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Poetry is a form of wordplay that not everyone can possibly attain and comprehend. Yet it dates back to the …

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Indian-origin poet Bhanu Kapil makes it to the shortlist of T.S. Eliot Prize

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Indian-origin poetess, Bhanu Kapil, has been shortlisted among 10 artists for the 2020 T.S. Eliot Prize, named after the renowned 20th-century American-British poet.

Kapil, born in England and grown up in London, made it to the Prize with her poem – ‘How to Wash a Heart’. The poetry explores the relationship between an immigrant guest and a citizen host. It is her first poetry collection to be published in the UK and is drawn from a performance in London last year. Critics have praised it for using poetry as a mode of interrogation.

“In a time of increasing hostility against migrants, Kapil demonstrates how survival tunes the guest to its host with devastating intimacy,” quotes publisher Liverpool University Press, in reference to the work shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

The prize is considered one of the most valuable prizes in British poetry and the only major poetry prize judged purely by established poets. It comes with a winner’s cheque worth GBP 25,000 and the shortlisted poets receive cheques worth GBP 1,500 each.

Kapil’s poem has been selected out of 153 entries. Others in the shortlist include – includes Natalie Diaz for ‘Postcolonial Love Poem’; Sasha Dugdale for ‘Deformations‘; Ella Frears for ‘Shine, Darling’; Will Harris for ‘RENDANG‘; Wayne Holloway Smith for ‘Love Minus Love’; Daisy Lafarge for ‘Life Without Air’; Glyn Maxwell for ‘How the hell are you’; Shane McCrae for ‘Sometimes I Never Suffered’; and J.O. Morgan for ‘The Martian’s Regress’.

The author/poet who has dual citizenship has spent 21 years at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and has six books of poetry and prose to her credit, including ‘The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers’, ‘Schizophrene’ and ‘Ban en Banlieue’.

She has won the Windham-Campbell Prize, in the poetry category in recognition of her literary achievements earlier this year.

The T. S. Eliot Prize was inaugurated in 1993 to celebrate the Poetry Book Society’s 40th birthday and honor its founding poet, T.S. Eliot. It is awarded every year to the author of the best new collection of poetry, published in the UK and Ireland. This year’s results are slated to be unveiled in January 2021.

Rape Nation: Meena Kandaswamy’s poem on Hathras Horror that trembles one’s soul

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Once again India is horrified with the brutal gang rape and death of a 20-year-old Dalit girl in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh. To add to the nation’s dismay, after she passed away the state police cremated her remains without allowing her family to see her for the last time.

Recent reports have further buried the case with claims of no assault being done. Politicians who showed concern were manhandled and arrested.

The world is now talking about how the lower castes and largely women are undermined in our country. Besides women, anti-caste and Dalit activists have been urging people to use the victim’s name while protesting, in order to highlight her caste activity.

The same was picked by poet Meena Kandaswamy, also known for her book on domestic violence – When I Hit You. A Ph.D. holder in literature, Kandaswamy irks her readers to delve into the pain of lower castes in our country. She stresses on the fact that the ostracization and oppression will never end. A novelist, translator, and rebel of a woman, Meena’s words have shaken the entire nation.

Below is her poem.

 

In Hathras, cops barricade a raped woman’s home,

hijack her corpse, set it afire on a murderous night,

deaf to her mother’s howling pain. In a land where

Dalits cannot rule, they cannot rage, or even mourn.

This has happened before, this will happen again.

What does that fire remember? The screams of satis

dragged to their husband’s pyres and brides burnt alive;

the wails of caste-crossed lovers put to death,

the tongue-chopped shrieking of raped women.

This has happened before, this will happen again.

Manu said once, so his regiment repeat today:

all women are harlots, all women are base;

all women seek is sex, all they shall have is rape.

Manu gives men a license plate, such rape-mandate.

This has happened before, this will happen again.

This has happened before, this will happen again.

Sanatana, the only law of the land that’s in force,

Sanatana, where nothing, nothing ever will change.

Always, always a victim-blaming slut-template,

a rapist-shielding police-state, a caste-denying fourth estate.

This has happened before, this will happen again.

She tweeted the same on her twitter profile.

Netizens have been sharing the poem over social media and stirred by her words.

https://twitter.com/bismay_inc/status/1311216395867156482