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International poetry Festival |
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The fifth Kritya 2010 Festival concentrated on the poetry of exile, trauma and survival. Trauma poetry therefore included experience of loss, rape, war, natural or circumstantial and other tragic and vulnerable situations that make use of poetry for catharsis. This would include poems dealing with insistent memory and using poetry for curative or therapeutic purposes to overcome trauma. In the final analysis the “minimal affirmation” endorsed by surviving under duress would bring back hope through poetry The known poets of exile all around the world who had assembled for the festival expressed exile in different individual terms. Indian poets who took part in this festival were Vivek Narayan, Prayag Shukla, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Agnishekhar, Tenzin Tsundue, Shyamala nair, Jayasree Ramakrishnan nair , Rati Saxena, Umesh Chand Chowhan,, Alka tyagi, Shailey, Bijay Kumar Shaw ( Nishant), Dushyant, Aruna Sharma , Amit Kalla, Prantik Banerjee. On the occasion an Art Workshop had been envisaged. This was a forum for art lovers, the world over to witness a visual extravaganza through the works of upcoming Indian artists. The art workshop opened simultaneously along with the poetry festival. The poetry & the environment inspired the artists and their works. “Labyrinth: self, nature and dreams” A film by Akash Gaur “At The Midnight Hour” by Samit Das “Breathing Without Air” by Kapilas Bhuyan Poetry Films by Sadho We are sincerely grateful to all our sponsors for the success that we achieved at our festival. The Poetry of Exile, Trauma and Survival ….and somehow, each of us will help the other live, The fifth Kritya 2010 Festival will concentrate on the poetry of exile, trauma and survival. The known poets of exile all around the world have expressed exile in different individual terms. The poetry of exile, here, as a concept has been stretched to include voluntary and involuntary exile not only from one’s land and life but emotional, spiritual, political, social, cultural, economic and similar contexts of the term. This would, therefore necessarily include diasporic poetry. Though politically exiled poets experience acute trauma in terms of being politically uprooted from a motherland, voluntary exile and diasporic poems also entail similar pain of displacement and loss of nativity. Trauma poetry therefore would include experience of loss, rape, war, natural or circumstantial and other tragic and vulnerable situations that make use of poetry for catharsis. This would include poems dealing with insistent memory and using poetry for curative or therapeutic purposes to overcome trauma. In the final analysis the “minimal affirmation” endorsed by surviving under duress would bring back hope through poetry. ( Presented By Dr. Shyamala Nair ) A different type of exile- As we announced earlier, Kritya 2010 will concentrate on the poetry of exile, trauma and survival. I am trying to understand the meaning of exile and invite readers to discuss this subject. Dante has explained this issue in very clear words: “. . . Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta “. . . You will leave everything you love most: Paradiso XVII: 55?60 Let me consider this feeling, leave everything you love most. I travel down memory lane. I remember the day when I asked my mother to give me permission to take part in a “Scouting Camp” in the neighbouring city, Udaipur. I was hardly 11 years old, and those were the days when girls had to live within lots of limitations. My mother happily gave me permission, and while I was leaving home, she gave me a few coins along with salt and chilly powder and said- I saw her eyes shining then. Though I could not understand her intention at that time, after so many years, when I reread this incident, I can feel the pain she experienced of losing the city, food, fruits and so many things of her own childhood. It can be strange for most of the people, but in the Indian tradition, girls have been the victims of exile, a social exile. There was a time when a girl married to a family located far away, was never allowed to return to her own family. In the course of time, society changed its ways, but at least 40% women in India still face the pain of social exile. My mother had to leave her parents? home in Madhya Pradesh and come and live in Rajasthan with my father’s family. The distance was considerable, and she could not regularly visit her own home. But she was always closer to her own home, her own childhood, and her own relations. She was in social exile, but ironically she was closer to everything she had to leave. I could understand mother’s pain, when I had to come to Kerala after marriage, leaving Rajasthan for ever. The vast sea reminds me of the desert and dunes every time. I remember those things more often, which I had never bothered about while living with them. This means that the situation of physical exile is just opposite to emotional exile. The more we go away from our roots, the closer we come to them. Indian philosopher-poets like Kabir have discussed the feeling of separation as an emotional bond to the Supreme Power. Does it mean separation or exile has another face, and that is faith and bond? Or what we can call LOVE? Separation makes us understand our own inner bonding to the emotions, relations and surroundings. Exile may be another way to go back to original love. I think that emotional separation is the most ancient and important feeling of exile. Rati Saxena ________
Albert Camus The term ‘exile’ translates into separation, anguish, dislocation, loneliness, anxiety, depression, fear and what not…. Taking this into account, exile need not necessarily be a physical break-off from everything one is familiar with, or comfortable with. The psychological impact exile from one’s own country and people can create has been much talked about and accepted. Exile is more traumatic at the purely mental level. You can be very much among the things you love and yet be an exile. You can be in your own country and yet be an exile. You can lie next to your beloved and still remain an exile. The mind is a very intriguing part of the human system. It can destroy your sense of complacency in a second, and bring back that complacency with equal speed. This veritable bundle of fleeting thoughts very often takes absolute control of you, dissociating you from everything around you, pushing you into the depths of despair, anxiety, fear and everything negative. However, the irony rests in the fact that very often this is a kind of willing surrender or yielding to situations fabricated by oneself. But most individuals fail to realize or refuse to see that they have landed in this quicksand that is their own creation. I am referring to the thousands and thousands of human beings who have forced themselves to live the lives of exiles. You come across them in society, among people close to you, and those you hear about. I wish to highlight this kind of mental exile as represented by some of the immortal characters in the Shakespearean canon. The themes of exile and banishment are important in many plays of Shakespeare. It can be convincingly said that the psychological and physical experience of the refugee is beautifully represented in his plays. The bard has also thrown much light on the effect exile has on these characters-some become revengeful and full of hate towards those responsible for their exile, some develop a resigned attitude, some decide on fighting for their land and some others opt for self-exile, consequent mostly on a feeling of guilt and assuming responsibility for the situation. Coming back to the issue of the exiled mind, one only needs to look at King Lear to realize with a shock how simple it is to impose self exile by one’s own impulsive action. The haughty and powerful old king who is a victim of his own foolish action and a representative of many such doting individuals in this world is an exile in his own kingdom. His mental exile and madness follows his action of banishing his favorite daughter, Cordelia for the simple reason that she couldn’t bring herself to be insincere to him. Thus he is responsible for initiating a sequence of tragic events, at the end of which he senses that his wits have begun to turn. An exile wandering the heath on a stormy night, it is pathetic to listen to Lear ask, “Where is this straw, my fellow? Yet another character in the Shakespearean repository that endures a traumatic isolation from her known world is Lady Macbeth. The outwardly authoritative figure comes across to us as a weak character at the mental level. Like Lear, she too forced herself into exile. Whether it was her wish to see her husband as king, or whether she cherished the title of queen, her heinous action brought forth the terrible outcomes. She appears to the audience as the very personification of cruelty who calls upon supernatural powers to unsex her so that she can commit the crime of killing King Duncan who had come as her guest, and was under her care. What more cruelty can one expect than what is portrayed in the words, “I have given suck, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, and dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this. ” I think my wife be honest and think she is not; Exile at both the physical and mental level is characterized by the feeling of inhabiting a strange world. The sights, sounds, experiences are all unnatural in the sense that they are different from what one is at home with. The Shakespearean figures pointed out here persuade one to think of the real reason for their tragedy. It all boils down to the mind-the mind can make or break an individual. As Camus stated, if each of us could successfully fight our negativities, not unleashing them into the world, this would have been a “brave new world.” It is the large scale influx of negative emotions and feelings that poisons and weakens the human mind, making it vulnerable. Weak minds cross the fine line that divides sanity and insanity and pass into a land of no return. They inhabit the twilight zone, an unreal world where they are totally dislocated with no scope of relocation. When the writer in literary exile can at least try to give expression to her innermost thoughts and feelings in a world that is totally foreign to her, what can such real life characters do? Unequipped with the skills of language and expression, they go round and round in a vortex of their own creation. Do they deserve our sympathy?
A story Behind curtain by Rati Saxena This is the evening of the 5th of February 2010, the curtain of the Poetry Festival Kritya 2010 has just been dropped and we are all together, but in a mixed mood. We have been blessed by the golden glows of the most powerful poetry expressed. We are all bound by a feeling of fulfillment and bliss. We are all ready to journey back to our nests. Though we come from different parts of India and even the world, speak different languages, are torchbearers of diverse cultures, we are bonded as though we are one. Israel’s Diti Ronen and Shyamla Nair from India are conversing as if they are long lost friends. I patiently tell them there are other people too from other places, to which Norway’s Bjorn smilingly replies, “They will talk until world’s Peace is resolved”. The young Tibetan, Tenzin Tsundue, had claimed at the beginning of the festival that he was Tibetan not Indian, but he changed his thinking pretty soon. He said, “I belong here, I cannot leave this country.” His pain hurt us also: “When I was born On your forehead I scrubbed and scrubbed, I am born refugee. Tenzin Tsundue Alicia Partnoy’s experience was not different from Tenzin’s, she had her own land, but it was snatched away from her. She said- “They booted my home land But she herself got energy from this pain “And yet That’s where it all began” In poetry, exile is not only from land, but even from life. Kabir Das has already said- “Rahane nahi des paraya he”, I don’t want to lie here, this place does not belong to me.” Zingonia of Italy created for us a distinct aura of exile “Birth: The small cry Every age arrives The most senior poet of Costa Rica, Osvaldo Sauma says- “do not fear Blessed with poetry we are like honeybees, a little tired but very fulfilled. In this journey we had poetry films from Sadho from Delhi, and from Odveig Klyve. These films gave a different angle to the whole idea of the festival. In another part of CIIL, talented young artists were giving colorful expressions on canvas to the poems that had captivated them, in an art camp organized by Pranjal Arts. Friends, this is a common issue for February and March as we are providing a lot of poetry to be read. You can read the very inspiring speech of our chief guest Mahesh Elkunchwar in the section ‘In the Name of Poetry’ and lose yourself in the timeless, beautiful poems of the Dalai Lama in “Our Masters.’ Besides, we offer a feast of poetry in our segment ‘Poetry in Our Time’–this time highlighting the poems of the poets who partook in the poetry festival. Rati Saxena |
Kritya
International Poetry Festival
he Festival was organised in collaboration with the CIIL, Mysore, which is a Central Government body for the promotion of languages.
