Vibrant voices

“While the poets of the 60s and 70s question their assigned role as women,the poets of the 90s move away from a strident and aggressive tone of assertion,” says Anju Makhija who along with E V Ramakrishnan has edited the anthology titled We Speak in Changing Languages; Indian Women Poets 1990-2007 which was launched at the Crossword Bookstore in Juhu on Friday. “They are concerned with communicating the problems of living in a complex society riddled with consumerism,culture industry and glaring social inequalities.”

The 21 poets in the anthology are from different states,cultures and schools of thought. Thus for a poet like Jane Bhandari,her forte lies in the acute details of her descriptions and the reminiscent tone of her memories. “When I was young my grandmother would pack cheese sandwiches,send us out and tell us not to come back till tea time. I don’t think that’s possible now.” It’s these shining memories that translate into her poems like Catching Crayfish.

On the other hand,poets like Marilyn Noronha and Menka Shivdasani have a more meditative tone and wax eloquent about the internal journey of their lives. “For me,poetry is a way of making sense of who I am and what I’m doing in the scheme of life,” says Marilyn Noronha.

Sampurna Chatterjee’s poetry is one of experimentation. “The ‘I’ in my poem is a shape-shifter. It is as malleable as I chose to make it. Thus I speak with varied voices ranging from that of my mother,a man or an estranged observer.”

Each poet in the anthology has a distinct style,tone and voice. Their poetry addresses a wide spectrum of topics from creativity to communalism. Poetry,it is said,is a mirror of the times we live in,in which case,the poems in this anthology are indicative of a complex,altering world in which the poets are united by the common experience not of being women,but of being Indians.

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