Wednesday, April 29, 2009 10:04 AM
In celebration of planetary poetry month 25
gbloggers
By Judith Fitzgerald
TODAY'S POET:
NITOO DAS (April 29)
David McKelvie: Born and raised in Assam, an area of India almost always hidden away on maps beyond West Bengal, Nitoo Das, the author of Boki (Virtual Artists Collective), now lives in Delhi where she teaches English Literature at a college for women. Many of her poems are -- perhaps lazily -- described as surreal. Although they contain often striking and contrary combinations, each predominantly expresses sensuality (in image, description, subject matter and lexical selection) in that most fundamental of ways: Readers cannot but help responding to them with most -- if not all -- of their senses. (Of course, several of her offerings also involve that other kind of sensuality.) Her secret weapon? The well-chosen adjective, a part of language often demonised in (or banished from) the realm of the poetry workshop. No matter. For Das, adjectives breathe life into her works (from phrases such as "sandalwood mornings," "paan-bites" of lovers' lips and "wise-eyed aging punks" of a wet crow to "simpering buck teeth" and "knee-length red strings"). Not only does Das write extraordinary poetry, she's also an artist who creates improvised designs, caricatured drawings and free-flowing illustrations inspired by -- rather than copied from -- the so-called real world. "See," a self-portrait sparked by a corruption of a photograph of her own heavily kohled eye, appears in Boki, but one example among many demonstrating the unique way in which Das takes great pleasure in uglifying the beautiful in order to paradoxically renew and / or amplify the greater beauty inherent in such enterprises. Naturally, it will come as no surprise Das is particularly drawn to insects and creepy-crawlies (not to mention rust, decomposition and decay).
See
See, this was designed
by laughter, by pulp
of lemon, by shoes
with knee-length red strings.
See, this was my bee-
tree, my hibiscus,
my mirrored rusting
box. See here decomposed
my dog, my stapled eyes,
my well-fucked fat hens.
See, here were trees with
ghosts, houses with hags,
dwarfs with chuckle-cases.
See, this is where I
cooked dead stars for you.
-- Poem and photograph © 2008-2009 Nitoo Das. Reprinted by permission. All Rights Reserved.
