Report: Poetry Circle 2.0
The founders of the original Poetry Circle, active in 1980s and ’90s Bombay, launched an updated forum where poets can meet and have their work critiqued
Poets can now read out their work and have it peer critiqued at Poetry Circle 2.0, a revival of the famous Poetry Circle active in the Bombay of the 1980s and ’90s. Established by two of the three founders of the original body, Menka Shivdasani and Akil Contractor, and endorsed by the family of the third, (the late) Nitin Mukadam, the group, in its latest incarnation, also includes Jerry Pinto, R Raj Rao, and poets Akhil Katyal and Dion D’Souza. Katyal and D’Souza will mainly handle operations and social media. Meetings will take place on the second Saturday of every month at the People’s Free Reading Room and Library near Marine Lines railway station.
An enthusiastic audience attended the launch held at the reading room on the evening of September 13. Saranya Subramanian, who organises addas and poetry walks that also engage with the ethos of the long-gone Bombay Poets and former journalist Peter Griffin, who runs a poetry appreciation group and organises online/offline communities around creative interests, were both there.
The theme of the evening was revival in multiple contexts including myth, community and history. The first Poetry Circle contributed towards the development of a number of Indian poets and writers in English including Shivdasani, Rao and Pinto, Ranjit Hoskote, Anand Thakore, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Charmayne D’Souza and Marilyn Noronha, among others. Many of their works found homes in poetry anthologies and syllabi for degree courses, and influenced many younger poets.
Poetry Circle 2.0 has much of the same format: it is a group for people to read and suggest improvements to each other’s poems. It also offers the opportunity to commune with fellow practitioners. Like the earlier avatar, there are no passports to entry needed other than a passion for the enjambed line and a penchant for receiving and offering generous and frank critique.
The new group is likely to have very few members from the original circle at least regularly, partly because they no longer need or seek group feedback for their work. Members can join the group’s little library by donating a book. There aren’t any plans as yet to launch a literary journal but that could change in future.
The original founders Shivdasani and Contractor imparted the occasion with a sense of resisting forgetting or even erasure from history. They showed that the circle belongs not only to the past but is a tradition that promises to continue.
There were references to a gentler, softer, image of south Bombay, now Mumbai, as a home for and of poetry. It is a more participative and approachable vision than others that demand ties in high places. Even the venue chosen for the new group, the People’s Reading Room and Library at Dhobi Talao established by Indians during the British Raj was apt. It was expressly opened to accommodate the Indian reading public that was barred from places like the Asiatic Library, a few kilometres away.
The audience broke out into grins when the founders spoke and took photos and videos that were soon uploaded to Instagram tagging the Circle’s account. At least one participant was seen making a pen-portrait of a speaker. Afterwards, another audience member, fired up by Pinto’s charismatic address, spoke to me with intense exultation.
It all indicated how thrilled people are at the thought of sharing collegial poetic friendships, or meeting like-minded artsy, word-sy people in a city that mostly prioritises the hustle. It is true that, though there are many reading groups as well as poetry and literary appreciation groups online and offline, Mumbai lacks open fora where poets can workshop each other’s poems. The launch also tapped into a myth of cyclical renewal at a time of year, the cusp of the monsoon segueing into dryer, cooler weather, that for many conjures up feelings of flux and uncertainty. The audience felt that they were part of history being continued. Even I was infected by the context of creativity. So, when Contractor read one of his poems in Urdu on the theme of mortality, I had a vivid daydream that the marble bust of one of the (Raj-era Parsi) benefactors of the library, situated behind the poet, turned to us all and listened. Speak of legacy.
The founders reminisced about the earlier circle. Rao’s stash of colourful memories of the group’s excursions to the wildlife reserve of Bhimashankar included a lovely one of a few people climbing on top of the bus to read out poems. Shivdasani spoke at length about the circle’s past and its plans for the future. She also displayed two audio cassettes of recordings from the 1980s.
The late Nitin Mukadam’s family, comprising his wife Dina and son Mihir, too, spoke. The latter read out one of his father’s unpublished poems.
When Pinto walked into the aisle among the audience and declaimed his rhyming English translation of saint-poet Muktabai’s devotional poem in Marathi, making the audience recite each line after him, I was reminded of that famous scene from Dead Poets Society. What that film did in a wholesome and life affirming manner was the effect that the audience at this launch were looking for: to be moved, to be transported into epiphany and excitement. While the event did have this effect, the circle’s regular sessions will be very different. As Pinto said, they will be “dal bhaat chutney ones” of quiet reading and feedback of work-in-progress poems among poets, without an audience.
For sure, Poetry Circle 2.0 holds the promise of great creative possibilities in times to come.
Suhit Bombaywala’s factual and fictive writing appears in India and abroad. He tweets @suhitbombaywala.
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