Uploading verse By Subuhi Jiwani DNA, September 10, 2005
"You're like an ostrich with its head in the sand, communicating by wagging its tail," says Mumbai poet Jane Bhandari, describing what it feels like to write to an on-line group. She is a member of ZESTPoets, a special interest yahoo group that focuses on writing and discussing South Asian poetry in English. Unlike other poetry websites (www.geocities.com/varnamala/ineng.html, for instance) ZESTPoets is, by definition, interactive. The India edition of http://poetryinternational.org, edited by Arundhati Subramaniam, is exhaustive with biographies, news articles and poems, in English and in translation. But it stops at the known names. ZESTPoets' members need not be South Asian but the workshop material – usually unpublished and by unrecognized poets – must be. "There isn't a community of [Indian] poe! ts that can share work, receive feedback, and read the work of others, including the established names," says Shivam Vij, one of the founders of ZESTPoets and a B.A. student of English Literature at St Stephens College. "A mailing list doesn't require its members to negotiate city traffic and reach a place where struggling poets might hang out." Poetry groups like The Bombay Poetry Circle have, for decades now, groomed poets and chiseled poems. But cyberspace cuts through prestige barriers, offering something these groups can never approximate: anonymity. Nitoo Das, prolific blogger and online poet who's been studying on-line poetry communities says, "A lot of people crave the disguise of screen names. For many online poets, poetry is therapy, sometimes written as a humiliating secret." When asked if the internet helps people be more frank —and possibly, more merciless —she's skeptical. "The initial sense of liberation wanes after some time and then, you m! ay suddenly become conscious that the same old paradigms play their part online as they do offline." Detractors of online poetry complain that the internet isn't all 'democratising': the web isn't available in India's remote areas. But for Das "poetry has always been elitist, especially after it became a part of print culture". The internet might have altered poetry reading habits but Delhi poet Vivek Narayanan is wary of this. He says, "The internet can also foster a kind of haphazard reading of poetry, where people consume individual poems of varying quality rather than whole collections from start to finish." But Das' observation underlines the difference between online poetry and the printed word. "You don't have to pay for online poetry, most of the time. So, if someone cannot buy poetry books, he/she can simply spend ten bucks per hour in an internet café." The internet, testify many ZEST poets, has ac! tually driven them to buy collections of poetry, especially after they sampled some on the website. But it might also tempt them to switch to the ESPN or BBC web pages. After all, flipping a page in a book only takes you to the next. [ ZESTPoets can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets ] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/yqIolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -- You are encouraged to post poetry, respond critically to the poems circulated and participate in discussions. To post, email your message to [email protected] OR post online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/post/ Tell friends to subscribe to ZESTPoets by sending a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED], OR, if they have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/join/ ---theZESTcommunity-------------- [1] ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCurrent/ [2] ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/ [3] ZESTGlobal: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ [4] ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/ [5] ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ [6] ZESTCaste: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ [7] ZESTAlternative: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTAlternative/ [8] TalkZEST: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TalkZEST/ --- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
