Anamika (born 17 August 1961) is a contemporary Indian poet, social worker and novelist writing in Hindi, and a critic writing in English. My Typewriter Is My Piano is her collection of poems translated into English. She is known for her feminist poetry. She is the first and only female poet to have won the prize in the award’s 70-year history. She is currently teaching English Literature at a college affiliated with the University of Delhi.
In an exclusive interview with Nitish Raj; Editor-in-Chief, The Literary Mirror the celebrated poetess talks about poetry along with the true meaning of feminism.
Q.1: How tough is it to write two different forms of literature in the form of poetry and prose as an author?
Dr. Anamika: Capturing life in all hues and shades is a dream common to us all. Mimesis is the guiding principle of life. Even a child wishes to capture beautiful moments or whatever moves her on her first slate or drawing copy- a rising sun, a flying butterfly, a hit with a chimney on the mountain range. Even in later life, this instinct to document persists, but life gets tougher and more complex to capture at that stage, so we can’t keep capturing just the beautiful and the sublime. One is moved not only by the charming aspects of life but also shaken by the ugly aspects. Truth manifests through a delicate interplay of binaries- agony and ecstasy, personal and political, cosmic and commonplace, and to do justice to the multiple dimensions of truth, the mind acts sometimes like a multifocal camera and a sensitive earphone. This is the moment one creates or recreates. Creation is actually a sorting out of or a neat editing of the images and reverberations that lie jumbled up in deeper memory, both personal or genetic/evolutionary/ racial memory. Sometimes the irony of life flashes through a single, potent image just like lightning flashing amidst clouds. We call it Poetry. At times, it needs to be explored through characters in all kinds of situations bound together by an imagined storyline rooted in a particular locale. Here, the moral enquiry into life leads us to an imagined community, and we try to procure answers to our basic queries through these characters. This is how a novel or a story is created.
Discursive writing is the by-product of creation.
Q.2: What do you think about the losing charm of poetry amongst youngsters?
Dr. Anamika: Considering the fact that rap and other forms of popular poetry also fall within the range of poetry, we can’t really say that poetry has lost its charm. Serious poetry is like classical music or abstract painting. It has never aimed for a large audience or readership and has always known that the select few, the ‘sahriday’ alone will be drawn towards it to act as the coproducer of meaning and play out the Meer- Moorchana, the pregnant silences, the nuances of the implied meaning, thus forming a small community of friends , sensitive to the sublime aspects of life- love, death, compassion, justice and beauty.
Poetics offers you a stage for a dramatic interplay of the best that Ethics and Aesthetics have to offer. And it is interesting to note that even today, Archie’s and Hallmark cards are full of poetic messages or full-fledged poems fit for all kinds of occasions, seasonal greetings, and highlighting of bonds. Even today, Poetry Writing is one of the most popular courses both in Eastern and the Western Universities. Even today thousands of poetry contests and poetry readings are organised in institutions and even on the social media there are so many websites dedicated only to Poetry, poems of different languages across the world which people visit in moments of extreme agony or ecstasy, at moments when they lose a job, a friend or a parent or at moments when they fall in love and feel inclined to write poetry. Reading senior poets at that point of time becomes a kind of foreplay .As one enters into a deeper dialogue with the senior poets of the poetic tradition, one’s own memory is ignited and the right kind of mood is set in for one’s own expression. Hundreds of poetry videos floated on the social media every year bear a witness to this.
Q.3: There was a time when authors used to have a very rich academic background. These days we have seen students in schools and colleges proclaiming themselves as an author and poet. What are your thoughts on this?
Dr. Anamika: I am very happy about it. Linking the self to creativity is any day better than the tall claims of scholarship. Creativity dissolves one’s ego and trains one in the art of negative capability or parkayapravesh. Scholarship could underline one’s ego and block one’s vision , if one is not careful enough ,it could also kill the general humility towards life . We have had a good tradition of scholar- poets but then poets like Kabir , Bhakta poets and Sufi in general, had not known formal education: “ dhai akshar prem ka, padhe so pandit hoe”, said Kabir and he was so right.
Q.4: You had been the first and only female poet to receive the highly prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award. How much it has changed the outlook of the common masses towards female poets in India?
Dr. Anamika: Women, like plants, have a group identity .When you hurt a plant or you water it, the ripples of agony or ecstasy travel far and wide. I feel very moved when I see parents and teachers floating videos of girl poets on you tube. This only means that they no more consider women’s poetry a cry in the wilderness or a washing of the dirty linen in public .
Q.5: What are your thoughts on the true aspects of feminism when pseudo-feminism seems to overshadow it?
Dr. Anamika: Marx had once made a very astute observation on the vulgarization of mass movements . He had said that if you are trying to spread a particular message, you have to stop bothering about the distortion and vulgarization it would be subjected to when it starts going down the lanes. Vulgarisation is a part of the journey . The welcome part of the story is that the movement is up on toes and has gathered courage to speak to and speak through one and all. Only when you start walking on your own, your feet gather dirt and muck. Dirt and muck can easily be washed away at the later stage.
Pseudo feminists irritate, no doubt, but this irritation has a role to play. It creates debates and at the end of it the core message sets in all of us that for a society to flourish and thrive in harmony , both men and women must curb their excesses. Men must stop being hyper masculine macho men and women must cease to me hyper feminine Barbie dolls.
Q.6: What needs to be done to make poetry a way of life for the readers who are bereft of quality literature?
Dr. Anamika: Poetry as a way of life , the subtle and the sublime as a way of life, negative capability and Samyak drishti as a way of life – that’s the moot point. Poetry is a deep dialogue not only with your own self but also with the people around you. For a dialogue to be deep and meaningful, an intelligent interweaving of words, half words and pauses at the backdrop of that lush green patch of meditative silence is a must. This lush green patch of meditative silence is impossible to attain without the art of patient listening. Once you master the art of patient listening, ironies in and around you are played out large, and the tendency to boss over others subsides. You become the part of the larger whole and the larger whole becomes a part of you. That’s the ultimate that could happen in life.
Q.7: What would be your piece of advice to the young writers?
Dr. Anamika: ‘ishq ko dil mein de jagah Akbar,
Ilm se shayari nahin ati’
(Let love find a place in your heart,
Poetics is no guide to poetry)
