Once Again, In Verse 'St Cyril Road' suffers from inwardness. Amit Chaudhuri's world is deeply internal, implacably personal, despite the stray poems here on Kashmir and violence. By NILANJANA S. ROY Sunday, February 27, 2005 http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=65364 To want to be not an Indian or English poet, but simply a 'poet' like the others, to be undivided from them by class and geography, those other languages within language, as I believed them fundamentally undivided from each other.
Perhaps these lines from 'Memorabilia' are the key to Amit Chaudhuri's poems. Here is an articulation of his aspirations, to be part of "the great equality conferred by the bookshelf", measured only by the worth of his writing, not by his rank, position and place in the card catalogue of writers. Here, too, is the gulf between image and representation, the clunky lines and awkward rhythm unable to do justice to a poet's desires. St Cyril Road and Other Poems is an unusual collection of poetry from a prose writer often praised for the poetic quality of his prose. It bears the stamp of poems written in Chaudhuri's youth when he intended to be not just a writer, but a poet; and the more private watermark of poems written at a stage when he had become the writer, poems not meant for publication. And it has the hallmarks of his prose work: his ability to store away apparently unremarkable moments and images and illuminate them in recollection, his love for the mundane over the extraordinary, the connections he makes between language and music. A painting on the wall of a room in India becomes the starting point of a journey into England: "Growing up and taking the trouble to see the real thing/ hasn't diminished the village, its heart as full/ of sleeping resonance as the unstruck church bell." His mother and her music teacher create "something liquid and grieving", "through the clear archway of notes", a "mortal moment" shadowed by an impending but as yet unsuspected death. The sting of Old Spice; frost on a Mercedes-Benz; the mud-like stain on toilet paper, too dark to blend in with the "pale shit" of the English boys; the place in all conflicts but especially in Gaza, "between the kitchen and the garden and the wall and the barbed wire". Revelation can come from anywhere, in Chaudhuri's muted but vivid world. For all that, St Cyril Road suffers from inwardness; Chaudhuri's world is deeply internal, implacably personal, despite the stray poems here on war and Kashmir and violence. It is unfair to compare two poets as different as the late Kolatkar and Chaudhuri, but Kolatkar's cycle of Kala Ghoda poems has all the vitality, the force that this collection lacks. St Cyril Road is important for readers in search of the quiet moment, or readers who want to trace Chaudhuri's development as a writer in love with language. And it is an important book for Chaudhuri to have published; it takes some courage, after years of being identified as a prose writer, to stake claim to the poetry that was his first love. But this is too slight a collection, its impact too mild, to establish Chaudhuri as a major poet. He has staked his claim; perhaps a second collection, less haphazard, more intense, will consolidate it. o o o o o Author Amit Chaudhuri to release first book of poems: New Delhi, Feb 16: http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=72706 Feted author Amit Chaudhuri is set to release his first book of poems, "St Cyril Road and Other Poems," which is also his new book after over four years. The book is breaking new ground for the 44-year-old author who has won the Betty Trask Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize and written much-lauded books like A Strange and Sublime Address, Freedom Song and Afternoon Raag. "St Cyril Road and Other Poems" is a collection of verse written by Chaudhuri over the last two decades. They deal with his quintessential themes like displacement, solitude and subtle undertones in relationships. The early poems are permeated with a sense of place and an understated but powerful belief in the capacity of language to renovate perceptions of everyday life. They draw from a host of elements - from a walk to the local medical store, a whiff of Old Spice aftershave to war in Iraq and a Kashmiri apple. The book would be released Feb 21. Born in Kolkata, Chaudhuri grew up in Mumbai and graduated from University College, London, and was a research student at Balliol College, Oxford. He was later Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, and received the Harper Wood Studentship for English Literature and Poetry from St John's College, Cambridge. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Yorker and the Granta magazine. He is the editor of The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature and lives in Kolkata. --Indo-Asian News Service -- Adreesh Katyal Administrator, the ZEST lists adreesh dot katyal at gmail dot com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestcurrent ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater? Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good! http://us.click.yahoo.com/pkgkPB/SOnJAA/Zx0JAA/yqIolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ******************* Did you get this mail as a forward? Subscribe by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/join. Members are encourage to post poetry, their own and others', respond critically to the poems circulated, and participate in discussions. 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