A new anthology of poems responds to the environmental damage prompted by human greed. We speak with two Mumbai-based poets who have contributed to the collection
The river Cauvery. Pic Courtesy/Wikimedia Commons
This writer reads Greening the Earth (Penguin Random House India) fitfully. Sometimes, in between deadlines; often, in the early hours of the day; and on occasion, before going to sleep. Every passage stirs our consciousness. They require us to review histories of ecological damage, leaving us questioning — “Where does greed end?” And in times when religious and racial divides can dictate common interests, it’s heartening to find poets across continents assembling for the need of the hour.
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But can poetry effect climate advocacy? Poet and author Rochelle Potkar believes in the telegraphic power of poems. “Imagine how in the earlier days, a telegram — only two lines long — could impactfully communicate good and bad news. Poems, from haiku to 40-line free verse, have similar power. In their short expanse, they can put together a galaxy of thoughts. In an age of attention deficit disorders, poems act as synopsised nuggets of wisdom that help seep through what has to,” she notes, adding, “I wish for readers to read a page patiently and connect the abstractions involved in poetry.”
Sampurna Chattarji and Rochelle Potkar
Potkar’s piece, Confluence, holds our hand along the banks of river Cauvery, across Uzbekistan’s Aral Sea to the Whanganui Mountains in New Zealand. Elaborating on the diverse geographic journey, she shares, “A poem, almost intuitively, witnesses the becoming of a pearl from a grain, and in the course, it strives for eco-equality. While writing Confluence, I thought that while world leaders and activists engage in climate summits, why can’t the rivers and lakes of the world come together to discuss the fact that their lives are at stake?! And if they do, they would share every little detail. Also, issues pertaining to water can’t really be contained within boundaries because a molecule of water belongs to the world as it evaporates for the river Cauvery, it might fall in rain somewhere in San Francisco. Water poetry too belongs everywhere with the concerns of a burning planet.”
Another poem that hits us hard is poet and translator Sampurna Chattarji’s Highway. Ask her how she uses personal context to communicate the magnitude of loss and she says, “I think by turning the microscope onto one’s own gargantuan un-knowing is the way in which I try to do this. Loss is implicit in every life, every landscape. To work with that loss — and take it towards a place of healing is perhaps what poets try to do.” Giving us context, she adds that she wrote the poem after a car journey in Gujarat, aghast at the information her host gave her about the huge number of trees that had been felled to make room for that highway, but equally abashed by her own ignorance of the names of the crops that they were driving past.
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