Meanwhile... an anthology of Bombay/Mumbai 'City Writing'
with ajay kumar & P. aranya
Note: this post is in 3 parts.
1
there are so many years in a single day. aeons live inside moments, only to emerge from their pupae as winged monarchs. this alchemy curdles in the mind of the poet. where else, dear reader? where else?
a single day in this empire feels like an era. considering the advancement of human technologies of control, the mere fact of our writing is a miracle. with what voice can a person sing paeans to power. or truth.
millenniums of data lie at our disposal today. every possible narrative exists. we bide our time in the lonely corridoors between the shelves of a an AI generated Library of Babel. even the news is a persistent illusion that strains long and hard under the weight of realities too toxic to process.
one feels as if one is living within a meme. the meme’s purpose is to multiply. the online etymology dictionary has this to say about the linguistic roots of the word:
“an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture," 1976, introduced by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene," coined by him from Greek sources, such as mimeisthai "to imitate" (see mime (n.)), and intended to echo gene.”
through multiplication, the meme circumvents spoken/written language. it could be argued, however, that even language grows more attuned to meaning through multiplication. this is a logic of cumulative aggregation. nevertheless it could both explain, and negate, the phenomenon of god. or beauty.
so then how does the artist create? how does the writer speak with the awareness of borrowed tongue? is there nothing ‘new’ anymore? if everything has been said, and speech has devolved into machiavellian rhetoric, why write poetry?
many young creative people have come up against this wall. many seasoned writers continue to negotiate it. daily. (poetry - daily: poetly). they find the new through repetition and creative plagiarism. our first poems are often imitations, are they not? of the poets we love, the poets who we hope would smile at our poems?
the only thing that arrests this cycle of self-doubt is the awareness of being carried towards some distant shore in the tumultuous current of the doomscroll. the notion that we have agency, as creative people, is flawed. we make art by accident.
perhaps, a poem could illustrate…
(this poem is part of a series of poems (first published in ASAP | Art), ‘Finding Nainsukh’. They were written as companion pieces to Amit Dutta’s Nainsukh. i share a couple of screenshots from the film below)
i throw poems into the ocean of history. little stones rippling the serene surface. how many lifetimes do you think the ocean needs to rise? how many artists must throw stones, for even an inch of revolution? each gilded surface glints like a prophecy. and when the sun rises, these stones sing, they shard into light as one.
a utopia, this. but a poet can dream no? how else to resist?
in a world that gaslights you every time you turn to it for explanation, remaking reality as dream is the only act of rebellion.
the deadline for poetry submissions for the anthology of city poetry (‘Meanwhile’) passed at the beginning of this month. i was truly overwhelmed by the response. i found solace in the presence of so many voices that are serious enough to labour lightly in their poetry. this, for me, betrays an evolving poetic imagination.
an old professor, a mentor whose ideas meant a lot to my young self, would often speak about the ‘collective evolution of thought’. i remembered him while reading some of the entries. it felt as if i was given access to the gleaming letters that archive the city, today. i laughed as i compared this little attempt to the spate of poetry anthologies that came out through the sixties and up till the present, points of rupture in a chaotic timeline of urban imagination. Dilip Chitre’s 1968 anthology of marathi poetry, for instance.
Call it confirmation bias, but the vision of fashioning a prism, through the written word - a prism that could refract the diverse shades of the mad city’s becoming - seems to have found its way into reality. already, one sees the harmony that curators seek. already, there are cross currents and dialogues between sets of poems. common themes emerge, and conversations that stitch the collection together. the language of the poems across submissions is present, infused with essence of myth, and history.
i’m sure the other poet who I have invited to judge the submissions will agree with me that the process of selection hasn’t been easy.
the poet, Ajay Kumar, is the external juror who is working with me to judge selections. please note the process of selection was blind, the juror was not given any information that identifies submissions with their authors.
briefly: In the first part of this post I outlined a pursuit of originality, or beauty. ajay is that ‘new’ voice, for me. some years ago, I read a poem of his that was published in an online literary journal. the idiom in which he wrote was so unfamiliar to me that i subconsciously labelled it avant-garde.
I reached out to him.
kumar’s writing is far from ‘obscure’. the ordinary (into which every day is folded) seeps through kumar’s poetry. epic themes trod past the phrases, leaving quiet footprints in a quicksand whose chaos is at once profoundly personal, and yet, devastatingly universal. Kumar’s poetry teaches the syntax of sensation, feeling, and emotion, with a power that draws me to his sensibility, his imagination. we have been exchanging notes ever since, and i count myself lucky to have learnt from a voice that is fresh, unassuming, and devoid of dogma.
i share below, a poem of his, from a debut collection, balancing acts, first published in e-book form by Yavanika Press.
Kumar is not a “Bombay poet”. but many of his poems do flirt with urbanity. i identify with the city of bombay, and i hope to bring this thematic as ‘deal-breaker’ while finalising the curation.
you could find his poems here: TBLM, Usawa, Rattle.
The reading period for poetry started at the beginning of this month. We hope to write back to all the poets who have submitted by the end of the next month.
Thankyou for your patience.
3
Seeing the poetry submissions that paid their tributes to Bombay city, I find that I cannot restrict the entries only to poetry. This part of today’s edition of the newsletter is thus the announcement of a fresh call. Please find details below. The theme remains the same (as you will see the language of the original call is mimed below), but the form changes.
Meanwhile…
A call for non-poetic forms
“Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and in this hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.”
― John Berger
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough”- Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro
"...As I play,
the city slowly reconstructs itself,
stone by numbered stone."- Arun Kolatkar, “Pi-Dog” (From Kala Ghoda Poems)
How does a writer negotiate the city? What does your city mean to you?
Leaf and sunset have given way to screen and concrete spire. Sometimes the city offers a way out. Sometimes it is a mirror, offering a way into ourselves. To the writer, the city is both muse and monster, lover and mentor. Artists locate themselves within the city, making apparent their relationship with people, places and shifting scripts of memory. In their unique experiences we find ourselves, and also, a language with which to speak about the world.
This language is fickle, incandescent, and always moving. It is hidden in the smell of ittar whose enterprise conjures up utopian escapes, or the taste of a bunt cook's coconut chutney sold off a makeshift kitchen on a cycle (not unlike Annapoorna’s “avalanche of idlis” in Kolatkar’s Kala Ghoda Poems); It settles sleepily in the fumes of 5.30 am chai to dunk bun maska in, a breakfast reserved only for daily wagers, outside Churchgate station. It surfaces in the marigold's orange under Dadar bridge, or as the touch of cold steel on the railing of the harbour line 7:12 am VT (CST) slow. It dreams in the silence of three black crows on an electric wire, and the city below bucking heaving moaning groaning honking brawling bawling screeching snarling breathing. It takes its afternoon nap in the folds of yellow curtains in middle class homes (a la Anjum Hasan) or tetrapods that keep the frothing sea at bay beside Marine Drive (tipping hat to Rushdie, and the Bombay poets). Like the musician’s attempt to find the most perfect pitch of every note in a raag – that unrolls as alaap (I borrow from Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar’s oft repeated definition of alaap, here), I imagine a writer searching for the poem with their tuning fork, remaking the city with their song.
The material city is characterised by a unique form of sociality, and differential and intertwined modes of living together. But the city is also constructed in the imagination. The emotional heft of poetic world-making comes alive in the body - it moves, and it feels (to reframe Brian Massumi), and it senses. Writing is the act that covers the distance from movement to feeling, and from sense to synaesthesia. A parallel trajectory emerges from material to emotion, and from place to people (invoking Gita Kapur’s landmark 1981 exhibition).
Various lines of conception diverge from this fertile creative place. How does writing become an act of placemaking? Who is the witness? How does the object of witnessing change the witness? How does the artist experience the city, and how much of the city lives in the artist’s experience? Most importantly… When the writer writes into the city, is the city a changed entity? How does the writer make the city through their writing?
Submissions are open for a collection of “Bombay?Mumbai City Writing”. we seek ‘non-poetic’ forms of writing including and beyond creative non-fiction, short fiction, ekphrasis, epistolary, story, vignette, personal essay, critical, and academic writing. Surprise us!
The field is vast, but is envisioned through one cross section that is critical to an archaeology of urban experience. I do not by this, mean to estrange the individual, to remove the person from the context. Quite the contrary. The line between consciousness, and that which is lived, is blurred, to open up new avenues of thought about “the social” and “the urban”, about “ways of living together” and “being-with-others”.
There is only one thematic box to tick – for this collection. Let the backdrop be of that Bombay/Mumbai, not any other city. The vision for this collection is to put together a series of “Contemporary Bombay/Mumbai City Writing”.
Parameters of curation will include the conceptual shadow of the “urban”, creativity in form, and how the writing makes the reader feel.
Submission Guidelines
Short fiction submissions: 2,000 - 5,000 words in length. (if your submission exceeds this limit, write in to poetly@pm.me with a short pitch of the idea)
Creative non-fiction, essays, critical writing, academic papers: 2000 - 8000 words in length
Send in your entries to the editor, Aranya - poetly@pm.me.
Please categorise your entry within the forms that have been listed above. If you feel your writing is not easily categorised within any set literary boundaries, please choose the form closest to the written piece. for eg. ‘short story’
The subject line of the email should indicate this categorisation. for eg. “short story submission for Meanwhile”, or “personal essay submission for Meanwhile”.
The format of submission is word document. If you’d like to share a pdf, please add the pdf, but make sure your submission contains a word document of the same as well. Entitle your submission, with no identifying markers. The document should have a name that indicates the content. for eg. Bombil fry.
Please follow this format to make it easier for jurors to access your work.
Submissions with no attachments (haha) will not be entertained.
Do not share your writing in the contents of the email itself.
You are not required to send a bio note. We will contact you regarding this, if your submission is selected
You could add a cover letter if you wish. This document allows us to get to know the authors better. It will not be used in the selection process, and will not be shared, publicly or otherwise, without the author’s consent.
The writing should be unpublished (Social media sharing is fine).
If the writing is selected, the copyright of the poems will remain with poets, but Poetly reserves first publishing rights, and subsequent citation.
At the moment we cannot pay contributors, but we are seeking funds.
The last date for submission is August 7th 2024.
We look forward to reading your work.
Feel free to write in (to poetly@pm.me) with any questions, queries, or comments. We will write back as soon as we find the space, and the time.
If you like what you read, do consider ‘buying me a coffee’.
I wish to confirm that you are seeking submissions for ONLY the city of Bombay/Mumbai? Thank you.