Prof Asim Siddiqui delivers keynote address on Mahapatra at a national seminar

ALIGARH  : Professor Mohammad Asim Siddiqui delivered the keynote address at the National Seminar on “Poeming the World: Jayanta Mahapatra’s Contribution to Indian English Poetry”, organized by the Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Allahabad.

In his initial remarks, Prof Siddiqui remembered great names associated with the Department of English and mentioned, among others, the contribution of Firaq Gorakhpuri, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Prof. Amaranath Jha, Prof. S.C. Deb, Prof. P.E. Dustoor, Prof. A.K. Mehrotra and Prof. Neelum Saran Gaur. Referring to Prof. Susheel Kumar Sharma’s work as an English poet and that of some younger poets in the Department, he praised them for carrying forward the Department’s great tradition. He expressed happiness that the seminar was organized on poetry, a neglected but very important genre of literature.

He said that poetry requires a serious engagement, a particular kind of sensibility, a love for words and a certain amount of leisure to appreciate it.

In the history of English writings in India, poetry is an older genre than fiction and early Indian poets like Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, Rabindranath Tagore, Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu and Sri Aurobindo laid the ground for Indian English poetry. Often not given due credit, the poetry of the colonial period has been anthologized in many books. It is the generation of poets after the independence, led by Nissim Ezekiel, which included A.K. Ramanujan, R. Parthasarathy, Kamala Das, and Arun Kolatkar among others, which is usually considered worthy of critical attention. Jayanta Mahapatra, though their contemporary, started writing poetry late, at the age of 40, but soon caught up with other already established poets. Prof. Siddiqui talked at length about his collection of poems titled “A Rain of Rites” (1976), which presents many of his representative poems, and touched briefly on his Sahitya Akademi award-winning work “Relationship”.

Prof Siddiqui stated that the discovery of the absent context in the poem is of crucial significance. Reading poetry can be difficult but paradoxically teaching poetry can be easy thanks to the pedagogical significance of the method of close reading. On the other hand, in most cases reading fiction can be an easier task than teaching it, given the time constraints in our universities.

He said that context is always very important in Mahapatra’s poems.  The immediate context of Mahapatra’s poetry is full of cultural and religious richness. Hindu myths and rituals provide a framework for his poems in all his collections. Odisha’s temples and town, the ambience and atmosphere at many religious sites in Odisha are, however, treated with some irony in many poems in A Rain of Rites.

The mythical-historical consciousness of the poet interspersed with a tragic awareness of the course of history is also at work in most of his poems, especially in his collection “Relationship”.

He said that Mahapatra also appears alert to the contemporary reality of the exploitation of women, elusive gender justice and the oppressive patriarchal structure. Mahapatra often uses the modernist technique of montage in his poems where a poem consists of pictures capturing different scenes, he mentioned. He also highlighted silence as an important feature of Mahapatra’s poetry.

Rain also fascinates Mahapatra and it appears repeatedly in his poems as a symbol, motif and force.

Towards the end of his keynote address, Prof. Siddiqui mentioned the work of four professor poets from North India who also translated from Indian languages to English. The English poetry and translations of Prof. Sukrita Paul Kumar, Ranu Uniyal, Susheel Kumar Sharma and Sami Rafiq, though not inspired by Mahapatra, are certainly part of a tradition of Indian English poetry and the legacy bequeathed by Mahapatra.

Prof. K.G. Srivastava, former Vice Chancellor, University of Allahabad and the Chief Guest, talked about the role of language and read out his translations. A book of essays on Prof Susheel Kumar Sharma’s collection of poems “The Door is Half Open“, edited by Danielle Henson, was also released during the session.

Earlier, Prof Susheel Kumar Sharma, the Head of the Department, discussed the concept of the seminar and the Dean, Prof. Sanjoy Saxena talked briefly about Mahapatra.

Prof. Manoj Kumar, Convener of the seminar, welcomed the guests and Dr. Debashish Pati gave a vote of thanks.

The inaugural session was conducted by Dr. Sadaf Siddiqui, an Assistant Professor in the Department. Attended by a large number of participants, 170 papers in all, the plenary speakers included Prof. Srivani Biswas, Prof. Ranu Uniyal, Prof. Krishna Mohan Pandey, Prof. Priyadarshi Patnaik and Prof. Binod Mishra.