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      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
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      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
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      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
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“North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence”

Ananya .S. Guha


To discuss poetry written in North East India is an enormity of tasks. Firstly, to share commonalities from the different matrixes and cultures of the region; secondly, to pin point the major themes of the poets writing in different languages invested as they are with stark realities. However, if we posit a reductionist theory of their poetry, discovering only the violence that is prevalent in their poetry and the attendant brutalization of society we will be doing grave injustice to a body of work kneaded by cohesiveness, lyricism and a well ordered world of sanity. To complement this there also exists a group of English poets who share the Romanticism and mythopoeic vision of their vernacular counterparts.

These give to these poets a universal coherence, not an inchoate disorderliness, a world view where love matters; love in its many sided dimensions touching on immutable relationships. In many cases the love for the land and the love of intense relationship coalesce into vastness of images. These poets are imagistic, Romanticists; cannot forget their hills and valleys and the intrinsic beauties of their land now sullied and tarnished.

North East Indian poetry has a remarkable whole, and is marked by the kind of tension which generates all great poetry; it may be at one level the poetry of violence, of torpidity and fear but it is also the poetry of searching, soul searching for peace.

Among the poets who write in English there is the remarkable expression of mythology and folk-tales, whether in the poetry of Robin. S. Ngangom, Desmond. L. Kharmawphlang, Temsula Ao or Mamang Dai. The search for the past is no escapism; it is a hiatus, gripping and painful, between past and present. The myth of Nohkalikai for example pervades the bi-lingual poetry of the poets in Shillong. Even in Robin. S. Ngangom’s poetry there are such typical and mythological allusions- he has been living in Shillong for the last thirty years or so; but is originally of Manipuri descent.

There are two distinct categories of English poets in the region; some are domiciled there like Robin. S. Ngangom, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Mamang Dai, Mona Zote, Nini Lungalang, Janica Pariat and Temsula Ao, while others such as: Anjum Hasan Nabina Das, Nitoo Das, Trisha Bora and Aruni Kashyap live outside the region.

However, where does one begin in a discussion or poetry in North East India written in a wide spectrum of languages: Assamese, Manipuri, Khasi, Kokborok, Bodo etc.? How does one classify them into a genre of poetry, or is there an urgency to do so? Often considered a homogeneous unit, North East India spells ‘notoriety’ of heterogeneity. We have Manipuri poets, writing in the Bengali dominated Barak Valley of Assam, for example.

Where is the ‘peace’ then we talked about? Is it in the hills, rivers and lakes or in the mountainous terrain of this beautiful part of the country? Landscaping the past and the present is a recurrent theme of these poets; images embedded in the natural landscape, there is quiescence and peace there, an antidote for all ills, suffering and violence.

Yet fears, ghostly apparitions and shadows are omnipresent. Thangjam Ibopishak the Manipuri poet says:

 

“… Volcano… you cannot erupt

Volcano, stay asleep…

Lava remain slumbering…”

(“Volcano You Cannot Erupt”)

Similarly in his trenchant poem “I Want to Be Killed by an Indian Bullet” there is layered irony but also rejection of the ideology of violence.

When Mamang Dai breaks into rapturous delight, there is peace in bewilderment:

“I hear the bewildered

cry of a deer

floating on the

waves of moonlight.”

(“Moonlight”)

Desmond. L. Kharmawphlang makes the myth of folklore an archetypal and enduring vision:

“I became a folktale…

I became a proverb…

I became a riddle.”

(“Last Night I dreamed”)

Dreams, visions enter the mindscape like haunting motifs and recurrently, obsessively. This is evident in Chandrakanta Murasingh’s ‘ancient’ love narrative: “The Stone Speaks in the Forest”. There is a myth-making capacity in this poem of a “golden deer” and a “broken heart”.

In Saratchand Thiyam’s poem: “Sister” there is a frantic plea:

 

“This rain has not yet let up

Don’t go out yet, sister…

Haven’t you heard this

Sound…

Don’t you go at all.”

There is a predominating fear of violence, but at the end of the poem there is restoration of peace and equanimity. So long as ‘sister’ is safe; then there is peace.

The celebrated Assamese poet Harekrishna Deka, a former police officer, knows the story of violence and bullets only too well:

“… After dipping in

Blood the nightlong

How ruddy the

Morning she would

Be.”

(“Dawning”)

Yet, Kynpham. S. Nongkynrih who predominantly writes in English can envision the prophylactic of love in the midst of ethnic conflict:

“Beloved Sundori,

Yesterday one of my people

Killed one of your people…

 

Through a fearful breeze

Please let your window open...”

(“Sundori”)

When Temsula Ao speaks lyrically in her poem: “Stone-People From Lungterok” there is an animated discovery and re-definition of the past. Past is history:

“Lungterok, The six stones

Where the progenitors

And forebears

Of the stone-people

Were born

Out of the womb

Of the earth.”

 

Poetry written in North East India can be analysed against the backdrop of ethnic violence and militancy/militarism, but it transcends such immediacy into an ideal world bereft of suffering:

“… When you leave

Your native hills

I can only speak

of lost times,

and of sorrow and blood.”

(“When You Do Not Return”, Robin S. Ngangom)

These “lost times” are the halcyon days of past. They are juxtaposed with “sorrow and blood” in almost a violent and forceful imagery. But the ‘lost times’ bring peace to the mind as a token of immutable love.

The North East Indian poets have an ambivalence, towards militarism, love for the land, ethnicity etc. but these are transcended into love: love for woman, love for the hills, ravines and deep gorges, precipitated by gushing waterfalls; in short love for the land. They are able to transmute the chaotic into the subliminal. That is, in the final analysis, the poetry of peace; out of disorderliness, an orderliness. Politics and love complement each other with lyrical utterances. The public and private voices mingle into rhapsody:

“You are very pretty,

Barak river!

… Barak river; when

your waters soothe

the fiery heat,

the desert smiles

quietly.”

(“Barak River You Are Beautiful”, Ilabanta Yumnam)

Disquiet transmuted into quiet. Beatific

(All references in this article are to Dancing Earth; Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2009)

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  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • Media Coverages
    • Copyright Notice
    • VerseVille Blog
  • Submissions
    • Poetry and Essays Guidelines
    • Book Review Guidelines
    • Research Series Guidelines
  • Masthead
  • Editions
    • 2011 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XIV November 2011
    • 2012 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XV March 2012
      • ISSUE-XVI July 2012
      • ISSUE-XVII November 2012
    • 2013 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XVIII April 2013
      • ISSUE XIX November 2013
    • 2014 Issues >
      • ISSUE XX May 2014
    • 2015 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXI February 2015
      • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • 2016 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIII August 2016
      • Poetry From Ireland ISSUE XXIV December 2016
    • 2017 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXV August 2017
      • ISSUE XXVI December 2017
    • 2018 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXVII July 2018
      • ISSUE XXVIII November 2018
    • 2019 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIX July 2019
    • 2020 ISSUES >
      • Issue XXX February 2020
      • ISSUE XXXI December 2020
  • Collaborations
    • Macedonian Collaboration
    • Collaboration with Dutch Foundation for Literature
  • Interviews
  • Prose on Poetry and Poets
    • 2010-2013 >
      • Sylvia Plath by Dr. Nidhi Mehta >
        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-2(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-3(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-4(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-5(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-6(Sylvia Plath)
      • Prose Poems of Tagore by Dr. Bina Biswas >
        • Chapter-1(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-2(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-3(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-4(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-5(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-6(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-7(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-8(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-9(Rabindranath Tagore)
      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 2(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions