Poets should have the freedom to "disturb and agitate", so they can reshape the world by opposing and escaping reality through their verses, award winning poet K Satchidanandan has said.
Speaking at one of the sessions during "VAK: The Raza Biennale of Indian Poetry", he said poetry was the freedom to "conceive, to create alternative worlds".
"The freedom to disturb and agitate is one of the most important rights a poet has, especially in the history we find ourselves living in today.
"Poetry is the freedom to conceive, to create alternative worlds, different ways of seeing, going beyond reality to escape it. Or perhaps even oppose the real and inhabit other realities," he said.
The poet, who opened the discussion with the poem "Prayer" by Spanish poet Francisco X Alarcon, said the primary freedom for a poet is to imagine God in ways he wants him to be.
"The primary freedom of any poet is to imagine a God in ways he wants him to be. Because poetry ultimately is freedom of imagination beyond language. The freedom to conceal and create alternative worlds, in different societies.
"Poets need the freedom to relate to the world in their own terms, to respond to world events, situations and contexts in their own ways and to use language as they see fit," he said.
Satchidanandan exemplified poems by Pablo Neruda to certain the importance of "conversation" which a poet does through his verses.
"The conversation could be done within ideologies or out of them and in act of poetry, this border line is very thin because even when poets speak they may look very different. Pablo Neruda poems on love, society and mystery are a good example of it," he says.
The Sahitya Akademi awardee says that poets create their best works when their freedom is denied and they are under pressure.
"Readers get best out of poets when they are under pressure, and feel that the freedom is denied and history is passing through a dark tunnel. The freedom of poetry is to create multitudes and contradict oneself and approach to anything in different ways," he says.
Organised by Raza Foundation, the ongoing poetry festival, is hosting 45 poets writing in over 15 Indian languages while providing a platform for the regional languages of the country.
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