How poetry is turning the wheels of young minds

Poetry gives you so much freedom, says Rochelle D'silva, founder, Words Tell Stories

Chandrabati was a poet in medieval Bengal, one of the few women poets of her time. She wrote about local rulers who slapped usurious taxes on farmers, of lecherous landlords who wrecked havoc on women who refused to sleep with them and about love, pain and infidelity. She also composed her own Ramayana, told entirely from Sita’s point of view. Chandrabati may not have been as famous as another poet of her time, Mirabai, but she would have been right at home today holding a mike, spewing incendiary verse, at the umpteen poetry gatherings (slams, readings, open-mic sessions, call them whatever you will) or on any of the poetry channels online.

Poetry that has for long been seen as a literary form on life support is thriving. Cafeterias have dedicated poetry hours every week, groups organising poetry slams have mushroomed in and around college campuses across the country, poetry channels are drawing in big numbers on YouTube and it is not just the English language poets that are being read and heard at these gatherings. Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi are filling up the halls too. While this is yet to convert into marketing muscle, in terms of publishers backing more poetry titles or companies supporting poetry festivals, the buzz around verse is growing louder.    

Shantanu Anand, co-founder of a Pune-based spoken word poetry group called Airplane Poetry Movement (APM) says that since he began in 2013, they have averaged at least one to two poetry events per month. But the real change in the past three years, he says is in terms of people registering. “When we just started hosting events, it’d take a big, big effort to get 15-20 performers for an event. Now, we put up a Facebook post, and within half an hour we get 20 applicants!” 

The interest in poetry reflects its timeless ability to impact lives with words. Michael Robbins, poet and author of a new book on poetry (Equipment for living: On poetry, pop and music) said in a recent interview to The Paris Review, that the experience around poetry is “something that people have been trying to get to the bottom of since someone first recited the Iliad around a fire”. He says it is a strange experience. “It’s strange that words and songs can have that kind of power,” Robbins told his interviewer. 

His words find an echo in the kind of response that Manish Gupta, founder of YouTube channel, Hindi Kavita, draws from listeners. “I kept listening to the poem on loop,” said one IAS aspirant, who said a poem helped him get through his darkest days. Another said that the poetry she discovered through the channel had changed her life. Hindi poetry is particularly popular at engineering colleges. Gupta says, “We have a big following at the IITs, BITS. And slowly we even found fans among those who are proficient in Hindi literature, among actors, writers, theatre professionals and people I call influencers.” 

Mumbai-based poet and art theorist Ranjith Hoskote reciting a poem at Words Tell Stories

Gupta set up his channel around four years back amidst resounding scepticism. Who is going to watch this? Why would anyone watch it and what are you going to do with it? He says he had no response to any of these questions, “I just didn’t know.”  He believes that the poetry project sought him out as he went in search of Hindi literature. The magic of the masters of Hindi poetry, some well-known and popular and others not so much, was that the subjects they deal with and the emotions that their words evoke are universal and timeless. It appeals to the urban sensibility as much as it does to small-town India. Today the channel has close to 50,000 subscribers and over 51 lakh views. Hindi Kavita, he says, is being propelled forward by an army of volunteers who help carry forward the literary traditions that resonate with them. 

Poetry has the ability to get personal and intimate, touching an individual chord in a room full of people. This is a big draw say many of the young listeners and poets in the making. Rochelle D’silva, poet and founder of a spoken word poetry group, Words Tell Stories, says that she found poetry the best way to express herself when she lost a friend. “It gives you so much freedom and also makes you vulnerable at the same time,” she says. Rochelle has been working with spoken word poetry for over seven years and just last year, she quit her day job at a digital marketing agency to do this full time. It is not all smooth sailing, she says, but if you keep at it, poetry can sustain you, she says.  

Spoken word poetry is the stuff of poetry slams. In India there are several groups that organise such slams, some jointly with international poetry groups, in Indian colleges. Shantanu Anand of APM that organises the National Youth Poetry Slam, a ticketed event that invites entries from colleges across the country, says that he has seen a steady increase in terms of the quality of poetry, and in terms of the number of people who are performing good poetry. 

One of the big draws for the young is the performative potential of poetry. As is the ease with which poetry melds on to digital platforms. The power lies in a poem’s ability to pack a punch in a few words, which makes it a perfect read on Instagram, Twitter and several other digital platforms. And to those who scoff at what passes for poetry on these platforms, many poets say that this is just the beginning of a lifetime of poetry reading. Many may have begun by reading out their own poetry but are now hooked on to other poets, even the masters from the past, say founders of poetry groups on these platforms. Similarly, for Hindi Kavita, the biggest joy has been discovering new poets, says Gupta. Once you are hooked in, poetry does not let you go. 

While that is good news for poetry and its future, there is still a way to go before poetry can offer more than sustenance for the soul. Rochelle says that in the seven years that she has spent with poetry in India, she finds a shift in the sense that people are now willing to pay to attend a poetry gig. However, that is still to translate into increased sale of poetry books, which, in turn, would lead to more published poets. 

Can poetry be a career option?  Shantanu says that he gets a lot of people asking him that and for them there is no easy answer. Yes, it can be, he says but only if the poets aspiring to hit the jackpot master the craft. And that takes years, so there is no instant formula for wealth and fame, only a lot of satisfaction if you love poetry. 

Now that seems to be an answer stuck in the medieval age, one that even Chandrabati may have closely identified with.