Wednesday, April 11, 2012

On the Fringes: Marginalised Voices in English Literature

On the Fringes:
Marginalised Voices in English Literature
ISBN 978-81-7273-657-6

AuthorsPress, New Delhi
 Worldwide Circulation through Authorspress Global Network. The book is also available online on flipkart, infibeam, alibris,  amazon, snapdeal,  ebay, Southasiabooks and so on
First Published in 2012 by Authorspress, New Delhi-110  016


As stated in the Post-Colonial Studies Reader, “Literary Resistance (LR) . . . can be seen as a form of contractual understanding between the text and the reader . . . buttressed by a political and cultural aesthetic at work in the culture. And Resistance Literature (RL) . . . can be seen as that category of literary writing which emerges as an integral part of an organised struggle or resistance for national liberation.”

With both the categories of LR and RL as the backbone of the Postcolonial theory, we know that domination is the mother of resistance and the forces of power-play. Resistance is very much conditioned by those very socio-political forces that it seeks to challenge. The birth of the Post-Colonial theory, underlines two important points:
1) Domination and resistance are mutually interdependent;
2) The Will to Power is central to both.


The difference between LR and RL is subtle and important.  If Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak explores the issue of the “subaltern voice” in one of the foundational texts of Postcolonial Studies: “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and notes that any attempt to recover the voices, perspectives and subjectivities of the socially outcaste is heavily compromised. We also have Frantz Fanon and of course, Homi Bhabha who argue in favour of the pathos of ‘cultural confusion’ so that it can be used as a strategy of political subversion. Notions of the orient “Other” and European “Self” throughout the world- and questions of identity back home and the world over have been effectively tackled by writers like Bhisham Sahni, Shashi Tharoor, Amrinder Kaur, Taslima Nasreen, Manjushree Thapa, Mahasweta Devi and of course, writers of the Dalit literature in India.  Whether it be an analysis of Tawfiq Awwad or Mongane Serote, or our very own Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao, their writing put forth the marginalised subjectivity in literature. How far have the marginalised voices reached? Can they still not speak? Do other social/cultural theories offer a way out of this silence/confusion? How have the marginalised been portrayed in Literature? The present anthology On the Fringes: Marginalised Voices in English Literature attempts to explore such marginalize voices and the problem involved in crushing or establishing the “oppressive power structures”.  

From Bondages to Emancipation: Women in English Literature

From Bondages to Emancipation:
Women in English Literature
ISBN 978-81-7273-656-9


 Worldwide Circulation through Authorspress Global Network. The book is also available online on flipkart, infibeam, alibris,  amazon, snapdeal,  ebay, Southasiabooks and so on

First Published in 2012 by AUTHORSPRESSNew Delhi-110  016



ABOUT BOOK
For all we know, we inhabit the ‘postmodern’ society, where voices clash, react and converge only to split into a cacophonic harmony of new and emerging trends that influence lives as well as cultures. Yet, when it comes to the audibility of women’s voices in the amalgam of sounds, the volume is rather low---is it that they still do not have a voice?...or is it that they speak and we fail to hear them?
Working for women through various platforms gave us both these experiences and it was while ruminating on such issues, the idea of this book From Bondages to Emancipation: Women in English Literature germinated. The experiences of women reflected in literature and the myriad interpretations of those reflections by both men and women readers, seemed to be an interesting opening towards the unlocking of their urges and longings for emancipation through the media of pen and paper. Whether it be the discussion of literary theories or an analysis of literary characters, this book has made an effort to catalogue the power of women’s expressions---both reading and writing. This analysis purports to break the stereotypical belief systems that convince us that the burdens of power are too great to seek and the happiness of powerlessness is too great to leave. The prisons of predictions are broken through efforts that seek to enhance and glorify the individual destinies of women through literature.
If writing in one’s mothertongue can be alternatively deciphered as the continuatin of the idea of a female linguistic/literary heritage; a discussion of alternate models of sexuality seems to openly threaten the ideal of heteronormativism (the idea/belief that heterosexuality is the norm from which any sexual behaviour deviant is condemned as un-natural, immoral and “queer”.) In all forms there registers a strong sense of what Adrienne Rich called the “Lesbian Continuum”, which is nothing but an all-encompassing space wherein all relationships between women, sexual and non-sexual, find articulation and strength. Well, at all levels (and dealing with all forms of feminist articulations) the one thing that perpetually haunted our minds was the defining of women’s creativity as resistance and art...defining it so that the “newly found feminist” thinker in our women readers ( and to quiet an extent in the males as well) would not feel guilty...guilty of being a bad cook, guilty of being a bad mother...or the guilt of being a writer in the first place...when the vegetables were waiting to be washed in the kitchen! Writing is therapeutic, for the researcher as well as the author...and this volume aims to present in a coherent form the pressures of both various bondages  and resistance, both through a reading of the presented texts and their analysis...so that we might once again be able to possibly find a way to women’s voices...women’s emancipation! This was our attempt and we hope this volume turns out to be as such!!
Dr. Arvind M. Nawale

                                              -Dr. Sheeba Rakesh 

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Feminine Fragrance: Reflections on Women’s Writing in English


Feminine Fragrance: Reflections on Women’s Writing in English
ISBN 978-93-81030-28-8.

GNOSIS, New Delhi
Worldwide Circulation through Authorspress Global Network. The book is also available online on flipkart, infibeam, alibris,  amazon, snapdeal,  ebay, Southasiabooks and so on
First Published in 2012 by GNOSIS, New Delhi

Indian writing in English has been acclaimed around the world for its innovation, radical new approaches to the art of storytelling and reworking of language. While the older generation continues to produce literary masterworks, a newer generation of writing talent has emerged, ensuring that the fount of imagination in the country has not run dry. Women writers in India are moving forward with their strong and sure strides, matching the pace of the world. We see them bursting out in full bloom spreading their own individual fragrances. They are recognized for their originality, versatility and the indigenous flavor of the soil that they bring to their work. The works of women novelists in English mirror the exact realistic picture of contemporary world where innocence is suffocating in the ‘blood- dimmed tide’ of corruption, where women are supposed to be just a doll in the hands of men, where there is a prevailing sense of gender discrimination in an average house of India, where the helpless women have to bear the brunt of patriarchal domination.
One evident trait among all the contemporary women writers in Indian writing in English is the revolutionary spirit with which they strive to write. Indian women English writers have quietly and confidently gone about putting to shape their literary endeavors letting the product do the talking, which it has done most eloquently, establishing Indian English Literature as an inextricable part of Indian literature. Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy, Nayantara Sahgal, Shobha De, Manju Kapur , Shashi Deshpande, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Bapsi Sidewa, Anjana Appachana, Sumathi Sudhakar, Suniti Namjoshi, Jhumpa Lahiri, Veena Paintal and Nargis Dalal have added new dimensions and depth to Indian fiction in English. In the exploration of the consciousness or the psychological state of human mind, Anita Desai has been appropriately compared to the powerful British fiction writer, Virginia Woolf. These women writers particularly shared experiences of Indian women in general and presented them into fictional form. Women’s inner-self, their agonies, their pleasures are better and more truly depicted by the women novelists. The reason may be the flowering of the educated women who began to feel an increasing urge to voice their feelings.
The present volume Feminine Fragrance: Reflections on Women’s Writing in English, is intended to focus on some of the latest perspectives on noted Indian Women Novelists. This volume comprising twenty-four scholarly papers offer a critical appraisal of some of the outstanding Indian women writers works and gives varied and analytic interpretation of their work. Above all the volume provides the whole critical and historical perspectives that have made it a commendable scholarly engagement. It marks a significant contribution to academic research on both women’s writing and Indian English literature.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

New Book Panorama of World Literature



Panorama of World Literature
ISBN 978-81-7273-653-8

AuthorsPress, New Delhi      

Worldwide Circulation through Authorspress Global Network. The book is also available online on flipkart, infibeam, alibris,  amazon, snapdeal,  ebay, Southasiabooks and so on
First Published in 2012.
Blurb
If World literature is the sum total of the whole thing ever written, we have to pact not only with an never-ending array of texts but also with a plethora of local histories and competing literary cultures, which may not have anything bordering on an overall history even if such a mass of literary bits and pieces could be mastered and presented.World literature refers to literature from all over the globe, including African literature, American literature, Arabic literature, Asian literature, Australasian literature, Caribbean Literature, English literature, European literature, Indian literature, Latin American literature, Persian literature, Russian literature and so on. Although anthologies on "World Literature" have often used the term to market a largely European canon, the past three decades have given rise to a much more expansive conception of literary interest and value. Recent books such as David Damrosch's What Is World Literature?, for instance, define world literature as a category of literary production, publication and circulation, rather than using the term evaluatively. A multitude of scholars wrote on writers across the World and contributed to bring out this anthology. Though it cannot present the entire treasure of World literature, it will become successful in archieving the desired goal of the research scholars.
The present anthology Panorama of World Literature puts together incisive and highly rated articles on almost all the important writers of literature across the world. It includes perceptive and analytical interpretations of literary scholars.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Global Responses to Literature in English ISBN 978-81-7273-652-1

 My New Book Global Responses to Literature in English with Dr. Amrendra Sharma, Dhofar University, Oman
ISBN 978-81-7273-652-1

Editors
Capt. Dr. Arvind M. Nawale
Department of English,Shivaji Mahavidyalaya, Udgir, Dist: Latur (M.S.) India
Dr. Amrendra K. Sharma
Department of Languages & Transaltion,Dhofar University,
 Salalah, Sultanate of Oman.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

New book Insights into Indian English Fiction and Drama


New book
Insights into Indian English Fiction and Drama
ISBN 978-81-921254-3-5

ACCESS, New Delhi
English literature is an established genre in India with about a 150 years’ history, and recently, along with the global migration of Indian people as the result of the economic liberalization, we see not only the domestic writers but also a great many NRI  writers publishing their work in their countries of residence. Their works are very useful in promoting the interest in and the understanding of Indian culture by English-speaking people. Indian English literature originated as a necessary outcome of the introduction of English education in India under colonial rule. In recent years it has attracted widespread interest, both in India and abroad. It is now recognized that Indian English literature is not only a part of Commonwealth literature, but also occupies a great significance in the World literature. Today, a number of Indian writers in English have contributed substantially to modern English literature.
It is generally agreed that the fiction and drama are the most suitable literary form for the exploration of experiences and ideas in the context of our time, and Indian English fiction and drama occupies its proper place in the World literature. There are critics and commentators in England and America who appreciate Indian English novels and dramas. Indian writers of fiction and drama discovered a whole new world. Indian English novelists and dramatists defined the area, and brought the Indo-Anglian novel and drama within hailing distance of the latest novels and dramas of the West. They established the suppositions, the manner, the concept of character, and the nature of the themes which were to give the Indian novel and drama its particular distinctiveness.

The present anthology puts together incisive and highly rated articles on almost all the important Indian novelists and dramatists in English. It goes on to include  perceptive and analytical articles on the renowned novelists and playwrights  such as Arundhati Roy, R.K Narayan, Salman Rushdie, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Arun Joshi, Arvind Adiga, Anita Desai, Makarand Paranjape, Shashi Despandey, Rohinton Mistry, Shobha De, Chetan Bhagat, Amitav Ghosh, Badal Sircar, Tendulkar, Indra Parthasarathy, Girish Karnad,  Mahesh Dattani, Mohan Rakesh and so on

Thursday, February 9, 2012

National Conference on Peace and Harmony in Literature held at Nehru College, Hubli during 7-8 Feb 2012

National Conference on 'Peace and Harmony in Literature' 
held at Nehru College, Hubli during 7-8 Feb 2012






Sunday, January 29, 2012

GCC Banglore International Conference on "Recent Trends in Literature: A Global perspective" 27-28 Jan 2012, Banglore


GCC Banglore International Conference on "Recent Trends in Literature: A Global perspective" 27-28 Jan 2011, Banglore



At releasing of first issue of Thematics Journal of Commomnwealth Literature, A Peer-Reviewed International journal, (ISSN 2250-3803) with Professor Dr Avadesh Kumar Singh, Dr Ashok Hunbadi (Dharwad University), Ramesh Chavhan (Chief Editor),  Prof. Dr D. T. Angedi (Chief Editor, Deccan International Peer-Reviewed Journal For English Literary Studies, )  , Dr. P. Kannan (Dharwad University) and Prof Dr Payel Dutta Chowdhary (GCC, Banglore)




Monday, December 19, 2011

A Literary Interview of Sharankumar Limbale


Dr. Sharankumar Limbale: A Dominant Literary Voice Striving for Liberty, Justice and Humanity for Dalits
A Literary Interview by Capt. Dr. Arvind Nawale

“Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar's thoughts and movements inspired me to write.  
 The pains and pangs of Indian Dalits are subjects of my literature. I stand for   human dignity. The world of oppressed is battlefield for me.”  
    - Sharankumar Limbale
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The Present interview is published in my book Nation with Discrimination, ISBN 978-81-921254-5-9, ACCESS, NEW DELHI

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Sharankumar Limbale (b. 1956), a well-known Dalit activist, writer, editor, critic and  author of 40 books is one among the most renowned Dalit voices in India. Most of his writings are in Marati and translated into English and other languages. At present, he is working as a Professor Regional Director (Pune Division) of the Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, Nashik. He is a good academician as well as a writer and he occupied so many positions till date. He is an illustrious writer and his writings mostly rest on the Dalit struggle and identity. He is known for his poetry, short stories and particularly for his master-piece, autobiography Akkarmashi (2004). His autobiography is written in Marati language and translated into Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Punjabi, Gujarathi, Malayalam languages. Anyhow, it caught the attention of the world especially after translated into English as The Outcaste by Santhosh Bhoomkar. He got many awards and won the wider acclaim from the public for his literary talents. His critical work Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Studies  (2004) is considered as a  most resource book on Dalit criticism. He is a member of many academic and cultural organizations and many scholars did and engaged in active research on his writings. He won prestigious 14 awards for his literary and social contribution. His other books include Udrek [poetry collection], Bahujan, Zund, Hindu, Upalya,[ novels] Dalit Brahman,[ short stories] Dalit Sahityache Saundarya Shastra[ criticism] and so on.
Email: sharankumarlimbale@yahoo.com
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AN: Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Please tell us a little about yourself. Who is true Sharankumar Limbale? Dr. Sharankumar Limbale, a Professor or Sharankumar Limbale a Dalit writer.  Which Limbale you love most?
SL: Sharankumar Limbale as an author. I love my writing because of it’s commitment to the movement and masses. I am writing for social change. It is my responsibility being an author and born as dalit. I am tightly fastened with expectons of downtroddens. I can’t survive witout masses. I am not human being but a living weapon. I am a war. My writig is a battlefield. It is my noble duty to write for dalits.

AN: Who/what made you want to write?
SL: Thoughts of Dr. Ambedkar and dalit movement inspired me to write. Atrocities against dalit made me to react. My writing is reaction against brutal and unhuman caste system. Equality, freedom, justice, democracy are streams of my blood. I never tolerate injustice against common man irrespective of his caste. I want to see a beautiful Nation without exploitation, corruption and atrocities. From thousands of years dalits are neglected. Now we are aware of our rights and power. Dalit literature is a manifesto of our movement. My life is part and parcel of dalit movement. Movement is MY LIFE.

AN: You are one of the major voices in Dalit literature. How Dr. Ambedkar’s writing and thoughts influenced on writer in you? Can you say about your journey as a Dalit writer?  Apart from Dr. Ambedkar, who else has made an impact on your writing?
SL: I am writing from my school days but it was an immitaion of high caste authors. It was not true feelings. I came in contact with dalit movement in my youth and I am changed totally. This change is new birth for me. It made me to march towards masses. But it is true the writing of Marathi progressive writers influenced me in my college days to think.

AN: What books have most influenced your life most?
SL: An Annihilation of Caste by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Golpeetha by Namdev Dhasal and Baluta by Daya Pawar. These books are search lights in my life.

AN: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
SL: I want to be an author. It was  my lovable dream. But dalit movement made me dalit writer. Now I can’t write imaginative, false and entertainment literature.

AN:  Will you please tell us something about your childhood memories? How was your parentage and bringing up all about? Is this background flowered writer in you?
SL: I have written my autobiography The Out Caste: Akkarmashi. It is published by oxford university press. Please see it. I have written everything in it. It is not an autobiography of a person but a social document of dalits. It is helpful to understand me as well as dalit community and its struggle.

AN: What inspired you to write your much acclaimed autobiography, The Outcaste?
SL: My different and defamed life story. Daya Pawar wrote his autobiography named Baluta and then Laxman Mane wrote his autobiography Upara. These two books are well received and debated. There was need to come forward and to continue this literary form. This was the beginning. I feel to place me on public front because my life has social meaning. It is the example of dalit community how they are harassed. I have written this book for social cause.

AN: How did you come up with the title The Outcaste?
SL: I, translator Santosh Bhoomkar and editor Mini Krishanan of this book decided the title. It is matched the original Akkarmashi.

AN: How your family helps in your writing,
SL: No.... no. they are uneducated. I took help from my friends. I had discussed with them when I was writing. This was beginning period. No one knows how to write and what to write a dalit autobiography. Daya Pawar was pathfinder. We followed him.

AN: How your family members react on your confessional mode of writing? Was there no disliking on your confessional mode?  For example- You described in your The Outcaste in very frank language how you are outcaste, your childhood where you and your fellow Dalits were brazen out with grinding poverty and hunger as well as rank inequity by high-caste Indians. You described bigoted incidents in your public school where you and other Dalit children were expected to accept leftover food from the high caste children. You also were not allowed to draw water from public wells. You had to wait for high caste people to draw the water for you and pour it into your hands or cups. You exposed about how Dalit women have been either beguiled or forced into sexual encounters with high caste men.  The high caste men, who think touching a Dalit might "pollute" them, never think themselves ‘polluted’ while raping a Dalit woman. What were reactions of your family and relatives after publication of book?
SL: At the first time of publication, I had been attacked by every one of my family and community. When my autobiography received and well debated I became a hero, then the resistance became normal.

AN: Is any distressing/embarrassing experience you faced after publication of The Outcaste?
SL: Before publishing the book only my villagers were known that I am an outcaste boy. Even today sometime I faced ill-treatment especially in marriage engagement of my children, but not in movement and social life.

AN: Are experiences depicted in your writing based on someone else you know, or events in your own life?
SL: Movement is person for me, friend for me, society for me, life for me and mother for me. I have depicted only the movement.

AN: Name few others that you feel supported you outside of family members.
SL: My friends. Suryanarayan Ransubhe, Nishikant Thakar, Laxman Gaikwad, N. M. Shinde, Hrishekesh Ayachit and others.

AN: Are you feeling optimistic about the possibilities for creating social change through your literary work? Do you think it’s important for writers to be socially active?
SL: Yes.

AN: What is your biggest struggle with your writing?
SL: Time is the biggest struggle.

AN: What are some of the unexpected and notable responses to your writings?
SL: The great writer Amaruta Pritam, Kamaleshwar, Rajendra Yadav, Ramnika Gupta, Alok Mukharjee, Arun Mukharjee, Hon. Sushilkumar Shinde, Ajit Kour are the persons who admired me always.

AN: You got many awards and won the wider acclaim from the public for your literary talents. That's really great! How have your life and/or your relationship with writing changed since such awards?
SL: No ...no. Awards are only recognitions. Awards can help to reach public at large but can’t change writing process. I am not writing for any awards. I am writing for social cause.

AN: With the growing translation of works by Dalit writers from various regional languages into English, Dalit literature is on the edge to attain a national and an international attendance as well as to masquerade a major defy to the traditional concepts of what forms literature and how we read it. What do you think about it?
SL: We have to understand caste system of India, and then we can understand dalit literature in true sense. But it is impossible for every reader. Literature is a mirror of society. One can understand the social structure of Indian society which is based on discrimination and inequality thorough dalit literature. No one can read dalit literature for the entertainment. It is a literature of social cause and for social change. Reader can know social reality about Indian dalits thorough dalit literature. One can take inspiration to struggle against injustice in his life. Dalit literature is a noble message to live and let live as human.

AN: What do you think of future of Dalit literature?
SL: Whenever there is caste system and inequality in society dalit literature will be there to defend human values.

AN: What do you think the future holds for a Dalit writer?
SL: We should think to rebuild beautiful and progressive India. We should work together to minimize the age-old gap between dalit and non dalits. We should prepare to ready for new changes because of globalization. We should talk on national problems. We should talk on population, unemployment and command man. We should talk on brotherhood and sisterhood.

AN: What aesthetic considerations should be taken into account in interpreting Dalit writing?
SL: I have explained in detail in my book Towards An Esthetics Of Dalit Literature published by Orient Longman.

AN: Is it appropriate to apply to Dalit literature, the criteria used in assessing the work of non-Dalit writers generally, and high-caste Hindu writers in particular?
SL: Why not? How can we compel literary critics to follow our parameters? One can use his criteria to assess dalit literature. It is another way to understand the dalit literature. It will help us to know other side of our literature and we should welcome our critics. This is the healthy way. We should welcome and appreciate our critics. It is the need to assess the dalit literature on base of art, but no one dare

AN: Your novel, Hindu translated from the Marathi into English, mirrors present-day conflicts in India and intensely demonstrates the negations within most individuals, their negotiations, densities  and the plight of women who suffer gender discrimination regardless of their caste. Please tell where did the seed for this novel come from and how did you develop it?
SL: I have written trilogy. Hindu is second novel in this trilogy. I want good translator to translate this trilogy.

AN: What kind of criticism you longs to have on your writing?
SL: Very welcoming, encouraging and supportive.

AN: What are you working on now? What can we expect soon?
SL: I am writing in Marathi. Only Marathi readers can read me soon.

AN: Thanks. Let your pen run and should keep on running for issues around you. All the best for your future literary ventures.


- Capt. Dr. Arvind Nawale

Friday, December 9, 2011

In and Around DDMC Kolkata Conference 5-6 Dec 2011


Chaired a session in National Conference held at DDMC Kolkata  during 5-6 Dec 2011


                    





Tuesday, November 29, 2011

At Amravati International Conf

Amravati International Conference held during 25-26 Nov 2011, releasing of my book' Poetry n Drama: texts n Context',  My talk in  the Plenary Session on 'Literature and Projection of Women as chairperson.


Releasing of book ' Indian English Poetry n Drama: Texts n Contexts' edited by me  at the hands of  Hon'ble Rajendra Gawai, Hon'ble Yeshe Bodhicitta (Australia), Hon'ble Dr. Sushma Yadav (IIPA, New Delhi),  Hon'ble Ganesh Thakur (Div. Commissioner, Amt), Dr. Bhojraj Chaudhari (Joint Director, Higher Education, Amt), Dr. Sudam Bhagat, Prof. Tayde


Chairing Plenary Session on 'Literature and Projection of Women'



Monday, November 14, 2011

Gopi K Kottoor: The Poetry of Emotion, Colour and Passion



Gopi K Kottoor: The Poetry of Emotion, Colour and Passion
Literary Interview by Capt. Dr. Arvind Nawale

“I feel that the process of poetry is like blood running in the body. The blood does its function.  Poetry, for which you are ordained, is doing its job all the while for you whether you are aware of it or not. I let it.  The poetry runs within, taking resources from all around and stirs it with emotions of all kinds. The poet is only the outlet, the medium. When the trigger comes, poetry bleeds.” -Gopi K Kottoor

*The Present interview is published in my book Global Responses to Literature in English, ISBN 978-81-7273-652-1, AuthorsPress, New Delhi
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GOPIKRISHNAN  KOTTOOR
Gopikrishnan Kottoor is a major contemporary voice, and  foremost  among Indian poets  presently writing  in  English . He is an award-winning poet, with the highest number of prizes and short lists featured in the All India Poetry Competitions of The Poetry Society (India)- British Council . His prizes include, The Special All India Poetry Prize-97, The Second All India Poetry Prize (General Category-97) both in the same year, and Commendation prizes (95,98). His poems have appeared in Orbis (UK), Ariel (University of Calgary), Toronto Review (Canada), Nth Position Online (UK), Arabesques (Africa), Plaza (Japan), The Illustrated Weekly Of India, Chandrabhaga, Indian Literature, Kavya Bharati, Lipi, Opinion, Kavi (India), and  various.  Anthologies in which his poetry has  appeared include  The Golden Jubilee Anthology of Post-Independence Poetry In English (National Book Trust, India), The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poetry In English (UK), Verse, Seattle (USA), Special Issue on Contemporary Indian Poetry in English, Give The Sea, Change, Fulcrum (USA) and various. Kottoor was visiting poet, Augsburg University, Germany, and India Guest at the University of Vienna (Austria), in 2004. His book Father, Wake Us In Passing, appeared in German as a Laufschrift Edition in 2004. He attended the MFA poetry program of the Texas State University,San Marcos, USA in 2000.  Poetry from his book ‘A Buchenwald Diary’ was listed as a prayer  in the book ‘Through Another Lens, Liquori Books, USA 2011. His Oeuvre includes novels, plays, children’s stories, literary reviews, lyrics for music, and transcreations. His latest collection of poems ‘ Victoria Terminus” appeared in 2011. Kottoor has published 9 books of poetry, 3 novels (the third in press),  2 plays, 2 transcreations , 1 childrens’ book, and edited, ‘ A New Book of Indian Poems In English’. He is the founder editor of  the poetry quarterly ‘ Poetry Chain’. His new book ‘Vrindavan, The Coloured Yolk  of Love’ will appear in 2012. Film scripts, short stories, a play, novels, a collection of juvenilia, and a new poetry collection are on the anvil. He regularly reviews poetry for The Hindu, Literary Supplement.

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AMN: Good morning, Mr. Kottoor. Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Do tell me something about yourself and how you came to be a poet, novelist and playwright.

GKK:  I was born in Trivandrum, in beautiful Kerala, which I guess has something mysteriously stinging my soul and connects me to poetry. The beauty of its inscapes and lake scapes, the lilies of the rivers and the fragrance of its greenery have something to do as well. In fact, in the first part of my recently published novel, Presumed Guilty, there is a lot of me, shaping into a poet. The lonely childhood, the meeting point with nature, grappling the texture and finesse of female flesh and beauty, is all me, shaping into a poet. The character was the medium.  Good you ask this question, and good I can open up this way.
I have been a poet, primarily, and a misfit perhaps, as all poets are, and sure, must be. This world is not a poet’s world! Keats was my great early influence, with his life, love for wine and desire for hemlock, his loves, his poetry, self-spite, and letters. When I caught TB at around 23 at Keats’s age, I didn’t quite think much about it because Keats was still strong on me. I felt that a true poet had to catch it anyway and secretly felt proud. Luckily there was a cure.  For long years I have remained a poet, a poet mostly and primarily, and have lived my life that way, with other influences as Allen Ginsberg both in my poetry and in  my life.
            I had my  first published my first poem in Youth Times (Bennett & Coleman), when 17. It was a love poem for a girl in school and went.,.. ‘ I remember you with the towery inflorescence of the mango flowers, and the caterpillar fruit of the mulberry’. Both the mango flowers and caterpillar fruit were of my home garden. It was Shiv.K. Kumar who first published me both in Youth Times and The Illustrated Weekly of India.  Thereafter Kamala Das used to give me centre page spreads often filling it with me in Youth Times. Those events helped me climb up. Gauri Deshpande published me in Opinion. Anees Jung introduced me in Quest.  The lives of poets that influenced me made me write my plays, ‘The Mask of Death’ on the dying days of Keats in Rome, and ‘Fire in The Soul’ on the life of the Nationalist poet Bharati. It is closeness to nature, and the haunt of childhood recreating the freshness of reminiscence that is involved in my first novel ‘A Bridge Over Karma’.  Presently I work in a senior capacity with The Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.

 AMN: When did you first start writing, what made you feel the need to express yourself in this way?

GKK : As I said, I was around 16, when it happened. I remember a time I gazed in awe at the kitchen boy next door who read out to me his poems beneath the champak in blossom by my home, that he hid away from his house lady who used to burn them. Poor boy. I haven’t heard of him after. I used to marvel how poetry used to be written, while studying in school. Then, before I knew it, and bull dozed into calf love by a girl to whom I haven’t ever spoken to, I started writing poems about her beauty. Then slowly, and painfully the themes changed. My father, who saw my scribbles, was elated, that his son was showing signs of becoming a poet, and waxed eloquent about me to his friends. It was he who salvaged all the early brittle stuff and printed them into my first book ‘Piccolo’ which meant, an Italian flute. The name was chosen by him after consulting the dictionary. I became what I am in poetry because of him. This I have acknowledged in     ‘Father, Wake Us in Passing’, which they say is a poem that’ll see me through, and I believe so too. It is a book that has brought forth tears all over the world wherever I read it.

AMN: I am reminded G.B.Shaw’s play Candida and concept of calf-love in it. But that’s a different case. Okay, Please tell me how did you "discover" poetry? At what age did the light bulb come on for you, and what poem/poet flipped the switch?

GKK: I have answered this already. From the time I started writing at about 16+ poetry became my passion. I would do nothing but write poetry, sleep poetry, dream poetry.  I filled notebook after notebook and wrote at least ten or fifteen poems daily. I have still preserved most of the notebooks. I still go back to them at times, and will go to them again after 60 when I retire. I find they can still lend me inspiration. After I started reading poetry, and it was poetry, poetry, poetry. I read every poet I came across, I read them deep. I waded through the various techniques the poets used to bring home the truths of their poems. Poets as Dylan Thomas, R S Thomas, Norman McCaig, Walt Whitman, Wordsworth, John Donne, (I like him really) Ivor Gurney, Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, W B Yeats, Robert Frost, mesmerized me. I hugged modern American Poetry entirely. I think I must have read at least a thousand poets. It includes Lorca, Yevtushenko, the Haiku masters (Basho), Mandelstam, Neruda, Heine, Vasko Popa, Sappho, Vidyapati etc. In India, I was bowled over by the love poetry of Pritish Nandy, and used to initially imitate his prose poems, but soon gave it up.   Of my first published poem, I have already made mention. Two poets who had a say in shaping my poetic career were, Shri T K Doraiswamy (Nakulan), the avant garde Tamil writer, and  Dr. Ayyappa Paniker, my English professor.


AMN: A few days back, I read your Victoria Terminus. A few months back, I have published one paper on it in my one of anthologies. The structure you’ve attained is mesmerizing. Each poem stands on its own; united as a collection; your pieces form powerfully personal coming-of-age story with a strong narrative bend. Did you write chronologically, or did you put together the poems after they were finished?

GKK: They were put together and are selections from nearly all my nine books of poetry.

AMN: Can you describe your poetry writing process?

GKK: It is difficult, but I’ll try. There is no single way that I adopt. At times, I find that I write after reading a book of poems that has moved me. It stirs the process in me and sets it in motion. I write and most often rewrite. Sometimes I rewrite so often that I lose my original poem. At times I am inspired to write down a complete poem. I feel that the most successful poems are the ones that have a lot of craft and mind going into the poem’s nuances. At times, a reading of my old notebooks helps to begin a poem afresh. Sometimes, it is a single line, with lines contemplated and following after, or else it is the whole poem. It has also happened that the germ of some poem lying unattended within for years suddenly becomes a strong urge within you to deliver it. One passion may trigger another. Well, it is all about  alpha waves, and there is no single way. To think of it, even a poetry competition can trigger an impulse to write. It happened to me. I turned a four line poem, called ‘The Coffin Maker’ in one of my note books into a prize winning entry at the All India Poetry Competitions.

AMN: What’s your editing process like? Do you craft one poem until it’s done, or do you have several works-in-progress in various stages of development?

GKK: As I said before, every time I edit a poem, I see a new dimension, a different world. The poem becomes a crystal globe for gazing into a future poem that holds the ideal, perfect poem. Many sacrifices may have to be made. Nowadays I work on my poems directly on the computer and save every draft in series. It helps. I can always go back to my originals, and look up the version I think I must see again.  It is common for me to have more than twenty to thirty versions of the same poem. I cannot be happy with the first version, unless of course I am certain, but that is really rare. Yes, it has happened often that after I think I have finished a poem, I still end up making more versions of it. Meanwhile I might have written other unrelated poems as well.

AMN: When do you write? Are you always composing in your head, or do you set aside certain chunks of time to work?

GKK I am basically an owl. I live by night. But these days I retire early. But nothing like night to me for all kinds of creation. No, I am not always consciously composing in my head.  I do not set aside time that way. I feel that the process of poetry is like blood running in the body. The blood does its function.  Poetry, for which you are ordained, is doing its job all the while for you whether you are aware of it or not. I let it.  The poetry runs within, taking resources from all around and stirs it with emotions of all kinds. The poet is only the outlet, the medium. When the trigger comes, poetry bleeds. Sometimes the poet in his frenzy at wanting to write his poem looks for it as for a drug, to help him return to himself. It thus works without and within. Essentially, when both without and within merge is born the consciousness of the poem.

AMN: You won the Philip McCormick scholarship of the Texas State University, Southwest Texas, USA and you were Poet-in-Residence in the University of Augsburg, Germany, on a sponsorship by the Indian Council Of Cultural Relations,(ICCR) in association with Tagore Centre, Berlin, Germany. You were also invited to read your transcreation of Puntanam at the University of Vienna, Austria. Did these experiences leave you with something that’s been especially useful in your other writing?

GKK: Yes, most parts of Father, Wake Us In Passing, were written and shaped in a Macintosh computer in the school lab in Texas, and in the plane shutting between America and India, and behind father’s prescription sheets while he lay in a coma in the hospital. ‘ A Buchenwald Diary’ grew from my visit to the Weimar concentration camps in East Germany. A poem from the book, ‘ Bread’  as I said  is  recited as a prayer by  Sister Benjamin Franklin, of the Adorers of The Blood of Christ , and published in her book  which includes poetry by  Internationally  eminent poets as well. So these experiences have been my priceless treasure in shaping and crystallizing my poetry to a great extent.

AMN: Do you have a specific writing style?

GKK: The synthesis of emotion, visual imagery, and colour, is important to me. As  I  have said in one of my recent review articles, I like to remember what Prof  P. Lal wrote to me to whom I had sent my MSS ‘ Milestones To The Sun’ when 24. He said  ‘Your poetry is exceptional. Indeed it is. Lyrical, evocative, memorable, suggestive, and poignant’. I guess this is what every true poet must aspire to be if he wants to write lasting poetry. Poetry, if it touches the heart, will live.  It can touch with emotion, colour, suggestion, and evocation. Best, to try and have poetry that is an infusion of them all.

AMN: What has sustained your relationship with poetry over the years?

GKK: Any form of sustenance is possible only with love and passion. So it is with poetry.

AMN: I read your short poem ‘Roses in Vrindavan’… ‘When roses fade/ Krishna/ again and again/ you come to my mind/ and make them bloom’. The poem appears to me a spontaneous and wonderful composition! How did you come across such a fascinating ideas? Where did the seed come from and how did you develop it?

GKK: It was a poem that began as a simple love poem. ‘Krishna’ was a later addition and incorporation into the Vrindavan sequence. The poem was a normal love poem to begin with.  But perhaps I was already Radha, though the Vrindavan concept had not yet materialized yet. But I now feel that without my conscious knowledge I was stepping in that direction- to write the Radha Krishna poems. The poem truly was my ‘first’ Radha Krishna poem, though I remained unaware. Thereafter out of a spontaneous feeling, I typed in   two or three poems into facebook in similar vein. By that time Vrindavan  had also waded in.  Then a few friends on facebook like Priti Aisola, Tikulli Tiku, Manu Dash,  and Prof  Subbarayudu became my  gopis, sort of, praising the poems. And the dam broke.

AMN: While you were writing, did you ever feel as if you were one of the characters? For example in ‘Roses in Vrindavan’, is Krishna projection of you?

GKK: Yes, I was Radha, most often, and occasionally, Radha turned to Krishna, because essentially Radha-Krishna is one, and without Radha, there is no Krishna. I guess, one essentially has to be Radha first as Krishna himself cannot otherwise be. She is the spring of the poetry of love that Krishna turns out to be.

AMN: You write poetry, fiction and drama. How do you handle these genres at a same time?  There’s often a talk about how the study of poetry can have a positive impact on the novelist and essayist. Could you share your thoughts regarding this? Also, what hurdles might a poet face when making the transition from poetry to essays and novel-length projects or dramas?

GKK: As I said, I do not compartmentalize.  My novels, my drama, they are all nurtured in poetry. Between Poetry and drama, there can be no separation. From poetry to novel and drama is no hurdle but a flow. The poet is essentially a dramatist; he lets emotions take on characterization. So Hamlet is a poet, so is Macbeth and Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s hands. Shakespeare, master poet, is naturally the king of drama. Every great novelist began as a poet sometime or the other. Well, poets when they write novels, write poetic novels.  The way I write my novels has been interpreted primarily as poetic. Sitakant Mahapatra says so in his introduction to ‘ A Bridge over Karma’ that it is a poet’s novel.  So did Jayanta  Mahapatra eulogize the novel, in one of his letters to me, after he had read the first few chapters  that I had sent to him. Of ‘Presumed Guilty’ my second novel, the poetical narrations have won special acclaim and mention in the reviews. Is not  Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man And The Sea’ great poetry?

AMN: How did you turn towards writing a novel?  Tell us briefly about your ‘ A Bridge over Karma’.

GKK: ‘A Bridge Over Karma’ was written over a period of around four years. That time, I was not tuned in to the PC yet, and so wrote down the entire novel by hand and revised it over and over again.  The basic inspiration was  our  partially    ruined ancestral  ‘Tharavad’  house near the  Pallana riverfront in Alleppey, Kerala,  with its teak broken wood stairs, leading up to an attic filled with sand and  with bats flying in through the dimly lit stained glass windows . The germ was the haunting effect of the house all  through my childhood days. We used to get there by steamboat and paddle canoes during vacations.  There were coconut trees all around as far as the eyes could see; and lagoons all around where lilies in their myriad hues grew and among which the delicious thighed frogs hid; the pink mukkutti and thetti flowers grew upon their banks. The house had snakes in the cupboards  that left eggs broken and skins shed among the books such as ‘ The Book of Knowledge ‘ in about ten volumes, which great grandfather had  brought from England; Upon the cracks on the  damp floors, termite mounds grew to around three to four feet. The people who lived in it were my ancestors who practiced untouchability to core detail. The novel presents a time when untouchable women were not allowed to cover their breasts, but would come to thresh the overflowing grain of the high castes. The house, along with a painting of my great great grandfather, who was known as the Tambran, or The Feudal Overlord inspired the book. Not only ghosts, but even houses inspire novels!  In many ways the house has also fostered my poetry. One of my recent poems ‘The Attic of the Gods’ draws inspiration from the bat infested attic of the house. Memories that haunt you never quite leave.  I have also posted the copy of the oil painting of great great grandfather who inspired ‘ A bridge over Karma’  on facebook.  

AMN:  How you turned toward drama. Tell briefly about your The Mask of Death and Fire in the Soul.

GKK: ‘The Mask of Death’ was born out of my unending passion for Keats. As I said, I caught TB around his age, but fortunately, cure was around. It was while attending the Civil services interview and medical examination that the Koch’s Lung diagnosis was confirmed. Keats haunted me. I learned about poetry’s need to be crafted and made perfect from Keats. One reason to write the book was to try and enter the poet with my imagination. I wrote the book with the help of his letters to Fanny Brawne, and by imagining how his home near the Spagna would be like. It was a challenge. The book grew on its own, I wrote it as a spontaneous flow completing the book in two weeks. Frankly, years later on a visit to the bedroom in Rome in the house where Keats died his agonizing death, I was fascinated, how close my imagination had taken me to his bedroom and its ceiling where the painted  yellow flowers were  ‘I feel the yellow flowers  already all over me’.  I wished to paint the ecstasy of his love, and the helplessness, and the agony of Keats’s dying. There are readers who think it is a masterpiece. Well, let it be.
‘Fire InThe Soul’  grew out of a reading of the life of Subramania Bharati. It is interesting that you raised the question of the author entering the character. It actually happened to me in the case of  ‘Fire In The Soul’.  I not only entered the character. I lived Bharati. All through the period I was mesmerized into believing that I was indeed Bharati in my previous birth. Bharati was not just imagination, He was turning real, I was soon turning into him. Now I am freed of him. I think you enter your characters, they turn real and possess you.  No wonder I felt that I could even have been Krishna in a previous birth. Sounds like sacrilege. Even to me. I think in a way all this is what Keats termed as  ‘ Negative Capability’.

AMN: You also wrote Wander from the Great Wide Wander Galaxy. What got you hooked on children’s writing?

GKK: Wander grew out of my stay in Navi Mumbai hills, in Belapur. There is a hill near the residence where I stayed which stirred my fantasy. The Vashi creek over which I used to commute daily gave me the idea of the celestial child falling into the   backwaters, and being rescued by the children.

AMN: There is  to your credit  the  translation/transcreation of  books like-Poonthanam's Jnanappana (Fountain of God), Kukoka's Rati Rahasya as (Love's Ecstasies). What makes a successful translation in your opinion?

GKK: A successful translation must attempt to close in on the original, without losing the boundaries of its spirit. A transcreation attempts that. I do not think that it is possible to do a cent percent transfer job from one language to another.  But some specialists do a really good job.

AMN:  Which is your masterpiece?

GKK: I think it is better to ask what it is that I like to be remembered by. Victoria Terminus is  a collection that contains poems I wish to preserve. It contains Father, Wake Us in Passing, Mother Sonata, and individual poems that have received good ratings.  ‘A Buchenwald Diary’ is a personal favourite. It has also won rave reviews like ‘Father, and Mother Sonata’.
It has been said that  suffering and pain  is too much in my poetry The criticism I feel, is farfetched. It is suffering that moves the world. The greatest paintings such as ‘Guernica’ by Picasso and ‘The Crucifixion’ by Dali have all been about suffering.  If suffering and pain moves you in poetry or any work of art, it turns the personal to the universal and abides. To my critics, I suggest  that they also read ‘Vrindavan- The Coloured Yolk of love’ which is soon forthcoming as a book with 214 poems on the theme of Radha Krishna, which is  filled with colour, sensuousness, beauty and the ecstasy of love. Readers across the world have already rated it high. There are over a 2000  hits in less than six months for its online version. The readership simply seems to go on and on. It makes me feel happy. 

AMN: How do you like to be seen by your readers? As an English poet? Dramatist? Novelist? Or Children’s writer? Why?

GKK: I am known as a poet. In everything that I write my readers see poetry. Without poetry, perhaps I am nothing. It is not just written poetry. Poetry is like blood, like breath.   I guess, poetry begins and ends it all. I think it is my blessing and luck to be known and remembered the way I am.

AMN:  What kind of creative patterns, routines or rituals do you have?

GKK: No patterns, routines, or rituals.  I like to sleep a lot. I do not like to exercise. I like to read poetry all the time, and to listen to good music in whatever form. I would like to direct a film, if possible based on my forthcoming novel ‘Hill House’, partly again based on a true story, that draws on the life and murders of Bela Kiss.

AMN: Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name as influences?

GKK: Yes. So many.  They are not really influences, they are milestones to me. Keats, Ivor Gurney, Carol Ann Duffy, Sharon Olds, Heine, Edward Thomas,  John Donne,  Ernest Downson, Vidyapati, Sappho, Lorca, Swinburne, Neruda, Owen, Yeats, Larkin, Norman  McCaig, Douglas Dunn, Dylan Thomas, and many more have been milestones to me at some point or the other. I have learnt from them all, and still continue to learn.

AMN: Do you see writing as a career?

GKK: As I said, to me writing that has engaged me has been primarily poetry. It is to me a part of my life, like blood, like the beating heart.


AMN: What advice would you give to someone out there with a dream to write a book, but unsure whether to do it or not.

GKK:Go, sit where you think your alpha waves will rise and write it down.

AMN: What poetry books are next to your bedside table?  Why do you appreciate them?

GKK: Modern American, British and European Poetry. They fascinate and inspire me.

AMN: What are you reading right now?
GKK: These days my poetry reading is mainly online. I read the award winning pieces and enjoy them.

AMN: Can you share a little of your current work with us?
GKK: My new book, a crime-cum-romance fiction, Hill House will soon appear. A political satire, Empoeror Banana and The Sovereign Banana Republic will also be out. I am working on my new book of poems which will follow ‘ Vrindavan’- The Coloured Yolk of love’.  Other books include a play ‘ A Woman In Flames’ based on a true event of the 90’s in Mumbai involving a famous performing artiste.  I review poetry these days regularly for The Hindu Literary Supplement. I also want to put poetry chain back on wheels.
AMN: Lastly, do you have any advice for aspiring poets and writers of India?
GKK: Yes. I would strongly advise them to be passionately involved with their work- and to fear not to delete and start all over again. I would want freshers to read more and more poetry if they want to be poets, and not be satisfied to write dishonest poetry just to see their name in print. To remain cloistered, to publish in trash magazines and to pretend to yourself and to others that you are a recognized poet is easy.  But ask yourself if you are doing the right thing.  To be a poet is to have a lifelong commitment with words. It is hard work . You’ll know when you hit upon your own voice. Until then, keep writing. Don’t be in haste to publish trash in the name of poetry in red light magazines and to join gray groups that will ultimately get you nowhere. It is best to be honest, have patience, and suffer and write. And most of all read and enjoy poetry, classic and modern. It sure helps in moulding the poet in you and giving you direction... 

AMN: Who are your favourite Indian English poets?
GKK: I like the honesty, nuances, craft, and attention to detail of A K Ramanujan, Dom Moraes, and Arun Kolatkar. Some of the other seniors appear to often get lost in the maze of their narrative poetry and end up repetitive.  Among the younger ones, I haven’t seen any that have brought out a bright substantial corpus or, even a handful that remains in the memory after they are read,   though there might be individual poems by them.  This is a personal observation.  The young however seem focused on a lot of self -pushing these days, when they should be focusing their energies more on their poetry.  Who remembers a Bridges, Watkins, or Barker who were tall in their time, or reads them these days? Time has its own way with poets, and poets like Hopkins and Dickinson get ahead and stay. 

AMN: Thanks.. All the best for your future literary ventures.
GKK: Thank you, Mr. Nawale. It has been an interesting session with you
 - Capt. Dr. Arvind Nawale