, when we are giving the voiceless a voice versus the silence of those who should’ve spoken up or expressed outrage but didn’t, what is the role of quietness? As an artiste, would you choose solitude or solidarity? Can one have both?

Satchidanandan: This is a challenge writers have always faced. You can be a silent collaborator or a silent opponent. You can make your voice heard as a poet and not as a politician or using an overpoweringly loud voice. But how does one remain a poet even when you oppose? This is more of an ethical question than a political one and broadly speaking, it is taking a stand against violence. The writer’s resistance is ultimately against violence and it has always been so — only that the form of violence has changed. It could be violence against women, against a community, against free speech.

Through the ages, writers have in their own ways identified violence, and by doing so, opposed it. Poetry is one of those ‘pointing fingers’ that turn your attention to violence and awaken the conscience of people to change society.

That ethical vision is one of the fundamental missions of poetry. It was so in the past and it will be so in the future, for long as violence exists. Violence is ultimately violence against the human spirit — against the spirit of freedom.

One cannot isolate ethics from aesthetics. Pure unblemished beauty exists only where there is a fundamental moral sense, for man is a moral or spiritual being.

Anjum: The fascinating thing about poetry is that it is often very easy to tell whether a poet has a moral core or if a work is just superficially beautiful. It may not come with a moral lesson, but will come with a moral stance.

Satchidanandan: When you read a poem, you know where you stand — with the forces of violence or with the forces of peace, of unity, of democracy, of life itself.