Source : The Times of India
KOCHI: Poetry today lacks the capacity to dissent, feels senior journalist and poet C P Surendran whose new collection of poems ‘Available Light’ is set for release.
Surendran had published his first collection of poems titled ‘Posthumous Poems’ 17 years ago and went on to publish three more critically-acclaimed collections.
“Last week, I read a poem which was given Forward Poetry Prize. It was too abstruse. Poetry has become something that is not communicable to the crowd. It is no longer amenable to being of help to you in an emergency,” Surendran said.
He also slammed Indian publishing houses for reviewing literary work through a political framework in which dissent has been formatted, which in turn has led to the ‘gentrification’ of dissent. “If a monster can’t talk in literature then where would he talk? In a political forum, he can’t. People are looking for a format. The word is under siege not only from the mannerly, Left-oriented secular-minded “good people” but also from certain sections of the social media. All you need is a group and four lines there,” said Surendran. Surendran’s new collection of poems will explore several unsavory characters such as Ilse Koch, a Nazi who was accused of making lampshades with the skin of Jewish prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp, in his title poem, Available Light.
The new book will have 120 of his new poems and also 250 of his previously published poems.
