--- Boudhayan Mukherjee
Braja Kumar Sarkar is a bi-lingual poet with a
literary career of more than three decades; He edits ‘Tristoop’, a prestigious
literary journal in Bengali language. He is an author, translator and critic.
He edited a few anthologies of Bengali poetry and co-edited an anthology of
Modern Manipuri Poetry with eminent Manipuri poet Saratchand Thiyam earlier. He
translated poetry of the distinguished Assamese poet Hiren Bhattacharya and
published his selected poems.
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Braja Kumar Sorkar |
Recently, he has come out with a path-breaking
international anthology of English poetry- ‘Voices Now: World Poetry Today'
that earned great applause nationally and internationally for his editorial
skills. Braja has launched an English Poetry magazine recently, titled
‘Durgapur Review’.
The driving force behind his enterprise is his love
for literature, his capacity to winnow out grain from chaff while editing, his
expertise about book production and to cap it all, his own writing power.
His poems have been translated in many Indian languages, including English and Chinese. Ten titles of poetry, literary essays and translated works have been published under his authorship.
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Boudhayan Mukherjee |
Syllables of Broken Silence,
his first book of English poetry came to me as a pleasant surprise, as I felt
deeply the emergence of a new poet with consummate skill and maturity who knew
the inns and outs of good poetry. This possibly came to his command due to
voracious reading of poetry from young age and choosing the contemporary poets
while editing books. This collection contains thirty-four crisp and well
crafted poems that have been described by eminent poet Gopikrishnan Kottoor
with the following observation: “The basic yarn in the collection is love, and
so we have tender yearnings that touch us as ‘my Sundays mourn the death of our
dear Autumn, the Sun burns the leaves of memories’. The passion is genuine, the
words are heartfelt and the yearning brings forth poetry soulfully rendered.”
Incidentally, the poems have been written by Braja
since 2008 and appeared in various online and print magazines.
As the title suggests, Braja K Sorkar’s (In Bengali, he writes as Brajakumar Sarkar) poetry has occupied that space between the ‘broken’ and the whole with brilliant equipoise. Also, his muse is wrapped in white ‘silence’ that reflects the aura of unknown meanings, when the extraneous elements, offshoots are stripped away. He confronts the self to discern with uncanny clarity his creative solitude, the ‘syllables’ seeped in everyday actions and events. His poetry has been discovered by the critics and the present reviewer as an outstanding addition in the realm of contemporary English poetry.
What are the
basic elements of his poetry? As I understand, he is all by himself seeking a
new path, a realization that always escapes or eludes common folks. His poetry
is replete with thematic varieties that are expressed without cosmetic
wrappings, or abstruse words so common these days; his is a kind of poetic
craft that meticulously avoids loose statements and ensures uses of apt images
and signs to uphold his work from the level of mere descriptions and narrations
to the level that strikes a reader’s intellect and imagination simultaneously.
What attracts
me to his poetry are the surprise elements that can keep you wondering about
the nooks and corners of his mind:
“She entered the womb of night
And got the dark
Of
her body illuminated.
An
angel came and touched her hair
Her snow white breasts and her secret
river
and
all she possessed.”
(From Back To The Square One).
The poem ends when the angel claimed her as lover but
left her ‘in the womb of the night’. Seems like a fairy tale poem with
sexual innuendos!
In ‘Coffins with words’, the poet ends with the
three outstanding lines:
‘All day long I have been making
Coffins with words…
For me and others….’
In the poem-‘
'Colors’ is about a lady from Senegal:
“Young night tenderly burns the dark of her body!
The day breaks
with laughter”
Hysterical or satirical?
Only the poet can tell.
Each poem has
something new to say:
“Nobody knows the chemistry of blood
Except the sharpened swords!”
(-From the pages of history.)
The readers
will be flummoxed as to who is being addressed
In the poem, ‘I never mind’:
“I never mind your business
It is you, who indulges me in.
Ever since I have nestled in your warm heart,
You make me burn alive!
Even if you are a season
I never mind
Dear love…’”
Would you not call this a romantic but intelligent
nature poem?
Romantic poets
of twenty first century will put their hats off for these lines:
“A small-time poet in me knocking at the doors of
night
Desperately trying to make you a woman to love….
But solitary vanity of yours
An inheritance of darkness….”
From - It means
Or,
“And the memories are like strangers,
Visit once in a while
Leaving colors of the rain behind us…”
From – Leaves of memories
Speaks of the poet’s keen-sense of nature and its
effect on our mind’s eye.
There are innumerable gems I would have liked to
extract from the poet’s basket vis-├а-vis this collection. But this review is
only meant to open to the readers the doors to a treasure –house of muse.
Inviting all poetry lovers to obtain a copy and cherish Braja K Sorkar’s poetry
par excellence.
Boudhayan Mukherjee, a bilingual poet, author and
translator started as student editor and literary secretary of Visva Bharati university.
Have been published extensively in journals and newspapers since the mid-seventies.
First book of verse "Black Milk" (1990) followed by five anthologies,
a collection of short-stories and eight books of translations.Have represented
Sahitya Akademi at various poetry readings and taught Creative Writing in
English at IGNOU.Among various awards , he has been recently nominated for
America's Pushcart Prize(2023) for poetry.
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