Tag: NaPoWriMo

  • With Apologies to the Nakshatras

    This is my second entry for Global Poetry Writing Month (GloPoWriMo). I am not sure if I will be reproducing that poem here.

    This was the prompt given on the NaPoWriMo website:

    And just as many songs do, the poem directly addresses a person or group – in this case, the Muses. Taking (Anne) Carson’s translation as an example, we challenge you to write a poem that directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word, an odd/unusual simile, a statement of “fact,” and something that seems out of place in time (like a Sonny & Cher song in a poem about a Greek myth).

    I wanted to see a parallel in Indian poetry. I stumbled on an article of translations of medieval Indian poetry. There is one that I particularly liked:

    svārthārambhapraṇataśirasāṃ pakṣapātāt surāṇāṃ
    dṛptātmānaṃ karajakuliśair dānavendraṃ nihantum |
    siṃhībhūtas tribhuvanaguruḥ so ‘pi nārāyaṇo ‘smin
    rāgadveṣapratihatamateḥ kasya na syāt paśutvam ||

    Sūktimuktāvalī of Jalhaṇa 131.59

    The author, Anand Venkatkrishnan, translates it as:

    When the gods (to whom he was partial)
    started bowing to him
    to save their own heads,
    even Nārāyaṇa, the guru of all,
    turned into a lion
    to slay the proud demon-king
    with his pointy fingernails.

    I mean, if you were so
    swayed by love and hate,
    you’d become an animal too.

    Translation of Sūktimuktāvalī of Jalhaṇa 131.59, Anand Venkatkrishnan

    A search for Sūktimuktāvalī shows that it is an anthology of poems commissioned by Jalhana. I looked up the original text and found it on the Internet Archive.

    I tried to find more by the writer than the four articles he wrote for The Revealer. I found a Tumblr account in his author bio. However, he has not updated it since 2020. He seems to be currently at the Divinity School in the University of Chicago.

    He has written a book on the Bhagvata Purana and about scholarly life in India. I like it’s opening lines:

    We often talk about the life of the mind as if it were the mind that mattered, when it’s really the life.

    Anand Venkatkrishnan, Love in the Time of Scholarship

    The book is an open access publication made available online [PDF link] by the University of Chicago.

    I realise now that this post has not been about the poetry I wrote about 45 minutes ago, giving it a lot of thought but not really satisfied with the output. Not yet.

    In short, the poetry is about the story of the Nakshatras and the Moon. Modern science posits these asterisms at different points in space and time. I tried but have not been fully successful in adding all the suggestions in the prompt.

  • GloPoWriMo Day 1 – Swarajathis and Youth

    April is Global Poetry Writing month. The theme for the prompts this year is around cultural institutions. As the website says:

    This year, our daily resources will take the form of online museum collections and exhibits. Hopefully, you’ll find these to be at least entertaining, and you may even be able to use some of what you see as inspiration for your poems – particularly given that our prompts this year will all be themed around music and art.

    I am writing the poems as is on a platform called thinkdeli. Here, I want to provide a little more context.

    The prompt for Day 1 is:

    As with pretty much any discipline, music and art have their own vocabulary. Today, we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms, or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses a new-to-you word. For (imaginary) extra credit, work in a phrase from, or a reference to, the Florentine Codex.

    I looked up the glossary of Carnatic music terms on Wikipedia. I learnt about something I missed learning in my Carnatic music education – Swarajathis. This became the basis of the poem.

    I learnt swarams, geethams, and varnams.
But not swarajathis.
I seemed to have pranced over them,
Unknowingly.

I lived through boyhood, adulthood, and parenthood.
But not youth.
I seemed to have pranced over those years,
Knowingly.

    I don’t know why I skipped learning swarajathis between geetham and varnam. After varnam, I went directly to learning keerthanams.

    In my mind, I similarly skipped over youth. I was eager to get into adulthood as a child. Once I got there, though, I was eager to do many things I wanted to go back and do things I could have done in my youth. Like solo travelling, hiking, etc.

  • NaPoWriMo 2022 #10

    This is #10 in the prompts for NaPoWriMo.

    Photo by Bhavesh Jain on Pexels.com
    Reflection/Shadow

It's all a play of light.
It's a reflection,
When it comes back at you.
It's a shadow, 
When it's behind where you are.

A reflection let's you think about yourself.
Yourself, in terms of how you look,
Yourself, in terms of how you feel,
But, more importantly,
Reflection confirms what you feel about yourself.

A shadow tells us about ourselves,
Ourselves, in terms of what we fear,
Ourselves, in terms of what we don't expect.
But, more importantly,
Shadow tells us that fear is just a play of light.

  • NaPoWriMo 2022 #5

    This is #5 in the prompts for NaPoWriMo.

    Spices and Seasonings

She remembered a time,
When the food wasn't bland and dry,
It had spices and seasonings,
And accompaniments and fries.

She remembered a time,
When rain poured from the dark sky,
When children played in puddles,
Without a worry, nor wondering why.

Now the food was bland,
As spices were lost to a fire,
Neither were there seasonings,
Because there was no one to hire.

It was just her,
Alone on Earth,
Wondering if anyone would come to save her,
Or at least get her some spices and seasonings.

  • NaPoWriMo 2022 #4

    This is #4 in the prompts for NaPoWriMo.

    the taste of an emotion

My therapist and I, 
Had tried so many things,
We had had so many sessions,
That my wife thought we were havin' flings.

I was getting desperate,
Will there ever be any cure,
We had tried so many things,
But there wasn't anything but a lot of furore.

Finally she looked at me,
Asked me point blank,
What's the taste of your emotions,
I tasted nothing, I said, being quite frank.

But then having food at home,
Quite anxious what my wife would say,
About my session with the therapist,
I felt anxiety taste bitter for the first time that day.

  • NaPoWriMo 2022 #3

    I missed #2 in the prompts for NaPoWriMo. The numbering scheme is the prompt number and not the poetry number.

    a broken object you continue to hold onto...

I am a minimalist,
So, I don't hold on to objects.
I am a spiritualist,
So, objects don't really hold me.

But, there was this one broken object,
I held it and it held me.
It was a simple Swiss knife.

It was just loose,
Although everyone else insisted 
That it was broken

The knife was with me,
Through several highs and 
Many more lows.

It was with me when I,
Used it to uncork that wine bottle,
On our beautiful honeymoon.

It was with me when I,
Had to tear open the letters,
When I was separated from my lover.

It was with me when I,
Wanted to fix my daughter's,
Broken toys and odds and ends.

It was with me when I,
Had forgotten to clean my nails,
Jus' before a work meeting.

It was with me when I,
Had to open a bottle,
Of jam for my daughter.

But now, when it is broken,
It is they, who ask me to throw it away,
They know not all that it has taken.
While I hold it and it holds me!

  • NaPoWriMo 2022 #1

    April is celebrated as National Poetry Writing Month. An Instagram user I follow, @literarychills helped with a daily prompt for each of the thirty days. These are just my practice off-the-cuff efforts.

    An Overrated Adjective

Do not use adjectives,
That was the simple directive,
I used the word overrated,
Realized too late that it's an adjective.

I was taken to a Remedial Room,
Where a machine went zip-zap-zoom,
The next thing that I realized,
Was that I had forgotten all adjectives.