If you don't read (much) poetry, today (March 21) is the perfect day to start. It’s World Poetry Day, after all. Listening to a poet bring their own work to an audience used to be a rare opportunity, till the era of online videos brought so much of poetry within reach of the ears and eyes. Over to the poets on this hand-picked list:

Mulligatawny Dreams: Meena Kandasamy



Kandasamy dreams of “an English where a pregnant woman is simply stomach-child-lady”. In doing so, she not only acknowledges the ways in which the language is already reshaped by “brown or black men and women”, but also the ways in which it still enforces a certain regime. 

… i dream of an english
full of the words of my language.
an english in small letters
an english that shall tire a white man’s tongue…



On The Way To The Dargah: Namdeo Dhasal



The poet reveals the violence that visits a child and his mother on the streets of Mumbai:

… And I grew up
Like a human with his fuse blown up
On the shit in the street
Saying, “Give five paisa,
Take five curses”
On the way to the dargah."



Read the the full translation by Dilip Chitre.

Eight Poems: Arundhathi Subramaniam



The winner of this year's Khushwant Singh Memorial Prize for Poetry reads eight poems from her collection Where I Live: New and Collected Poems. Particularly compelling isTo the Welsh Critic who doesn't find me Identifiably Indian, where the poet challenges the critic:

…Arbiter of identity
remake me as you will.
Write me a new alphabet of danger,
a new patois to match
the Chola bronze of my skin…



Karna considers Yuanfen: Sharanya Manivannan



Imagine Karna as a woman: this is one such poem. On her blog, Manivannan explains why she wrote this way: “Karna is my mythological archetype, and the deeper I delved into creating my own art, the more I wanted to appropriate this story in a way that was truly mine.”

… I know only this: the way I spent my whole life daydreaming about what it
would be like to wake up with your hair in my mouth, your feet curved
against the soles of mine. Learning your texture long before I knew your
touch…



Mon Bhalo Nei: Sunil Gangopadhyay



The Bengali poet talks in poetic form of what it means to be depressed, yet still hopeful:

… No one knows
It’s a secret
Not on my face
My eyes are open…



Read the full translation by Arunava Sinha.

Tum Bilkul Hum Jaise Nikle Bhai: Fahmida Riaz



The Urdu poet (Riaz is Pakistani, but spent many years in exile in India) delights a laughing audience with her satirical comparison of religious fundamentalism in both India and Pakistan.

…You turned out to be just like us;
Similarly stupid, wallowing in the past,
You’ve reached the same doorstep at last.
Congratulations, many congratulations…



Read the translation by Khushwant Singh.

That Woman: Tishani Doshi



The poem imagines a comradeship with the kind of woman that young girls are constantly told not to become:

… That woman who spreads her legs,
who is beaten, who cannot hold
her grief or her drink.
Don’t become that woman….



Main tenu phir milangi: Amrita Pritam, read by Gulzar



No separation here.

…Perhaps I will become a ray
of sunshine to be
embraced by your colours
I will paint myself on your canvas...



Read the full translation by Nirupama Dutt.

Mujhse pehli si mohabbat: Faiz, recited by Zohra Sehgal



Zohra Sehgal recites the nazm by Faiz on the poet's disenchantment with romantic love in a world full of injustice and violence.

…Other pains exist than those that love brings,
Other joys than those of lovers’ mingling…



Read two translations.

Stammer: K. Satchitanandan



The Malayalam original of poem Stammer, which he has translated into English himself:

… Did the stammer precede language
or succeed it?
Is it only a dialect or a
language itself? These questions
make linguists stammer…