The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Indian Poets

by Jeet Thayil (Editor)

Jeet Thayil's definitive selection covers 55 years of Indian poetry in English. It is the first anthology to represent not just the major poets of the past half-century - the canonical writers who have dominated Indian poetry and publishing since the 1950s - but also the different kinds of poetry written by an extraordinary range of younger poets who live in many countries as well as in India. It is a groundbreaking global anthology of 70 poets writing in a common language responding to shared traditions, different cultures and contrasting lives in the changing modern world.Thayil's starting-point is Nissim Ezekiel, the first important modern Indian poet after Tagore, who published his first collection in London in 1952. Aiming for "verticality" rather than chronology, Thayil's anthology charts a poetry of astonishing volume and quality. It pays homage to major influences, including Ezekiel, Dom Moraes and Arun Kolatkar, who died within months of each other in 2004. It rediscovers forgotten figures such as Lawrence Bantleman and Gopal Honnalgere, and it serves as an introduction to the poets of the future.The book also shows that many Indian poets were mining the rich vein of 'chutnified' (Salman Rushdie's word) Indian English long before novelists like Rushdie and Upamanyu Chatterjee started using it in their fiction. It explains why Pankaj Mishra and Amit Chaudhuri have said that Indian poetry in English has a longer, more distinguished tradition than Indian fiction in English. The Indian poet now lives and works in New York, New Delhi, London, Itanagar, Bangalore, Berkeley, Goa, Sheffield, Lonavala, Montana, Aarhus, Allahabad, Hongkong, Montreal, Melbourne, Calcutta, Connecticut, Cuttack and various other global corridors. While some may have little in common in terms of culture (a number of the poets have never lived in India), this anthology shows how they are all bound by the intimate histories of a shared English language.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

424 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2008

About the author

Jeet Thayil (born 1959 in Kerala) is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He is best known as a poet and is the author of four collections: These Errors Are Correct (Tranquebar, 2008), English (2004, Penguin India, Rattapallax Press, New York, 2004), Apocalypso (Ark, 1997) and Gemini (Viking Penguin, 1992). His first novel, Narcopolis, (Faber & Faber, 2012), was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the Hindu Literary Prize 2013.

Reviews

[Sunil · Rating 4 out of 5]

My relationship with poetry is rather complicated, perhaps more than photography! I am yet to find a reasonable argument to convince me that poetry in a post-modern world, or more accurately, post- modern poetry in the contemporary world has a certain shared tenets, value and purpose beyond that of fragmented, superficial (or otherwise) emotional communication between two people. I dont believe post-modern poetry and its various visages can actually add up to make either collective cultural or literary wealth. If it actually does, it wouldnt be anymore than the collective wealth of youtube comments.

With that in mind, I would say this is an average to decent Bloodaxe compilation of contemporary poets in India or of Indian origin and diaspora. Some poems are sweet as though they had been written to go with an evening tea, some are nostalgic as if made for a rainy day, some are melancholic to be read beside a window of a moving train , but many others others are excruciatingly monotonous when not pompous and presumptous ( are we accidentally rhyming love?) , some of course are hopeless factory seconds.

[Philip Nikolayev · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a copublication by Bloodaxe and FULCRUM -- the definitive anthology of current English-language poetry from India and from the Indian diaspora. This book puts India squarely on the map of English-language poetry. While the Indian fiction boom has been going on for a few years now, Indian poetry in this our language is in no way inferior to the fiction and may indeed be better. It's a shame that it has been so little explored in the English-speaking worlk, but I hope that this book will change that. Don't miss it.

[Abhishek]

I'll keep coming back to this book again and again. This is undoubtedly one of the best compilation of English poetry from India