‘Magician of Words’, ‘Urban
Poet’, ‘Poet of a new Genre’. Any three of these epithets together can identify
Sanjeev Sethi, the writer who wins the heart of his readers through a magic
weave of words. In November 2019 he jointly won the Full Fat Competition-Deux
(2019) organised by Hedgehog Poetry Press UK for his poetry book, Wrappings in Bespoke. The book will be
released in 2020. His work also includes well-received volumes, Suddenly For Someone, Nine Summers Later, This Summer and That Summer, (Bloomsbury). His poems have found a home in The London Magazine, The Sunday Tribune, The Fortnightly Review, 3:AM Magazine, London Grip, Morphrog 14, The Poetry Village, The Cabinet of Heed, Talking Poetry, Hamilton Stone Review, Peacock Journal, Packingtown Review, The Sandy River Review, Poydras Review, The Ofi Press Literary Magazine, Postcolonial Text, Transnational Literature, and Otoliths..
His
poetry is sometimes lyrical, sometimes strident record of a poet’s slide from a
lyrical to a personal identity laced with black humour (albeit philosophical)
to an urban poet with metro-centric faith. It is also a record of a journey
from his childhood to a mature poetic persona. And seeping, leaking, lurching
through every page is his intrepid poetry. He is but a visionary in whom is
melded a fearless poetical imagination and an instinctive understanding of the
underbelly of a monstrously threatened urban landscape, who wields a pen that
races ahead—even of him—most of the time.
Two
of his poetry books begin with “Summer”. This speaks of the sunny side in the
poet. “Summer” came from the Old English name for that time of year, sumor. This, in turn, came from the
Proto-Indo-European root sam (sam seems to be a variant of the
Proto-Indo-European sem, meaning
“together/one”). Summer in India speaks of hardships, parched lands, parched
tongues, parched minds. Only the very doughty can withstand it; and the
incandescent Sethi glares among them, having two ‘summers’ in the title of the
books –Nine Summers Later(1997) and This Summer and That Summer(2015).The
poet it seems, has a way and will to curve and darn any summer to his liking.
Summer speaks in his poems with a different connotation which is as inevitable
and necessary, and as disruptive and difficult to accept, for anyone who wishes
to float on a sense of well-being about the development of his poetic self into
a ‘global’ presence through the so-called poetic persona. He thus writes,
Anonymity
has its advantages.
One
can continue
To
be on the coast:
Seeing,
Savouring. Sharing.
When
the spotlight
is
on you, one is compelled
by
either choice or circumstance
to
maintain the status quo. (‘Anonymity’, Nine
Summers Later, 13).
Sethi’s
wealth of ideas and argument continually challenge the moribund state of the claustrophobic
urbanscape which has been crumbling in modern times, His rhetoric is grounded
in research. In “Death In A Metropolis” he speaks with his signature style dark
humour,
Corpses
carve a logo
a
philosophy
Have
you ever lived
close
to a burning ghat?
I
have. And noticed
there
is a corpse each day.
Sometimes,
there is more than one dead march,
crawling
through the lanes and bylanes,
recording
each dead person’s
last
signature on the street. (Nine Summers Later, 20)
But
does Sethi provide solutions to escape the moribund state of things in a city?
Mostly not, Sethi asks questions that chew our brains, and he can do that in a
language that exhilarates and chokes at once.
My
eyes are calloused with the curse
of
not being able to get your glimpse.
My
irises are templates of yearning
I
have decided to be in control-
like
how the handbooks,
expect
of us, when we seek oneness.
I
will be earnest about my etiquettes,
Follow
the grammar of successful regimes.
Please
vote me in. (“Suffrage”, This Summer and
That Summer15).
Sethi
thus creates a hurly-burly and when the hurly-burly’s done, he returns (us) to
the sense of who is and what he possesses---a magician of words, and an
imagination that leaps and soars with a poetic imagination.
In
my world
There
is no valley,
No
rivulet nearby.
Mind
is the landscape. (‘Metropolis’, This
Summer and That Summer, 19).
He
allows himself to be railroaded into offering prosaic, factual precision when
maybe what we need is a civic howl, or the transformative power and real
precision of poetry. At their best moments, his verses sound that civic howl and touch, however fleetingly,
the power and precision of poetry.
There
is some comfort
in
speaking negatively
about
one’s strength,
The
wealthy often say:
“I
am broke”.
The
good f**kers:
“I
can’t get it up, man!” (‘Philosophy’,This
Summer and That Summer, 41).
His
poems are astonishing in it’s rapidity of pace as well as its casual refusal to
follow convention.
In
hush of the gloaming hours when I wish to be myself
and
cannot, I cry. This sob is another sort. Skin ruddles
when
my salve is another’s snack. (‘Afterlight’, This
Summer and That Summer, 8).
Some
of Sethi’s poems are interior monologues that modulate into
stream-of-consciousness, almost surreal changes of points of view and sudden
introductions of sharply critical commentary, images that bloom and fade,
dreams that get mixed up with moods and action-holds the reader in a relentless
grip. Sethi seems to be pushing the possibilities of poetry past their bounds,
beyond narration.
I
have accepted incarcerations in my mind
as
injunctions of a worthy gravel. I have briefed
myself
to breathe crisp air but tendrils of uncertain
brumal
exhalations twine with my today. It pushes
me
to believe we are a sum total of our cantles. I wonder
why
we assign significance to some sections? (‘Winters’, This Summer and That Summer, 42).
Sethi
experiments with modernist techniques—assonances meddled with unexpected
alliterations although the imaginative affinities are sometimes uncanny.Multifarious
contours are explored in the context of writing poetry and interplay with the
form. However his poems are not an easy
read. The vocabulary is too elitist, the humour is too dark. However pairing up
an unparalleled vocabulary with dark humour can conjure up a magic that
breathes life into poetry where words fall short.
Grief,
like one’s private parts,
is
best shared with a few.
Emotional
Aids is just as bad.
Let
us not consider
a
heart-to-heart chat.
Even
if they do,
would
I, if I care,
Want
to hear it? (“A Statement”, Nine Summers
Later, 48.)
Sethi’s
poetry thus presents another language, it
is a mark of both his courage and his interest in poetry. His poetry is set
apart by its unique use of a language that triumphantly restores the poet’s
voice, and memory. His language is bound for other shores. As one reads his
poetry from Suddenly For Someone, Nine Summers Later, and comes to This Summer and That Summer they briefly
bring into mind an established senior but, pronouncedly, a younger contemporary
who’s been wandering in this denuded terrain in his art for a few years now.
But that terrain is not the private kingdom of just the poet himself, it has
come to inhabit the consciousness of many creative minds for the human
situation itself is perceived as inhuman, besieged with acts of unkindness,
lack of sympathy, modern chaotic life and progress that sacrifices human
wholeness to blind, mechanistic operations often under the control of a
super-state. Sethi thus writes,
Seasoned
advocates of statecraft
with
fluent tones and fixed turns.
They
can be quiet or clamorous.(“Panelists”, This
Summer and That Summer, 37).
In
a poem he calls“Fingerprint”, he writes,
Wind
on edge of an embankment
has
the urge to swallow me up.
The
celestial sphere sutures me to its stole,
Will
this improve with the lee of another?
In
the evenness of my energy, ideas interface
without
an additional channel unsettling me.
In
this home throbs an unusual tune.(This
Summer and That Summer, 53).
The
poet’s creative eye is thus alert at all times. He emerges as a commanding
presence of immense charm, grace, wit and power. A few lines with a Sethisque
blend of tones with short, quick strokes have a poetic appeal.
For
insects, various repellents
are
available.
But
is there a pesticide
for
the past? (“Nocturnal Activity”,This Summer and That
Summer, 3).
An
urban poet Sethi has turned out some noticeable cityscapes with flat tidy
lines. They also form important connections between his poetic entries that
describe the musings separated by time and space. In fact, his treatment of
space within the modern city (Mumbai) reveals a sharp eye.
Pigeons
have no tenancy laws.
She
placed her squabs on my sill.
…Soon
I decided-to be kind to myself,
I
had to be cruel.
I
opted to evict them.
But
there are no courts for this.
No
legal machinery. (This Summer and That
Summer, 1).
This
knowledge of the urban cityscape has remained central to his poetry designs
that have been instrumental in shaping the discourse of ‘modern urban Indian
English poetry’. The concept of space is invaluable when it comes to fleshing
out his reclusive self, it adds to his oeuvre.
Pigeon is presented as a metaphor for the growth and maturity of theurban poet.It
speaks of the emergence of a complete performer, a consummate poet. The
strength of Sethi’s text sparkles intermittently.
Watchfully
divinity unwraps its bounties and
blows
Like
a bystander at another’s setback I calm
Myself.
When
legacy of loss is your fiefdom, fist
pumps
are
alien.
Possibilities beckon me to the tarmac
Symbols
of
the universe warn and warm me in
strange
but
wonted
territories, some offshore. (“Explorations”,
Wrappings in Bespoke, to be published
in 2020 by Hedgehog Poetry Press).
His
poetry embodies the power, dynamism and grace of self-awareness with controlled
sentimentality. In “Apophasis he writes,
Vaunts
of venery are not
woven
into my vocabulary,
Am
I being a bluenose?
Who
can ever control
swirls
of a comber?
Weighed
in with self-denial
and
not swagger. (This Summer And That Summer, 38).
His
poetry is at times welded with its layered stories, which are intensely
personal, dark and painful like the poem“Sunny Chacha”. The poet crafts his
pain in a way that his readers are pained, the language is terse,
You
were gentle. “Beta, don’t worry. You are the son
I
never had. We are a family”.
Perhaps,
saying it more to yourself, than me.
“I’m
not used to families,” I cried. (This
Summer And That Summer, 6)
The
poem ends up providing readers with valuable insight into the poet’s formative
years and how his experiences went on to
inform his aesthetics of poetry. The poet is diverse, often uses conventional
themes like spirituality ( I run from myself, winded I return, debunking/the
illusion, (“Stour”, This Summer And That Summer, 48)
and unconventional themes like urban estrangement that are still relevant and
pulsating with poetic imagination.
In
a private hell with no public face
I
am capable of making love to myself. (“Fingerprint”, This Summer and That Summer,53).
Ideologically,
‘introspection’ may be said to be Sethi’s avowed response to the world in these
perilous times. His flamboyant rhetoric is girded by intense vocabulary that
holds the rest of the edifice of his poetry together. His poetic wardrobe
mirrors his own poetic persona. He strikes and shifts the ground we stand upon:
Sethi’s prowess is in the poetical.
Works
Cited:
Sethi,
Sanjeev. Nine Summers Later. Har-Anand
Publications Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi. India.1997.
Print.
Sethi,
Sanjeev. This Summer and That Summer.
Bloomsbury. 2015. India. Print.
