The Hour Of Poetry

They say it’s enjoying a revival. Why poetry never really goes away

- Sampurna Chattarji

In recent times, poetry seems to have been dusted off the back shelves and hauled into the public eye. Literature festivals dedicated to poetry; poets being invited to open proceedings at regular lit-fests; poet laureate awards; poets being commissioned by daily newspapers to write, not features, but poetry; and even that grand occurrence, a poetry biennale.

This buzz of a “poetry resurgence” leaves the poets themselves smiling ironically. How wonderful to be drawn out of near-invisibility into the roving spotlight. But also, how absurd, when we remember that some seasons ago the most commonly circulated rumour was that poetry was dead or, at the very least, dying. In both situations, “poetry” seems to be a patient, resuscitated by expert attention and treated to all kinds of goodies before being written off as a lost cause and left to sink or swim, until the next round of inspection.

What poets know, and hence the sense of tragi-comedy, is that poetry is neither a seasonal disorder nor a terminal illness. Each poet will have his or her own response to the question: Why poetry? But there will be one thing in common—how essential it is to our lives. To the way we understand the world, cope with its brutalities, respond to its beauty. In his essay, “The Hour of Poetry”, John Berger writes, “Poetry makes language care because it renders everything intimate. This intimacy is the result of the poem’s labour … There is often nothing more substantial to place against the cruelty and indifference of the world than this caring.”

But does the world care about this, beyond its “flavour-of-the-month” celebrations? Does it have room for this particular kind of labour, this intimacy?