Got (good) poetry?

Passing this on, courtesy Sridala Swami:

The inaugural Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize.

The Prize was instituted by the Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English and is being administered jointly by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. The prize consisting of a cash award of Rs.10, 000 and a citation will be presented annually at a literary event in Hyderabad in the month of October. The entries will be judged by a distinguished jury of poets and literary personalities.

Entries are invited from any Indian citizens between 20-40 years old who write poetry in English.

Entries must include -

1) Five different poems.

2) Evidence of age.

3) Complete contact information (including all phone numbers and email addresses).

Please Note:

Do Not Put Your Name on the Poems to be Submitted to the Jury Members.

Entries from Indian citizens between the ages of 20 and 40.

Deadline: September 1, 2009

Entries must reach

Dr. Aparna Rayaprol

Conveynor, Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize

C/O Study in India Program

University of Hyderabad

Gachibowli, Hyderabad – 500 046

Email: rayaproltrust@gmail.com

The winner will be announced by the first week of October. Arrangements will be made by the Trust and the Department of English Hyderabad for the winning poet’s travel and accommodation.

The Srinivas Rayaprol Trust was started in the year 2000 to perpetuate the memory of the poet and to promote Indian Writing in English. Srinivas Rayaprol (1925 – 1998), son of the famous Telegu poet Rayaprolu Subba Rao, is considered one of the significant personalities of early Indian English poetry. His major poetry volumes are Bones and Distances, Married Love and Other Poems and Selected Poems, all published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata.

What elephants! What tigers!

William Radice writes a well-meaning review of The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets:
"Their poems start to rub up against each other, more interestingly and movingly in this anthology than in any other I have seen."

Radice is an old India hand, but the rest of the review is illuminating because of his annoying assumptions about how Indian poets should write. "...For the reader of the anthology, the exuberance of India is precisely what is missing. Where are the colours, the light, the heat, the skies, the crowds and the birds? Where are the family relationships that the Indo-Anglian novelists have explored so lovingly?"

I was taken aback at that archaism--I haven't heard anyone in India describe Indian writers by the term "Indo-Anglian" since the dark ages--and irritated at Radice's appeal for Indian poets to abandon iambics in favour of the "tabla-beat of India". It's telling that he quotes Raine, who discovered India at the age of 74: "The place of every arrival, the term of every spiritual quest."

Jeet Thayil, the editor of the anthology--full disclosure, on the McCrum scale quoted below, Jeet's probably a 7--has responded:
"Radice's orientalism would be quaint enough to be endearing - if it weren't so annoying. He tells the reader (breathlessly, I imagine) that my anthology lacks "the colours, the light, the heat, the skies, the crowds and the birds" of India, not to forget "family relationships", "children" and groups of enthusiastic "Indian university students". What a happy picture must be playing in Radice's overheated 19th-century imagination! What elephants! What tigers! What heat and dust and palanquins!" Check out the lively discussion in the Comments section.

Why am I blogging this? Not just because it's a "fight" or a controversy. Not just because Jeet is a friend. But because this exchange feeds into a very contemporary debate, where many of us are beginning to question what the West wants to read about India and how it wants Indian authors to respond.

Amitava Kumar: http://bostonreview.net/BR33.6/kumar.php

David Baddiel: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article5205157.ece