NOVEMBER 2023 V-9 N-8

 

A

WORLDWIDE WRITERS’ WEB

PRESENTATION!

 

PUBLISHED BY

 

OPA

 

OUR

POETRY ARCHIVE

ONLINE MONTHLY POETRY JOURNAL

https://ourpoetryarchive.blogspot.com

email us to:

ourpoetryarchive@gmail.com

**************************************

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE AN INTERVIEW

 

NILAVRONILL TALKING WITH

POET OF THE MONTH 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE

NOVEMBER 2023

NilavroNill: Welcome to Our Poetry Archive, dear poet. And congratulations as the poet of this month. I would like to know your personal views on literature or poetry in general.

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: Thank you so much for inviting me as the Poet of the Month and giving me this wonderful opportunity to share my personal views on literature, poetry and their deep connectivity with life. As a Humanist cum Feminist Poet (though I do not prefer labels but use them only to facilitate general understanding) I have always believed in my Pen and Voice as instruments of Artistic, Human and Social Transformations. Poetry is the original Literary expression of Man, since the Vedic Sage-Poets wrote in India as also the Poetry written in ancient civilizations like those of Sumeria, Babylon, Greece etc. Fiction, Essays and Prose Literature arrived much later, sometime around the 17th century. This perhaps is the pivotal point which often makes readers avoid or misconstrue the sublime, or sometimes cryptic language of Poetry which is, however, the essence and substance of great and timeless literature.  As a Poet, Academic and Litterateur, I do feel agonised when I see established publishing houses banning poetry as a “commodity” which does not “sell” or Universities cutting down on the number of Books of Poetry in the syllabus or Students, Teachers and our Reading Public evading Poetry like some incomprehensible stuff, hardly visible in the bookshelves of regular bookstores. I am grateful to wise Poet-Publishers like you, who keep the lamp of Poetry alive as the Soul of Humanity.

 

NilavroNill: Is it possible to put into the words everything that as a poet you wish to express literarily? If not, why?

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: It is impossible to express everything “literarily” in poetry, simply because Poetry is a deeply Creative Art-Form born of the human soul, imagination and refined brain, a disembodied transcendence though deeply and intangibly integrated with our human/ socio-cultural world of living experiences. Hence its diction, expression is both in the sphere of spontaneous art and esoteric, cultivated craft, as simple as it is elevated. In Creative Writing there are submerged or invisible spaces between the lines, in the metaphors, similes, symbols and images, which the reader deciphers through reading repeatedly or training in creative writing. The text of Poetry is as important as its sub-text and meta-text since Poetry is more about the Unsaid than the Said. It is like a verbal painting or an emotive musical rhapsody in which the word-pictures, like notes of music, merge to resonate in the human heart and brain creating waves of intense joy or agony. Prosaic/ grand statements in poetry or even unintelligible cerebral poetry (on two opposite sides of the spectrum) used regrettably by many, are, to my mind, not poetry at all. 

 

NilavroNill: What are the factors that have influenced you immensely in the growing phase of your literary life. When, most probably you were not certain of your future as a poet or writer. Do you think society as a whole is the key factor in shaping up you as a poet, or your poetry altogether?

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: As I said earlier, Life and Literature or Poetry are mirror-images of each other. There is no Literature, especially Poetry in the world, which is not a reflection of living/ biographical experiences. I would state that my childhood has had an immense impact on my Poetry and Music, as I became a child-artiste at seven in the All-India Radio Calcutta as much as a child –poet writing lines on pieces of paper, which my mother would collect and store as if they were precious gems. The atmosphere at home was very conducive to my Creative Growth as a Poet and Artiste. It was full of Poetry and Music Recitals daily in the evenings with so many Writers-Meet and Musical Soirees during intermittent Sundays or holidays at home, creating naturally an ebullient atmosphere of Creativity for a child like me, growing up in this ambience. My grandfather’s and later on, my father’s regular resonating renditions of Sanskrit Slokas from the Gita, with Bangla and English Poems of Tagore, Wordsworth and Shelley along with soirees and meets at home regularly influenced me totally as a growing child and adolescent. Later in life, my university days both as a Young Lecturer and much later as a Professor, Head of the Department of English & Cultural Studies and Vice Chancellor, I lived through the bleak and seamy side of things, though with a bright mixture of Fellowships, Awards, and Global Assignments coming my way, often very unexpectedly. I gradually learnt to steer my boat firmly with Poetry and Music as my leavening instruments and solace of life. However quite a few events of darkness have continued to overwhelm me in life as I have slowly learnt the art of Time and Trauma Management with Poetry as my prime Survival Strategy…. not to forget my Vocal Music & Academics, all evocative triggers of my mind and heart. 

 

NilavroNill: Do you consider your literary life as an extension of your self-existence? If so, how it is related with the time around you? 

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: Yes, I do believe that in this contemporary world, my literary life is an extension of my self-existence. Poets, I believe, have never lived in ivory towers or exclusive spaces. Rather their involvement with their life and times had made Shelley remark “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”. Their imagination, sagacity and creative impulse are refined filters for humanity to find their way through the darkness with the lodestar and lighthouses of Poetry. As a Poet, I am engulfed in both agony and bewilderment in this present atmosphere of rising intolerance in a conflict-ridden world. On the one hand we are trying to find a utopia in thinking we have conquered the moons, stars and galaxies of the cosmos. On the other hand we have to deal with the rising hubris of Man, the dystopia of his human insensitivity, non-spiritualism, non-aestheticism and environmental ravages with Annihilation of the human race a lingering fear in our minds. A lot of my recent poetry deals with such devastating and ongoing predilections. While Science and Technology were meant to be facilitators of Human knowledge, these are now considered to be Knowledge itself, with monsters of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Cloning superseding the centrality of Poetry, Philosophy, Literature and overall Humanities. So as a Poet and Litterateur I can never dissociate myself and my writings from such a ruinous prospect of human extinction, looming large as our (God forbid) possible future.

 

NilavroNill: Do you agree with John Keats (1795-1821) on his ardent believe, “Truth is beauty, beauty is truth”? Even if we take for instance the war of Kurukshetra, the conflicts between Kauravas and Pandavas, or the fall out of Second World War in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how can we manage to reconcile between those truths with beauty as promulgated by Keats? 

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: A very good question! This Keatsian line from his Ode on a Grecian Urn is an echo of our Indian axiom ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ or that which is True is also Divine and Beautiful. In analysing our Epics like the Ramayana or Mahabharata, we learn through these allegories, myths or pre-historical lore that despite the dark ugliness of life, Truth and Beauty ultimately prevails. Even in real life, we have seen the wonderful Rise of Man from the ashes of the World Wars with the formation of the United Nations and the Progress of countries like Japan, USA, Germany and to some extent India. Despite the lurking fear of nuclear warfare, nations and communities have realised the overarching Need for Peace, Good Will and International Understanding. So Truth is always Beautiful and Divine, while utopia goes through dystopia, only to return to utopia, which is a natural creed of sentient beings. This is the cycle of Life and Creation which often takes centre-stage in my poetry. For me, Negativism and Darkness always oscillates, wavers and then returns to Light, Hope and Positivism. The reconciliation of Beauty and Truth is naturally inevitable for the sustenance of Life.

 

NilavroNill: As a poet, do socio-economy and politics in general influence your literary visions? If so how, and if not, why?

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: As I said earlier, Poetry is never an exclusionist, segregated or isolated human endeavour. It remains deeply connected with the real world in a refined sense, often elevated through imaginative, mystic or surreal elements. Yes some of my poetry is deeply influenced by politics and social injustice while the other part of my poetry remains spiritualist, profound or perhaps the pure joy of aestheticism. It is perhaps a blend and balance which happens quite innately in my poems. However, I believe, my poetic vision acts as a sieve to delineate as well as filter out the negativism of actual human affairs in our political, socio-economic world to arrive at redemptive stasis of my poetry, which then becomes reformative in a subtle way.

 

NilavroNill: Do you believe, passionately falling in love with a particular language is essential to excel in poetical ventures? And is it possible to write poems in multiple languages preserving same literary quality? We would like to know your own experiences.

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: Yes, I do believe I am passionately in love with the English language, primarily due to my environment/ ambience at home as well as my upbringing in a convent school of Irish and Polish nuns. Though it is true that I never learnt any other language academically in school or college, (alternative English always being my second language) I sincerely believe that the home ambience of Multi-Lingual Writers’ Meets and Poetry  cum Music recitals of English, Bangla and even Sanskrit Slokas (Sanskrit being the parental Fountain-head of many languages), not to forget the predominance of Tagore in the Poetry and Music renditions of my elders (my Mother being a singer herself) or such other aural or oral performance Arts in soirees and baithaks at home including stages, radio and record players made me thoroughly nourished   perhaps even gather some kind of literary expertise in Bangla. Hindi, Sanskrit and Urdu (through ghazals) as well, I guess----though not the kind of perfection I may have in English. I must state here, most humbly, that some of my Bangla or even Hindi poems are often appreciated by those who are adept in these languages. I believe sharpened language and literary skill always facilitates the proper use of multiple languages-----perhaps a phenomenon of the human brain we may not be able to understand.

 

NilavroNill: Do you think honest literary criticism has much to do with the development of a poet and the true understanding of his or her poetry? 

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: Yes definitely….. I mean constructive Literary Criticism, which includes analytical elements with examples and suggestions of betterment in terms of diction, idiomatic expressions, structural as well as thematic content. However Literary Criticism is applicable to the greatest of iconic poets and it certainly implies Critical Analysis with alternative vision as a Reader-----or the Inter-activity of Author and Reader. Since Poetry is both a Personal and an Universal Art form, well-meant constructive inputs (with alternative suggestions of critical thinking) are always welcome for better output.

 

NilavroNill: Do you believe, literature can eventually help people to uplift human conscience?

  

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: I sincerely believe in the uplift of our conscience and consciousness through Literature/ Poetry……since Aestheticism and Spiritualism are two sides of the same coin….hence the elevation of Humanity through Literature and vice versa, is natural. Literature and Humanity are mirror-images of each other or perhaps interconnected through bridges of living experiences and self-realization. Literature is, undoubtedly, the most significant instrument of Love, Peace and Social Transformation.

 

NilavroNill: I would like to know, whether your contemporaries inspire your writings in any way.

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: Yes, of course, some of them do. I am very often inspired by contemporary literature being written in India and all across the globe. However, since it is true that Literature never exists in a vacuum and always has a legacy, which is followed consciously or unconsciously through the ages, some of my Predecessors have impacted me deeply. As a Learner, Mentor, Student and Professor of English Literature, obviously Legends of yesteryears have left indelible imprints on my writing----whether it be Keats or Shakespeare, Shelley, Eliot, Yeats, Neruda, Ginsberg, Florence Howe, Margaret Atwood, Jayanta Mahapatra, Keki Daruwalla, Meena Alexander, Amitava Ghosh, or the American Transcendentalists or Feminist and Confessional Women Poets like Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, Eunice De Souza. Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath and so many, who awaken my Humanist as well as belligerent Feminist/ Female Consciousness as well. Among my colleagues and living poets I feel inspired particularly by the poetry of Sukrita Paul Kumar, Vinita Agarwal, Anita Nahal, Santosh Bakaya and many more. However despite these factors, I believe I have my own style of writing, perhaps with a predominance of images, symbols, metaphors creating verbal paintings with layered and highly textured, subterranean meanings. I believe Poetry is more about the Unsaid (implied or hidden meanings and nuances) rather than that which is Said (directly stated without any connotations, or rhetorical subtleties or symbolism).

 

NilavroNill: According to Tagore, poetry is essentially something to enjoy and not to comprehend mere meanings. What are your thoughts on this regard? What do you expect from your readers, should they enjoy your poems more than comprehend the essential meanings or both?

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: I think both are important facets of the appreciation of literature, poetry or any Art Form. Enjoying the thrill and the pleasure of Poetry as well as understanding or trying to configure the essentially embedded and submerged meanings in it. ------the Art, Craft, Rhapsody and Profundity of Poetry completes the process of enjoyment and comprehension.

 

NilavroNill: As a Bangali, we all are familiar with that famous and over referred quote of poet Jibananda Das that, not all are poets but only a few are. Can we replace poets with readers and come to the same conclusion? If yes, what are your expectations from your readers? 

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: I think good poets are still rare and irreplaceable. Well, in the contemporary world of Literature, good readers are also good critics and analysts of writings. Hence Readers are necessary for the appreciation and evolution of Good Writers/ Poets/ Performers. . As Tagore said “ Ekaki Gayoker nohe Gaan”….. may be loosely interpreted as a good audience, listener or reader is as important as the Writer or Musician or Poet himself/ herself. The Creative Author and the Reader complement each other as a whole------in this Totality, both have to be necessarily Good. A Bad Reader makes a Bad Author and vice versa. I believe in this entire sphere, constant diligence for improvement and rigorous training, despite having instinctual or inherent excellence of creativity, is urgently required. Both Readers and Writers need to constantly move ahead on the path of betterment to make Literature beautifully fruitful for the Up-gradation of Humanity.

 

NilavroNill: Being a Bangali by birth, you are writing your poems in a foreign language like English. Incidentally, which is a colonial language in this part of the world. Again, not only you, many others are extensively writing in this colonial language. Do you consider, that your writings will remain segregated as Indian English literature or will it be accepted as an integral part of European and/or American English literature? Or would you consider that, during last hundred years, English literature has been extended beyond the realm of Europe and America? Although I don’t know how British or American perceives all these, but I would like to know how a contemporary Indian poet writing in English interprets all these.

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: There is a slight problem in this question and in the understanding of English today, mistakenly as a language of the colonizer. As a long-term University Professor of English & Cultural Studies, I believe your Question is as important as my Answer, for people to know and clear their doubts and misgivings. Firstly, in most or all Indian Universities & Colleges, the Departments of English have now acquired the appellation of Departments of English and Cultural Studies. This is simply because English is no longer a Colonial Language and has expanded far beyond the limited shores or horizons of the small British Isles. Today English has incorporated within itself a vast and limitless storehouse of Words in the English Dictionary, incorporated profusely from all cultures and countries of the world, wherever the British Raj left its imprint. Hence English today is not a Colonial but a Contemporary Global Language in this New World of ours. English does not belong to the English alone or any more but to the entire World of varied cultures----hence our departments are today known as Departments of English and Cultural Studies (since a language is the face of a culture). Because the English ruled so widely in a vast empire (of course more with fraud and chicanery rather than any small gesture of benevolence), they have lost their ownership of the specificity of British English-----So now we have many “Englishes” with diverse Cultural flavours and specificities. Hence today we have Indian English, American English, Canadian English, African English, Australian English, Caribbean English, so on and so forth------each having its own literature, poetry, colour, flavour and uniqueness within a general framework of English. Hence, I am proud to be an Indian-English Author/ Poet and the best and most Awarded Writers today are proudly our Indian-English Writers----starting from Vikram Seth, Amitava Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and the List goes on.  I wish to remain always and forever an Indian-English Author, who is not just accepted but respected all across the globe.

 

NilavroNill: We are almost at the end of the interview. I remain obliged to you for your participation. Now, personally I would like to know your honest opinion about Our Poetry Archive. Since April 2015 we are publishing and archiving contemporary world poetry each and every month. Thank you for sharing your views and spending much time with us.

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE: Thank you so much for this opportunity for putting across my views in this Interview and for asking me such apt, meaningful and right questions. I have been reading quite a lot of your OPA, at least for the last two years and have great respect for E-zines such as yours, carrying on for years with such unfailing ardour and enterprise for the benefit of our Human Race and Civilization. We have a conflict-ridden world today and it is only such Creative Endeavours as yours, that would hopefully make a better World of Peace, Good Will and International Understanding. In the end it is Literature that will win ultimately and certainly not Politics, Religion or Fake Diplomatic Missions. Finally and of course as John Keats said “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty / That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know” .

 

 

Prof. Dr. LAKSMISREE BANERJEE is a Multiple Award-Winning Poet /Author, Literary Critic, Educationist, Editor and Practicing Radio & TV Vocalist with several National and International Publications, Assignments & Awards to her credit. She is an International Senior Fulbright Scholar, Commonwealth Scholar and National Scholar from the Calcutta University, a UGC Post-Doctoral Research Awardee and Former Vice Chancellor & Pro Vice Chancellor of Kolhan University, Eastern India. As a University Professor of English & Cultural Studies, Dr. Banerjee has lectured and recited in premier Universities of the world.  She has Nine Books of Poetry (with Two more forthcoming) and One Hundred Twenty Academic Publications including Books. Among her several Awards, a few need special mention---- viz. she is the Recipient of Two International Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Art & Literature, International Panorama Award for Poetry, Kala Ratnam Award, Asian Literary Society Women Achievers’ Award, Connoisseur of Literary Arts of Asia & Tunisia Award, Literoma Laureate Award for Lifetime Achievement, Sahitya Akademi’s Avishkar Award as “a Scholar-Artiste & Poet Musician”, the prestigious UGC Postdoctoral Research Award for her path-breaking Work on Comparative Studies of World Women Poets  and many other Awards over the years  An active Rotarian (Multiple Paul Harris Fellow) and a Former Nominee of the Indian Rashtrapati on several Central University Boards, Dr. Banerjee is passionate about using the potency of her Pen and Voice for Social Transformations and International Peace/Good Will.

 

 

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE

 

Sita Or Sati

 

Born in fire

inured,

deeply wound

in so-called love,

I, in flaming chromosomes

linked with the lynched

natal bond

 

Bred as a fire-girl,

a rhododendron

in ashes of cold heights…..

schooled for

the fire-rites,

in the soft encumbrances,

pulpy shells of sisterhood

 

Taught to cower

along the lines,

along the fissures of pain,

an agni pariksha

igniting every moment

every breath,

till the last one.

 

Pushed off the edge

by my mother,

pushed herself to

cut me off from

her bruised umbilical cord

into the hungry

orange ocean

 

Into the vortex of

savage drum beats,

the shehnai–drone,

the pyrotechnics

without salvage,

the last rites, sacramental shrieks,

loud conch shells

 

sacrificial chants of

the sindoor ceremony

myself in state,

voiceless regality,

a dubious spectacle,

a violent red pieta

in dark colours of

a make-believe whiteness.

© Laksmisree Banerjee                   

 

Silent Scream

               

Her scream has travelled long

through the hollows of ages

in the silence of whispering dogmas

 

A playful child she was at nine

with peals of laughter

enlivening her pink cheeks

 

Her dimples gleeful with her

clinking glass bangles holding

lovingly her slender wrists

 

The crackling jungles dim

the blossoming trees and foliage

all in sync with her quiet cries

 

While the foreboding heaved

deep within her childish bosom

with screams throttled by tradition

 

Soon her glass bangles broke

brittle like her silent crying heart

her whole self-enchained in gold

 

The young bride pushed into

an alien household with her wails

in subterranean folds of her trousseau

An under creeper wrenched out of

her soil for painful transplantation

her shrieks now deep as the ocean

 

No dearth of kith and kin or friends

no dearth of relationships half baked

in-laws, children, grand children

 

Her lord in sunny glory of triumph revamping her

Through decades, she in seeming command

as the screams pierce deeper into her loam

 

She remains forever the forgotten trophy

now a sudden horizontal ivory white

the grand matriarch dressed up again

 

Her final journey as lavish, pallid and ashen

as that first one with gleams and screams

she the Ma Durga and her carcass floating now

 

Worship, immersion, festivity, facades

all drown fading into memories and births

of generations of women with silent screams

dying every instant with their fortitude of dreams

© Laksmisree Banerjeee

 

Kargil

 

Our tears have washed off the saffron in intense colourlessness,

Our white has gone tear-stained but now even whiter,

Our green has crossed mountains of black pathos---

Vijay-Divas, our conquering day with no souls conquered,

Flags off to a better day, perhaps.

 

The hills of Kargil touch the skies with tired hands,

With fingers gnarled, rocky and eternally skeletal,

The summits weep with entrenched virulence in their wombs,

Cannons pierce their fluttering blue

With the darkness of bloodstains gone dry.

 

Kargil and the martyrs, who sleep endlessly

On its forsaken beds of history waning into nothingness,

Our weeping songs praise their heights and heroism

With the blankness of choked voices,

In re-births of possibilities or no hope.

 

We hear and speak the lessons of life,

Of terror and trauma recycled every moment,

Yet drowned deep in the ceaseless waves of love

Perhaps in the centuries to come

We just may return to hold hands once again.

©   Laksmisree Banerjee  

                         

Nirbhaya

(Tribute to  the Raped Daughters of India)

 

her voice awakens us

    a thumping soft echo rings in our wet hearts

        a falling star, an erupting timelessness

despite the hooded darkness

        her sparkling absence

    becomes our magic wand

on the road to freedom---

 

she is here and now

    she is you and me

        within and around

she is everywhere

        across and beyond the rainbow

 underground and overground

our Durga, Draupadi, Razia Sultan our Mother Mary---

 

she ignites my question, your question

        the question of countless Indians

reigning in rains, bleeding our veins

        our mourning awaiting the Sun

 furious cascades of ablution

        wailing against that hapless Midnight

of our dubious tryst with destiny---

           

the ardour of a thousand blazing moons

    the sprouting blue lava of her shrieks

        have whetted myriad bleeding struggles

have sanitized our skies and seas

        we are joined in worship in an endless cavalcade

    to redeem her unafraid volcanic tremor

resolved again to seek answers---

 

Nirbhaya’s sleeping voice is sleepless today

    with the lurking beasts still preying through

        our streets, our homes, our very own spaces

our cacti-forests are on fire

        our ravaged gardens seek justice

    our aridities yearn for Nirbhaya’s

cool clear water and pure ire---

 

we face each other, for each other

    linked in this encounter of

        prayer with folded hands

in a caravan of peace

        to the promised land

    perhaps to arrive or never to

with Nirbhaya’s surging symphony---

 

 

her fuelling soul hopes for a new dawn

amid the outrage against that

                                    celebrated Midnight of Mahatma’s India ---                

©Laksmisree Banerjee                                                                   

 

Haria: The Outcaste

 

Haria is not allowed

to cross our threshold

or enter the thirty-three million

doors of our gods.

 

He can hardly combat

deceit.

 

His dreamy eyes clouded, dark, are

folded and supplicant like

the green, timid under-creeper.

 

The brooms of cactus-life

help him to clean our dirt with

the breath of a hopeful vigilance

for a simple flash of instant salvation

with a lurking fear of a ruthless eternity

of god knows what,

never leaving his heart. 

 

He sweeps our outside verandahs, porches,

the dusty pathways, the lavatories,

cleans our sullied bins and grimy cesspools,

frittering away his doomed hours

on the dim margins of hope

which never arrives.

 

Our Brahmin cook with

a noose of a sacred thread

around his neck,

pounds painful thunders on him

driving him away like a street dog.

LAKSMISREE BANERJEE

Prof. Dr. LAKSMISREE BANERJEE is a Multiple Award-Winning Poet /Author, Literary Critic, Educationist, Editor and Practicing Radio & TV Vocalist with several National and International Publications, Assignments & Awards to her credit. She is an International Senior Fulbright Scholar, Commonwealth Scholar and National Scholar from the Calcutta University, a UGC Post-Doctoral Research Awardee and Former Vice Chancellor & Pro Vice Chancellor of Kolhan University, Eastern India. As a University Professor of English & Cultural Studies, Dr. Banerjee has lectured and recited in premier Universities of the world.  She has Nine Books of Poetry (with Two more forthcoming) and One Hundred Twenty Academic Publications including Books. Among her several Awards, a few need special mention---- viz. she is the Recipient of Two International Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Art & Literature, International Panorama Award for Poetry, Kala Ratnam Award, Asian Literary Society Women Achievers’ Award, Connoisseur of Literary Arts of Asia & Tunisia Award, Literoma Laureate Award for Lifetime Achievement, Sahitya Akademi’s Avishkar Award as “a Scholar-Artiste & Poet Musician”, the prestigious UGC Postdoctoral Research Award for her path-breaking Work on Comparative Studies of World Women Poets  and many other Awards over the years  An active Rotarian (Multiple Paul Harris Fellow) and a Former Nominee of the Indian Rashtrapati on several Central University Boards, Dr. Banerjee is passionate about using the potency of her Pen and Voice for Social Transformations and International Peace/Good Will.

 

VESNA TODOROVSKA

 

Attraction

 

Somewhere in the distance, the blue and fiery sky

kissed each other. Attraction was born.

Nor the rain in the night

could extinguish it.

Every drop, again and again

was creating the attraction

by the silence

by the smell

by the thoughts.

And again, it was born.

Attraction was there

between the thirsty mouth and 

the pearl –beaded water

when they extinguished the thirst.

Attraction was born

between the oil and the lavender,

and for the hot wound

caused by the sun light

Ointment became.

The illuminated faces attracted it

It was rolling down the desert plains

down the trembling descending and ascending dunes.

On the way to attraction                                 

deep dark secrets they told each other

United into one , the dazzling night

turned attraction into a rampart.

Somewhere in the distance, the blue and the fiery sky

kissed each other

one love, one heart and one single grain of sand.

Magic they became.

 

In The Name Of Kindness

Smile Love

 

I cross my heart in the name of The Holy Trinity.

In the name of kindness, I feel brave.

I move forward and turn myself into a root to a tree,

into a blind follower to my own dreams.

 

In the name of happiness, I draw the kindness onto the sun.

Let it shine everywhere and for everyone.

Wisdom is now my brother and I do not let myself

to look at the tired backs of my closest.

 

I follow the humanity swimming in the dark blue.

It is good. It is striving for its survival.

I turn smile into eternity,

your love giving me blessing,

giving me peace.

 

Kindness is love.

Love-kindness,

smile is love and eyes their home.

I cross my heart in the name of the Holy Trinity.

Love.

Kindness.

Smile.

 

The Moment I Accepted

 

The moment I accepted

that you were high sky

and unreachable universe,

my fallen star.

Everything had changed.

Deep inside me an internal struggle began

the demon brought mistrust

My thoughts turned into black flower-a thorn had they become

Nonetheless, I kept them despite my mind full of restlessness

I kept them in a drop of water

for two entwined phoenixes

Succumbed to the Eternity.

I pressed them like a mountain its climate

I was selfishly hiding them from the others

I was reviving them with tears just to put them in a circle

The moment I accepted

for my eyes to be closed

when I compared you to a depth and rumble

You should know.

You’ll live there forever

I understand, changes are real, changes exist

But not you. You’ll be written

in my Memorial

in my simple memory

Cheerful

Persistent

Loved         

 

VESNA TODOROVSKA

 

VESNA TODOROVSKA lover of books, poetry, verses. Born in Kumanovo, North Macedonia in 1970. Author of book of poetry with title "Night Notes". A motto that guides her through life: „Climb the mountain not for the world to see you, but for you to see it.“

 

SUMITRA MISHRA

 

Game Of Words

 

You always pleaded

“Don’t mind my words!”

 

But how do you forget

The power of words,

You are a magician

Who plays so many games

And tricks with words!

 

The words you uttered

May not mean what they are

But like cruel stones

They bruised my lovelorn heart

Like sharp needles or knives

They pricked and let the blood ooze

That is still clotted at the edges of memory.

 

I like to wipe the surfaces

Clean the dirt and paint colours

To hide the smeared edges

Of scratched photographs

And the broken glass panes

But cannot cello tape your month

Or exhibit my bruises or wounds!

 

So I prefer the silent zone

The rain-soaked garden

The twilight darkness

The bhajans in the temple

And the company of ink and pen.

 

I have painted

The ruined temple of your life

In the vivacious colours of love

You have offered me roses and diamonds

 Which I cherish like my treasure

But your words have smeared me black.

 

You believe it or not

But when I am gone

You will realize

How truly I loved your grace

And never betrayed your trust.

 

June Sun

 

“The dry rivers are

Desiccated in agony

How rude the June Sun is!”

Said the fish to the turtle.

 

But the cocky crabs trotting

Reveling on their sandy beds

They whispered to their mates

“The June Sun is so warm and mirthful.”

 

The crocs crouching under the rocks

Drooling eagerly to dupe the thirsty think

“The June Sun is mighty and dreadful

When will the August showers come?”

 

But the clever shrimps

Swimming away to the gorgeous lakes

Clap for the June Sun and exclaim,

“You did well to scorch the green trees

They don’t share their flowers and fruits with us!”

 

Hourglass

 

The grains of memory are slipping through

The throat of Time’s hourglass,

Is it age or Alzymehrs?

I am floating in the air

Or am I drowning in the deep sea?

My breathing is slow and shallow

My pulse is threadbare

My heart is pulsating like an old Bedford car

Dhak-dhak-dhak-dhak

Am I ready to fly away into oblivion?

 

Time is still flowing, but how do I measure

The time left?

The grains are still slipping

Through the throat of the hourglass of Time.

 

I know, my bare body is bereft of green

When the Spring will come

No more new leaves or flowers will bloom

No more bees will hum around my aroma-less body

The butterfly in my chest will flutter slowly

And my eyes will be fixed on the glazing sun

Darkness will overpower the flickering of the dim lamp inside.

 

The hourglass of Time will bear witness

To the shudder on my praying lips,

Uttering “Hey Ram!”

 

 

SUMITRA MISHRA

 

Dr. Mrs. SUMITRA MISHRA, a bilingual writer from Odisha, India, is a retired Professor of English who worked under the Government of Odisha and retired as the Principal, Government Women’s College, Sambalpur. A lover of literature, she started writing early in life and contributed poetry and stories to various anthologies in English and magazines in Odia. After retirement, she has devoted herself more determinedly to creating literary works in English and Odia. Her poems and short stories in both English and Odia are widely published in literary magazines and e-zines. To her credit she has thirty six (36) published books; 26 in Odia and 10 in English. She writes poems, short stories, plays, essays, articles and translates works from English to Odia and from Odia to English. She lives in Bhubaneswar with her family.