The Poetry of the Gaze: Visual Art: Flavours of Cities, Towns or Villages

Anasuya Bhar

The relationship between the mind and the camera is ever fluid. The human gaze creates poetry all the time – collecting and weaving images into patterns of different kinds. The more the eye sees, the more it ponders and tries to assimilate all differences into a linear design. In the beginning were the elements, the mountains and the seas and then the landforms, creeks, riverways, habitats – and then came the cities and then civilization advanced, through various lines and contours. There are architectural marvels, corridors of history and also man’s creation along the paths of genius. And then there are his small pleasures of kindness and love, his petty possessions and bigger dreams. But all these must come, necessarily to an end. And then is the time of great rest amidst flowers and good wishes, in everlasting peace.

The pictures following, have tried to weave such a saga for which the photographer, an amateur one at that, has searched through various places. It is her mind which has marvelled at the highs and the lows of time and history, trying to weave this one saga of continuity beyond time or borders. There are more stories created, more histories written. This is just one of them.

The High and the Mighty – the Swiss Alps, Matterhorn, Zermatt, Switzerland, May 2018

The Quiet Blues –Gulf of Thailand, Koh Samui, Thailand, June 2012

Avenues, a Creek in the Sunderbans – West Bengal, India,  January 2013

The Solitary Splendour – Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand India, April 2017

Avenues again – Venice, Italy, May 2018

A Paris skyline, from Musee D’Orsay – Paris, France, May 2018

Tour Eiffel – A Different Perspective –  Paris, France May 2018

The Maze – Bolognese Staircase – Musei Vaticani Italy, May 2018

The Corridors of History – Florence, Italy, May 2018

The Ruins – Bawali, West Bengal, India, March 2018

Mimesis, at the Louvre – Paris, France, May 2018

Display at the Flea Market – Zurich, Switzerland, May 2018

Love, locked – Bridge on the River Salzach, Salzburg Austria, May 2018

An Ensemble on the Street – Zurich, Switzerland, May 2018

Elegy, by the Churchyard – Salzburg, Austria, May 2018

Anasuya Bhar

Dr. Anasuya Bhar is Associate Professor of English at St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College, Kolkata India. She loves travelling, dreaming and writing poetry. She also takes pictures with stories.

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Setu, August 2021

Poetry: Anasuya Bhar

Anasuya Bhar

Periphery

To not find a fathom,

To be overridden,

By my own thoughts,

To be always left

As an outsider,

Even beyond the utmost periphery

Is common to my lot – 

Therefore, let me be 

Locked in my own peripheries

Beyond the outside of others

Let me be content, happy, 

Ignorant of all those thorns

That thistle my ways – 

Let me be happy 

Within my own, 

My peripheries 

***

Blossom

There is a flower that blooms

Late into the year

That flower, that unfurls

When watered with love – 

Its petals are a deep red

And its sinews and its veins 

Throb with a passion 

And a longing pure,

For that one touch

Which has made it come

So late, into the age 

Of the year.  

***

Landscapes

A lonely tree by the waterside, in full reddish-pink bloom

By a brown edifice of some foreign land,

The calm waters lazily idling by, bringing in ruminations strange

And thoughts myriad and unsaid,

Nesting and birthing in the pools of the mind.

Or even the blush of a new dawn between hills,

Playing with the newly born clouds,

Grey and white and fading vermilion even, 

Painting the picture, perhaps, of a bride

New or wasted in the rituals of habit.

Or a crowd of violets, nestling, comforting among

Dewy leaves, fresh, new and adolescent,

Spreading happiness like a grapevine,

In the gardens of the soul and the sinews of the mind,

Like sweet thoughts in a dream. 

Words are all the colours in my palette

Creating shadows of landscapes far and wide

But what are words to the smile,

Of one so immaculate, pure and perfect,

One whose lingering presence, breathes life to all?  

***

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Dr. Anasuya Bhar is Associate Professor of English and the Dean of Postgraduate Studies in St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College Kolkata. Dr. Bhar is the sole Editor of the literary Journal Symposium http://www.spcmc.ac.in/departmental-magazine/symposium/, published by her Department. She has various academic publications to her credit. She is also keen on travel writing and poetry writing. She has her own blog https://anascornernet.wordpress.com/. Her poems have been published in ‘Borderless Journal’ and ‘Ode to a Poetess’. 

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Setu, September 2020