About Usha Kishore
Usha Kishore is an Indian born British poet
and translator, resident on the Isle of Man. Usha was a student of the
University of Kerala, India, Sheffield Hallam University (England) and
Canterbury Christ Church University (England). She will be pursuing her PhD in
Postcolonial studies at The Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland in Autumn
2018. Her poetry has been published internationally in journals, including Aesthetica,
Asia Literary Review, Atlas, Bare Fiction Magazine, Index on
Censorship, Indian Literature, Poetry Salzburg Review, South Asian Ensemble,
South Asian Review, The French Literary Review, The Frogmore Papers, The
Stinging Fly, The Warwick Review
and Under the Radar. She has also
been anthologised by Macmillan, Hodder Wayland and Oxford University Press (UK)
and Harper Collins and Orient Black Swan (India). Her poetry is
featured in the British Primary and Indian Middle School and Undergraduate
syllabi. She won the Exiled Writers Ink Poetry Competition in 2014 and
the Pre-Raphaelite Poetry Prize in 2013. She is the author of three poetry
collections and one book of translation from the Sanskrit. Her third poetry
collection has been published from Eyewear Publishing, London, in March
2018. Usha is the winner of an Isle of
Man Arts Council award (2013), Culture
Vannin award (2013 & 2016), SETU award (2016) and The Word Masala Award
(2016). Usha is currently translating Jai Shankar Prasad.
Excerpts from the Interview
Goutam
Karmakar: You were born and brought up in Kerala, India. So tell us how far do
the scenic beauty of Kerala and your childhood memories cast an influence on
your compositions?
Usha
Kishore:
Kerala lives in my consciousness, I carry Kerala with me wherever I go. The scenic beauty of Kerala, the monsoons,
the flora and fauna, the sea, the sand, the culture, the temples, the dance
genre of Kathakali, the legends and folklore are all part of my work. One exemplar poem is "Monsoon Nights"
(On
Manannan's Isle):
Monsoon
Nights
… Grandmother’s tales
drone on as Anantha, Vasuki and Shesha
sway to the bheen of drunken monsoon
winds,
their jewels throwing sparkles of speckled
light
at the staggering coconut palms. The smell
of sand perfumes the air in a trapeze of
fireflies
and a courtyard quivers in the lap of the
pale moon,
in the south-western corner of a distant
nation
I call motherland, where eyes meet eyes
in greeting and languages melt in smiles.
The poem is
nostalgic and replete with images of Kerala in the monsoons: the coconut palms,
the courtyard and panelled wooden walls of a traditional Kerala home, fireflies
and the invocation to the snake gods in the allusion to the Pulluvan Paattu, connected with serpent
worship.
Not surprisingly,
I tweet under the handle kilipaatu –
which is translated from Malayalam as bird song or parrot song and a genre of Malayalam poetry, characterised
by the narrator in the form of a bird.
GK: Now let us discuss something about
your three collections of poems. On
Manannan’s Isle is your debut collection of poetry. From the very beginning
in this volume you have shown intertextuality and multiculturalism.
UK: On Manannan's Isle
was
published on the Isle of Man, by a local publisher (dpdotcom). The collection houses poems that outline my
life and work on the island. The book
received a grant from the Isle of Man Arts Council and a Culture Vannin award and was launched as part of the Island of
Culture celebrations in 2014.
The
opening poem in this collection is an invocation to Ganesha, a cross-cultural
bridge through poetry, also a personal coming to terms with my postcolonial
exile status:
Caught between
light and dark, living
in the aesthetic
of nowhere, my verse
loses its
rhythm. All alone, I stand
on a distant
shore, with a bowlful
of kheer to tickle your elephant tastes.
Come Ganesha,
bathe in the Irish Sea…
When
you are an oriental, living in the occident, multiculturalism is a natural
process. Incidentally, any Indian Writing
in English or any diasporic writer can be called multicultural, as an Indian
sensibility is translated into a Western language. Nevertheless, following Postcolonial theory, 'english'
is also an Indian language, appropriated from the colonial tongue. The multicultural elements in this
collection are also my interpretations of Manx Culture as in the myth of
Manannan, local legends and beliefs.
As far
as intertextuality is concerned, when you read and write all the time and teach
Literature, this is natural. One of the examples
of intertextuality in this collection is the poem, "On Teaching the
Tempest." The poem interprets
Shakespeare from a postcolonial angle, highlights my experiences of teaching
the text and my students' responses to the text:
Suspending
disbelief, I proceed
through the pages
of a language
not my own,
crisscrossed
by sheer Indian
womanhood.
I tread carefully
through an island
of metaphors.
Somewhere in me,
a tempest flames,
parts and flames
yet
again…
GK: ‘Night
Sky Between the Stars’ is your second volume. This volume witnesses your
feminine sensibilities and concern for Indian Womanhood. You have shown the
fate of women in India and for this you have drawn examples from Indian epics. So,
would you like to call yourself a feminist poet in this context? So, tell us
how far the poet’s personal experiences as a woman are shown in this volume?
UK: Thank you for reading
into my feminist sensibility. Night Sky
Between the Stars encompasses my pre-occupation
with Indian womanhood and articulates my concerns on a marginalised gendered
identity. Drawing
heavily from Sanskrit verse and Indian myth, I have challenged the ideology of
patriarchy, through various means including patriarchal texts and have tried to
render new voices to female mythical characters, perhaps attempting to create
an alternative dimension for Indian womanhood.
I
have portrayed Indian womanhood through mythical allusions that present
conflict, challenges and reflections of Indian womanhood. One example is the
poem "Dakshayani," a narrative of the myth of Dakshayani, her tragic
love story and her resurrection as the goddess Sati. Like Dakshayani, I too
challenge the Daksha Prajapatis of Indian patriarchy.
Let
me be born again and again to question pater ire,
to
wipe womanhood’s grief, to triumph over the sins
of
womb and breast that relentlessly bear generations
for
your unending wars, your sky searching quests,
your
bloodthirsty might. Let me immolate
myself,
again
and again to retrieve time’s long lost honour.
GK: This volume projects you as a symbolic
poet and the title bears the example of it. So can you explain the significance
of the title of this volume? Where your first volume shows the diasporic
sensibilities, multiculturalism, assimilation of different ethos and languages,
the second volume gives emphasis on the condition of women in general. So, can
you tell us the reasons behind this drastic change of subject matter?
UK: No writer or poet
sticks to any one theme. Each poetry collection is like a novel – with its own
themes, settings messages and poetic devices. Similarly, my first collection
and my third are about diasporic sensibilities, while my second presents an out
and out feminist theme. Just like an
individual has different traits to her personality, the writer presents various
aspects of herself in different poetry collections.
The
current state of Indian womanhood does require some critique, does it not? In a
nation that is personified as a woman (Bharat Mata – Mother India), in a
nation, where goddesses are worshipped left, right and centre, why are women so
damned? In this collection, I focus on the need for equality for
Indian women. This angst (of Indian womanhood) forms a motif within the
collection in poems like Girl Trees, Dowry Fires, Fairies Hanging, Devadasi and
Little Mother. I've also tried to raise serious questions on
the socio-cultural perception of women.
You, who worship mother goddesses,
exorcise your daughters, like doors
shutting out the storm.
You burn us, like orphaned corpses in the
crematoriums
of your minds. Daughters, where do we belong?
Look at us falling into the night, like
light scattered.
In a myriad crystal tears, we tumble from
your eyes,
to be silences between the words of a
soaring song. ("Daughters")
The
title poem is an inspiration from the Bengali Shyam Sangeet, where the goddess Kali is described as the
"night sky between the stars."
In this poem, also a metanarrative of my poetry, I harness the power of
womanhood to that of the Goddess.
I am she –
beheading myself
at the altar of
light – sucking
my own life –
devouring myself.
Burning myself in
wing├иd flames
of legends, I
disintegrate into
syllable, word,
metaphor and allegory -
only to be reborn
in your verse.
On the edge of
time, many moons
hooked to my dark
earlobes,
I dance, a night
sky between the stars. ("Night Sky Between the Stars")
GK: In this volume you have amply taken
references from Sanskrit verses and Indian mythical references. The volume
begins with the Gayatri mantra. So,
tell us the reasons behind using the Sanskrit verses and Vedic principles.
UK: Sanskrit
Literature infiltrated into my writing through Raja Rao's Serpent and the Rope, where Sankara's Nirvana Shatkam is referenced. The use of Sanskrit vocabulary as an
interlanguage in my poetry can also be attributed to the influence of T S
Eliot's The Wasteland, especially by Da Da Da, in "What the Thunder Said"!
(Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata, from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad).
I was
working on two projects between 2013 and 2015. I was translating Kalidasa's Syamaladandakam (The book is called Translating the Divine Woman) for Rasala Books, when Night Sky was accepted by Cyberwit.
At one point, I was working on both books, simultaneously. So, there is some cross cultural and cross
linguistic influences on both texts. Translating
the Divine Woman is my joint project with my uncle the late M Sambasivan, a
Neurosurgeon and Sanskrit scholar from Kerala. It is a feminist interpretation
of the Kalidasa text. Night Sky too is
a feminist text. Whatever myth is referenced in Night Sky, is a feminist interpretation, be it “Creation" "Five
Virgins" or "Vajrayogini."
You are right - there is a direct
reference to Vedic verses as in "Creation," where I refer to Vedic
poetic meters like Anushtup, Viraj and Usnih, where a Vedic deity is invoked
through a verse meter:
…Sacrifices
with threads drawn out
on
every side, woven into the warp and weft of chant
and
hymn, out-spinning the threads of Sama verses
on
to the vaults of heaven, conjoining Savitr with Usnih,
Soma
with Anushtup, Viraj with Varuna and Mitra.
Revisiting
the past, I feel I've had an ambivalent childhood. On one hand, I was infused with
the love of Indian culture, tradition, art, music, dance, language and
literature. On the other hand, I was constantly reminded of patriarchal
hierarchy. This ambivalence, I feel, is reflected in my work, especially in
this collection. As a young girl, I was told by the patriarchs of my Brahman
family that I cannot chant the Gayatri,
as this was the Upanayana mantra and
bequeathed only to the boys/men, during the sacred thread ceremony. The opening
poem of Night Sky, "Twilight
Prayer" is a feminist interpretation of the Gayatri Mantra. A goddess, a woman, is the personification of the
mantra and ironically, women were prevented from chanting this mantra with its female personification! I feel that the Indian patriarchy had
withheld knowledge from women (Vedas
and mantras all impart knowledge. Etymologically, Veda, comes from the root vid
- to know). Now Indian women are
beginning to challenge this mind set! This is the thought process behind "Twilight
Mantra" (and in fact, the whole collection). The poem is most certainly defiant
verse, where a woman chants the Gayatri
Mantra and is absorbed into its personification.
GK:
You have used words from other languages. You have shaped the English language
in your way. You have made the English language Indian English in your poems.
So tell us why have you created this kind of diasporic Indian English?
UK: I have
always been fascinated by languages. India is a multilinguistic plurality; we
are all surrounded by the music of many languages. The indigenous languages and
the colonial tongues of English and French have all left their mark on us. Like
many Indians, I went to an English medium school, where my second language was
given more importance than my first and subsequently I started writing in the
alien tongue. Mah├й (French for Mayyazhi)
in Kerala was a French enclave and I studied French as a third language – thus
French words trickle into my work. As academics, we get used to Latin, Greek,
French and German terms in literary criticism. These terms too invade my verse;
this reminds me of Kamala Das: "My language is my own". As a
diasporic, you get used to the language of the host British community and the
diasporic communities. Therefore, my English is a mutant, a syncretic cultural
mosaic. I explore this, along with my postcolonial feminist sensibility in the
poem, “L’ ├Йcriture Feminine et
Indienne" (translated as 'Indian Feminist Writing'). I lament that: Toutes
mes langues sont coloniales/ Elles sont les enfants terribles de la
politique. (All my languages are
colonial/They are the terrible children of politics.)
GK: Immigrant
is your third volume of poetry. The title says all about the theme of the book.
Here by creating a linguistic and cultural space you show the experiences of
South Asian immigrants in the UK. So, tell us how have you managed to maintain
a balance in between marginalisation and assimilation in this volume? Caught in
between integration and dislocation, does the immigrant want to begin the
journey towards the homeland or does the immigrant find a home in a homeless
land?
UK:
Immigrant is
my third poetry collection and as you say, the title is self-explanatory as it
reveals the theme of the book. As the
title poem goes:
A country stretches across my wings,
at times a burden, at others a blessing.
I have learnt to
live with it…
Immigrant examines the
political, cultural and linguistic spaces of first-generation South Asian
immigrants to the UK and "illustrates that to live in the diaspora is to
occupy a spectral space, to be haunted by the ghosts of history, empire and
colonialism, to be a ghost flitting in and out of spaces called nations, to be
homeless, to be caught between." (Eyewear Publishing).
The
binary perspectives of assimilation and marginalisation that recur in my poetry,
is actually a tug of war in the insides of any immigrant, a dilemma of any first-generation
immigrant. Whether a balance is achieved in Immigrant,
is open to reader response. As a poet, I find that "my aesthetic is
neither here nor there." As
discussed earlier, the primary issues are language and culture. My language is anglicised, but my sensibility
is Indian. This sometimes comes across
as a syncretic idiosyncrasy. Recently, I lived through this idiosyncrasy, when
I was editing the Sanskrit Issue for Muse
India (July/August 2018).
Immigrant also document the politics of being an
immigrant professional interacting with the harsh realities of racism and
discrimination. There are still existent pockets of prejudice; on the other
hand, there is a huge move on the part of the host community towards
assimilation, which is being welcomed by the immigrant communities, who are
working hard towards this process. I draw from my experiences as an Indian
woman teaching English in the mainstream British secondary sector and try to
chart my poetic space in an imagined borderland.
I live on the edge of history and
politics,
wallowing in the culture of a distant
monsoon land. Equality is new rain, here.
I breathe in the old rain, the latticed
winds
of racism and anti-racism. In swirling mists,
I recall grimaces, harsh words and jibes
reserved only for the peripheral and the
marginal. (“Marginal and Peripheral")
I think
this immigrant has found her space – she needs the exile, which is her
identity:
I am an exile here,
an exile there, an exile
everywhere.
… I know I am an exile; without
this exile, I am
no one. ("Where do I belong?")
There
is no journeying back home! I have accepted
my immigrant status, along with all the paraphernalia that accompanies it.
I live on both sides of the sky,
…I am half swallow, half chakora.
But I am not lost, I am not alone,
I am not afraid. My past seeps
into my present, My future,
a strange mixture of magic
and realism. I am not one but two.
India bleeds in my veins, England
paints my feathers with her mists. ("I Am Not One, But Two,")
GK: Poems like Indo-Pak 2001, Indo-Pak 2016
and We Ain’t No More Paki Mate throw
light on the ongoing relation between India and Pakistan. So, do you think good
fences make good neighbours? And why have you shown this relation in this book?
UK: The two "Indo
Pak" poems, "Partition 1947” and "The Radcliffe Line” chronicle
and historicise the Indo-Pak relationships. I don't know if fences make good
neighbours, especially if the fence, the Radcliffe Line is drawn by a departing
colonial power. It is up to the two
nations and the people to build bridges!
Ironically,
as other UK and US diasporics would tell you, there is no major animosity
between Indians and Pakistanis abroad. In
India, I grew up fearing Pakistanis, after the Indo-Pak wars. My first meeting
with a Pakistani was in the UK, in the Education sector in Kent and we became
firm friends. I realised that we looked alike, ate the same food and spoke
similar languages. I have had many
Pakistani friends since. I also teach
Pakistani students.
Why have
I written about Indo-Pak relations?
Well, it is time somebody did! In
fact, quite a few writers, on both sides of the fence write about the
situation. How long would we keep on fighting?
The Missing Slate, a
well-known journal from Pakistan publishes a lot of Indian poets and they have featured
my work many times! I think literature and art can build bridges between
warring nations.
The
poem, "We Ain't no More Paki Mate" is a tongue in cheek postcolonial historicisation
of South Asian Immigrants to the UK. Paki
(Literally meaning pure, from Urdu) is a term of racist abuse for South Asians
in the UK. Written in the London
cockney, the poem is also a rant against racism.
GK: Now let us discuss something about the
condition of diasporic poets in UK and USA. Are poets like you, Usha Akella,
Bashabi Fraser, Shanta Acharya, Daljit Nagra, Sid Bose, Kavita A Jindal, Saleem
Peeradina, Debjani Chatterjee and Meena Alexander are getting enough scope and
readership there? Do you think event like Word Masala Foundation and more
poetry reading sessions should be organized to promote the works of diasporic
writers and poets globally?
UK: Bashabi Fraser,
Debjani Chatterjee, Saleem Peeradina and Meena Alexander are established poets
of the Indian diaspora. Daljit Nagra is
a very well-established British poet. I
don't know if you can call him a poet of the diaspora. Sid Bose is a new voice,
Kavita Jindal is a poet and senior editor of the Hong Kong based Asia Literary
Review. I don't know where I stand in this circle of poets.
Word
Masala Foundation is a London based organisation, the dream child of the poet
and writer Yogesh Patel. UK Organisations and publishers like Word Masala, Exiled
Writers Ink, The Literary Consultancy, Eyewear Publishing and Skylark
Publications, certainly play a major part in the promotion and publication of
diasporic poets.
GK: Can you tell us something about your
future projects? Are we supposed to get any epic poem or long prose poetry from
you in future?
UK: An Epic poem is a dream! Long prose poetry –
you never know! Some longer prose poems
like "Gandhari" and "Partition 1947" have been published in
my 2nd and 3rd collections.
Future
Projects - I have enough published poems at least for one more collection. I
have completed the translation of Kalidasa's Rtusamharam and I am currently
translating Jaishankar Prasad.
GK: Thank you Usha Kishore for sharing
your precious thoughts and valuable time with me.
UK: Thank you Goutam. I am delighted and honoured that an academic
like you has shown interest in my work!
About
Goutam Karmakar
Goutam Karmakar is an Assistant Professor of English
at Barabazar Bikram Tudu Memorial College, Purulia, West Bengal, India. He is
doing his doctoral research at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences,
National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India.
