These are the last publications of the year (2011) for me. Two appeared earlier in the month, but I held on thinking I’d post them all together. I am not the type to get sentimental or anything, and I don’t get into ruminations about how the year has treated me and what I should do for the next and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, the last publication, a poem that appeared in The Golden Sparrow Literary Review, brought me some heartache.
About a decade ago, when I first ventured out to publish, timidly, very timidly, and had no idea whether my work was worth anybody’s tuppence (and so often I still don’t, but I am not so shy about my writing anymore), I sent my very first poem to Poems Niederngasse. To my surprise and immense happiness, the editor Pasquale Capocasa published one of the two I’d sent. That poem began a brief but meaningful relationship between a poetry editor in Switzerland and me, a small and unsure writer in Singapore. I continued to send him poetry, now and then, and he continued to either take them in or send them back with advise and comments. Then one day he wanted to see a bunch of my poems together, saying that he’d like to run a feature on me in Poems Niederngasse. So could I send him around twenty from which he’d choose. However, he fell ill, and I didn’t hear from him for sometime. That was around 2005 or 2006. He got better and the feature idea resumed between us, alongwith a few more poems published in his poetry journal. And then there was deadening silence, all over again. No word from him, mails unanswered and an un-updated website made me fear the worst. I asked around, an editor who had worked with him, but she had heard nothing. I searched his name on the net; nothing. For a long time I could see the last issue, where my poem Monday Aubade had been published. These days when I googled Poems Niederngasse, I get a website which says Sacramento Personal Injury Attorney!
The poem that was published in Golden Sparrow Literary Review was spotted by Pasquale from a bunch of twenty, its good lines underlined and returned to me to rework. After I began to believe the worst, that I would never hear from Pasquale again, I couldn’t send the poem out again to anyone. But finally a couple of months ago, I put a leash on my heart and sent it to the editors at Golden Sparrow. They took it! And I am so glad it’s Golden Sparrow. Once you read the journal you’ll understand why.
Charge of the Monochrome Brigade
Madras is at the lowest receiving end of the cold wave sweeping across North India these days. So it is gray and the city is dry and dusty, with a slightly cooler wind than our usual December’s winging through the street corners. It’s seems so right to have Charge of the Monochrome Brigade out in the city now.
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The other two publications are a poem in Bare Hands Poetry and a couple of poems and a short prose piece in Muse India’s Humour Issue.
Small Discomforts appeared in Bare Hands Poetry earlier this month. Bare Hands is a very interesting project, unusual in its style and approach. Read the magazine; you won’t be disappointed!
Sometime in early November (or was it mid to late October? Can’t remember!), some of us received mail from Surya Rao, managing editor of Muse India, about contributing something humorous to their soon to be published humour issue, edited by Ambika Ananth. The notice period was short, so he added that if we had any ready or could send at a short notice, he and Ambika would be happy to accommodate. Well, I often have a private laugh or two and end up writing something or the other from that. So I shot off Spam Mails a prose piece, and two poems , one of which is in four parts, to Muse India.
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Pasquale Capocasa was my first mentor. He was firm but always kind. That first poem – Mind Over Time – was an important step forward, and one of the few that brought in letters of appreciation from absolute strangers. The year is ending and since this poem is about time, and all of us are growing older, I’d like to share it here. Pasquale had taken the poem as it was, without editing. I can’t find the link, so copy pasting from my personal folder instead:
MIND OVER TIME
First published in Poems Niederngasse,
edited by Pasquale Capocasa
Here lives
A very young girl trapped
Within an old woman’s body
Don’t mock me
Please don’t.
Why are all your senses
Focused on the façade alone?
Aren’t you curious?
Don’t you
Want to know what lies
Behind? What lies behind is
A very long
Life stitched
All over this ravaged body
The soul though sits unscathed.
That’s why my
Soul sings
In spring and thrashes about
When winter howls, and
Murmurs
Seduction
In the blind heat of summer
My body dies. Everyday
Ashamed
Of my soul
Which refuses to grow old
Don’t mock me. Please don’t.
I am
Troubled
As it is. My wrinkles mock me
Enough. They are like vicious
Busy bodies
Slyly
Peeping through the cracks
They gossip. They can never
Understand
How
Wonderful it feels to feel
So young, even as this body
Dissipates.
© Rumjhum Biswas 2001
