Writers K. Satchidanandan, Anjum Hasan on words as weapons of hope

Writers K. Satchidanandan, Anjum Hasan on words as weapons of hope

Among the many events planned for their 20th anniversary, Toto Funds the Arts had organised Words Matter, to celebrate creative writing. On the occasion, winners of the TOTO Award for Creative Writing in English and Kannada, Aparna Chivukula and Dadapeer Jyman respectively, gave selected readings of their work.

The evening also saw poet K. Satchidanandan and novelist Anjum Hasan engage in a discussion which traversed the role of poetry and language in the areas of modernism, democracy and creativity. Their talk traversed large swathes of the literary landscape which included the likes Sartre and Camus as well as Kabir and Akka Mahadevi.

Anjum: Since you have been associated with poetry in so many capacities — as a poet, translator, editor, listener — I would like to talk about the idea of bad poetry. How do we use our judgement to discern?

Satchidanandan: All of us have different ways of understanding, appreciating and judging poetry. It is difficult to remain fresh with the abundance of writing that is now found, courtesy of the cyberspace opening up. Advancing on a blank page is the most difficult challenge any young poet faces, especially as there are very few blank pages left to be filled or over written. It is extremely hard for new poet to fill a page with meaning, relevance or freshness.

I look for works which produce a sense of wonder in me. It could be the product of many things — the way you engage with language, how you produce images or find apt words for your experience and the way in which you fill the blank spaces with meaning because I believe poetry to speaks not only through words, but also through silences and that’s what makes it different from other kinds of writing.

The concept of good poetry keeps changing, just as the concept of poetry itself keeps changing. These are some of the qualities I generally look for when I read a new poet.

Anjum: We need a shared sense of what is good and bad, a shared sense of standards to operate in any kind of context. Yet, how do we navigate through the overwhelming number of contexts that we have? How do you connect that reality of context to your own journey as a poet?