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AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY TALKING WITH APRILIA ZANK

APRILIA ZANK TALKING WITH

POET OF THE MONTH

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY

JUNE 2021

APRILIA ZANK: According to the American poet Robert Frost, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” Can, in your opinion, all thoughts be 'translated' into words?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY:  I was a very logos centred or word-oriented person till my son came along who has autism. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God kind of artist, very literature based. Reading and writing was the big thing. But after looking at how he related to the world which is more in terms of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell rather than the three r’s and imagining his inscape and seeing his kind of operative mode and creativity and artistry text has become for me only a part of a larger picture to be honest and, though still my favourite part of it, due to my background in the Word, no longer any more important than other features like sound. To put it in a nutshell thought are to me predated by experiences that are probably more holistically sensory and expressing them through multimedia and hypermedia have become increasingly important for me and the present world. The growth of the internet too has ensured this as we now think more in terms of sound bytes, videos, memes, gifs, emojis, etc;, with language being only a part of the whole. So, to sum up, Frost, no, things have changed. 

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: The English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote: “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” Can you explain how poetry unveils the hidden beauty of the world?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY:  This goes back to Coleridge wanting to make the strange familiar and Wordsworth wanting to make the familiar strange, in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and vice versa, with both wanting to do both to signal the shift to Romanticism, but Shelley is also talking of something more, about not only beauty but truth, according to me, that for most men these things are hidden and poets help us to  see them clearly, for the first time or as if for the first time. When we describe the beauty of a woman we love we reveal her beauty that is inner and hidden to the reader for example when we are poets in our poems. Same with truth that brings about a development in the awareness of people to increase their social conscience about causes by putting before them truths they may not have been aware of before in an aesthetically fitting way. Shelley’s own poems on Manchester and revolutionary ones and anarchy, and his Ode to the Skylark and his Ozymandias are examples that reveal to us both hidden beauties and truths and make the familiar strange and the strange unfamiliar.

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: The American poet of English origin W. H. Auden was convinced that, “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” Do you think that poetic language should always be refined and cultivated, or may it also be rough and raw if necessary?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: A poet is in love with language and for him every word and nuance of it matters. Every poet knows instinctively and intuitively that no word is bad in itself but it is thinking that makes it so, to misquote Shakespeare. A poet can use refined, civilized and cultured language where it fits and rough and raw or ready language where that fits. In Sanskrit aesthetics there is a word that can be translated as appropriateness which is auchithya, or as we say in Malayalam “uchitham” and this matters a lot to me, this concept. Sometimes we get somewhere in art by breaking rules too and it is the same in language as we are on a creative quest but if lucky or sensitive our handling of language will be accepted and appropriate either in the present or in the future and this is where we strike the balance.

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: Please consider the following statement of the English scholar and poet A. E. Housman: “Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.” Do you write or prefer explicit poetry with an obvious meaning or message, or rather more cryptic, challenging poetry?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: I am one of the widest poets I have known with a breadth that is all encompassing so I write both explicit poetry and cryptic challenging poetry. It comes down to what comes out as a first draft often for me but there is one matter in which I completely agree with A E Housman and that is that we have to leave half the work to the reader in terms of form, meaning, content and everything else or the poem fails as we need to draw in the reader as a co-creator. I would thus expand on what he says to include other parameters and not just meaning.

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: “Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”, is a famous quote by the German romanticist and philosopher Novalis. To what extent can poetry have a therapeutic effect?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: Poetry is a two-edged sword. It definitely has therapeutic effects on those who write it and especially on women and children and it has therapeutic effects on those who read it too but it can also be used to cause wounds on those who sometimes deserve it and this part of it interests me too. Poetry is an untamed beast and can sometimes heal but also cause wounds even on those it should not as once written and released a half of its reception is in its perception. Here poets have to take care to be more on the side of the Force and not the Dark Side, to put it in Stars Wars terms. (laughs) Poetry should be a light saber, in other words, and in the hands of Jedis who have not sold out in today’s world, to expand on this pop culture reference.

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: According to Salvatore Quasimodo, an Italian poet and literary critic, “Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.” Is, in your opinion, the poet primarily a personal voice, or rather the echo of his fellow beings?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY:  Both, I speak myself in poetry and not just for myself, it is the flesh become word to invert scripture and unless it finds an echo in my readers who say you speak me or for me it fails. Poetry has to be an extension of oneself where the other melts into one too or it cannot be poetry that will outlast time or find much spread in geographical terms to other languages.

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: The American literary critic M. H. Abrams asserted that, “If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.” Do you also think readers need to be educated as to how to go through a poem? If 'yes', in which way?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY:  For a deeper understanding of a poem’s aesthetics readers have to be educated about figures of speech, titling, musical devices, and imagery as well as forms, genres, structures and analysis or comparison or contrast etc., as poems are not just about themes or layers of meanings but “body” as MH Abrams puts it so beautifully and to make love to that body one needs to get hold of it properly first.

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: Let us now consider the words of the American songwriter and poet Jim Morisson: “If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.” Can you please tell us how poetry can be/become educational?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: It is strange that you should club the word educational with Jim Morrison as his point, I think, was to set people from the limits of education as it was practiced in his time, through the art of music, lyrics, poetry and performance. Morrison knew what Gardner speaks of, that there are many intelligences and not just literary or linguistic ones or mathematical ones, left overs of Greek philosophical subjects in schooling that were reduced to these three as primary, and his aim is to make poetry also reflect that times have changed and should take in technology and the past not limited just to Graeco Roman or Judaeo Christian frameworks but including others ones too like American Indian ones. He does this in his own lyrics to try to expand the frame.

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: The British-American poet T. S. Eliot claimed that, “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” Do you sometimes/often experience 'love at first sight' for poems that you have not understood immediately/completely?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY:  Oh, yes! Poems have a lot of depth and to get the meanings one has to read them several times, but to love them one has to read them only once. They communicate to the neural synapses before anything else being a very sensory medium. I remember this reaction on reading Rilke and Rimbaud for instance and more recently RS Thomas, WS Merwin, and some others. As I get older some names escape me but the poems don’t.  

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: Paul Valéry, a French poet, essayist, and philosopher, said: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” Do you also think that the final 'embodiment' of a poem happens in the mind of the reader?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: I agree fully with Paul Valéry as in my own experience being a poet whenever I return to a poem after weeks or months or sometimes years I see I could have written it better and make changes to it. There seems to be no final satisfactory version, even if sometimes the change is just a word. However, as they reader does not know of this and the care poets take over their works, at least ones like me influenced by fastidious poets like Valéry feel some of my poems are perfect and need no change. I rarely feel that way about any of my poems. Maybe one can a about a couplet or a four liner or five liner, at most.

 

APRILIA ZANK: The famous British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie believes that, “A poet's work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” Should, in your opinion, poetry have a strong social and/or militant component?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: I need to point back to my earlier answer of calling poetry a light saber here. In today’s world no poet can be apolitical or not take stances or fight for things he believes in, or call out bogus stuff and keep to wanting to be secure and safe. This is my unabashed position. I fully agree with him. I am, for instance, against fascism, against minorities being persecuted, for autism, against caste discrimination, for preserving what is good about Christ’s influence in the world etc. And all these things if opposed I have to point out that I cannot just stand and watch but have to take sides.

 

 

APRILIA ZANK: The poetic credo of the highly influential American poet Maya Angelou was the following: “The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.” Do you also think that your poetry addresses a large and varied audience?

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: I have written thousands of poems and my poetry definitely addresses a large and varied audience, including all who know English, all who are Indians or Asians, all who are human beings and all who are against the idea that they are human beings to as there are post human and anti-human strands too in my poetry so I really don’t know anyone my poetry leaves out. It may address people in different ways but all may find themselves and their consciences questioned in it as well as find me appreciative of their arts, cultures, and other such valuable things. I feel this is how we can approximate to universality in our times and in all my poetry books like FIGS, or Allusions to Simplicity or Birds of Different Feathers or Wine-Kissed Poems which is a collaboration with Jagari Mukherjee or Vodka by the Volga which is another collaboration with Santosh Bakaya I have tried to go beyond parochialism to being universal and mostly succeeded, or so I feel.

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: Dr. Koshy A.V. is presently working as an Assistant Professor in the English Department of Jazan University, Saudi Arabia. He has many books, degrees, diplomas, certificates, prizes, and awards to his credit and also, besides teaching, is an editor, anthology maker, poet, critic and writer of fiction. He runs an autism NPO with his wife, Anna Gabriel. Two of his co-authored books published in 2020 were Amazon best-sellers in India and USA, namely, Wine-kissed Poems with Jagari Mukherjee and Vodka by the Volga with Santosh Bakaya.

 

Dr. APRILIA ZANK is an educationist, freelance lecturer for Creative Writing and Translation Theory, as well as a multilingual poet, translator, editor from Munich, Germany and an Author of the Poetry book BAREFOOT TO ARCADIA. Born in Romania, she studied English and French Literature and Linguistics at the University of Bucharest, and then moved to Munich, Germany where she received her PhD degree in Literature and Psycholinguistics for her thesis, THE WORD IN THE WORD Literary Text Reception and Linguistic Relativity, from the Ludwig Maximilian University, where she started her teaching career. The research for her PhD thesis was done in collaboration with six universities from Europe, and as a visiting lecturer at Alberta University of Edmonton, Canada. Dr Aprilia writes verses in English and German, French and Romanian and was awarded a distinction at the “Vera Piller” Poetry Contest in Zurich. Her poetry collection, TERMINUS ARCADIA, was 2nd Place Winner at the Twowolvz Press Poetry Chapbook Contest 2013. In 2018, she was awarded the title “Dr. Aprilia Zank – Germany Beat Poet Laureate”, by the National Beat Poetry Foundation (USA). She has been an acclaimed guest at cultural events in Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Turkey, Singapore and Romania, where she read her poems, delivered lectures on various topics. Her poems and articles are published in many ezines and Anthologies of different countries.

 

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY

 

A Place On The Body

 

When she disrobed

I could see all the times on her body

The infant, the child, the young lady, the woman

Where in eternal lines to time she kept growing

But she said find me a place on my body

Standing before me unabashed and free

I had always been bad at geography

Parts of her body were metaphors for me

No place suggested itself to fancy

Placeless, she stood in her nudity before me

No space could bridge her or bind her when naked

She touched every place and was infinite like space

Expanding like the universe and lovely

If I touched her with even a finger

I touched history and all its layers

Her eyes were from the North of the fortresses

Her lips were the South

Her breasts were some West

And the jewel between her thighs

East of the explorers, all topsy turvy

Her thighs were fountains

Her nipples were standards

Surreal was no new word for me, confused

No words being able to describe her beauty

Her tresses and everything best described madly

She was all place and each move spacious

Small as quantum and large as a galaxy

What can you say of a place on the body

When place was all that bewitching poetry

 

 

A Haibun: Monsters Under The Bed

 

I close the monitor at night. When I wake up in the morning, the white lights light up as if smiling. As if in. Greeting. Under each silver key. The dot-like black ants come out, from the circuitry inside. Why are you in there?! I ask. I am amazed by their answer. We thought it is someone's bed, and the crumbs of food we take in for our parties under it makes our nights a pleasant revelry with these artificial lights to make it bright as day like the moon and the stars do it for you. Monsters, I think! Just not under my bed, but my keyboard!

Miniscule black ants

Come out from asdf

Go into lk

 

 

The Statue Of The Bronze Boy Seated On A Globe Reading A Book With A Magnifying Glass

 

Far away the building nestles

It is a school where young minds go.

I sit here brassy, bronzed and brazen.

I have blue-green claavu on my dress.

I am symbol. I am mascot.

I am dwarapalakan.

My seat is the whole wide world

Globe as chair and in my hand

Is the world as text or book

In my hand Holmes' clue-finder

I have been sitting here for ages

I may sit here many more

What I read is blank pages

What I see through the lens is convex and complex

Enlarged by any who stands behind

My message is about freedom

Though they've fixed me here in one place

Learning makes one travel the earth

Not to be cooped up in a building

And even the poor can journey forth

By the magic of the letters

Wander everywhere far and wide

Dreams can be magnified

And the globe can be your throne

I am in a uniform

I am but a little child

I am of an indiscriminate race

But to read and be literate

And to see things clearly

Is a great power, we do see

A little knowledge can go a long while

Kings and rich men fear learning

Knowledge is power and capital

Come, students of the world,

Whatever your gender or race

Religion, caste or creed

Recognize your potential

Know that to mastery age is just a number

At a young age, you can learn more than others

Your mind is keener, your eyesight shaper

And the whole expanse of the universe or earth

At your feet lies and awaits. Your grasp

Is in it, and who said that

To achieve something

That lasts forever

One must become aged first?

 

 

Part I

 

When angels dance on their heads

If angels danced on their heads

Would they be wearing skirts or smocks

Or tunics or white or silver robes

Or golden ones or nothing much?

Would those tumble to their heads

Revealing their private parts

Which they may or may not have

Do angels darn, wear underwear?

And if they dance on 'their' heads

Whose heads would these be?

On a pin or on the heads

Of some unsuspecting folks

Or on the heads unspoken of

That grow in size when blood goes there?

That would be a raunchy feat!

 

Part 2

 (Inspired by Marshall G. Kent Sr.)

 

For an angel to dance on its/his/her head

It has to put away its lyre and harp

It has to unpin or tear off (ouch!) its wings

And fold them away or store them away

carefully in a closet or wardrobe

And pretend it is not all feet

When it comes dancing on its head

But the joy, unknown

of Seeing things upside down

brings its smile on , and melts all its frown

and heavenly ditties escape from its lips

So red, so cherry, so hep and hip

You want to kiss it.

 

 

 Beware The Pharisees And The Legalists

 

A shadow always falls across the page.

The shadow of guilt he should not have

or she

of a Christian who was not discipled well

by those who were not born again

who is made to feel he or she did

sins of commission

he or she had not done

or left out things he did not need to do anyway

sins of omission

Guilt unneeded which he or she becomes set free from

only when he finally meets his real Maker, Lord and Saviour

if he or she is lucky, if not; then woe betide

those who made him or her feel guilty

as they are Pharisees who burden human beings

and deserve to be thrown with stones tied to their necks

into the nearest ocean

for becoming stumbling blocks to such children on their way to heaven

who would otherwise be happy, free, and not guilt-ridden

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY

 

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: Dr. Koshy A.V. is presently working as an Assistant Professor in the English Department of Jazan University, Saudi Arabia. He has many books, degrees, diplomas, certificates, prizes, and awards to his credit and also, besides teaching, is an editor, anthology maker, poet, critic and writer of fiction. He runs an autism NPO with his wife, Anna Gabriel. Two of his co-authored books published in 2020 were Amazon best-sellers in India and USA, namely, Wine-kissed Poems with Jagari Mukherjee and Vodka by the Volga with Santosh Bakaya.

 

YINA ROJAS

 

YINA ROJAS

 

#20160211

 

I want to write before I grow old and forget,

All those moments and situations I will never regret.

That night I sat on your lap facing

the window over the stars,

The sweet taste of your lips on mine,

The way your hands caressed my back

As you told me all those things,

The melting sound of your voice

making my heart skip beats.

The feeling of your arms

Surrounding me in an eternal embrace,

And a million other things,

my body, mind and soul just cannot erase.

 

 

#20160417

 

In so many eyes I see

It's clear what to believe

That no fantasy

Can be recognized

Nor fathomed nor denied

To assimilate

Another face, with more grace

Just embrace your desires and flaws

And leave the fantasies

To become dreams so raw

That you can touch on everyday

Because you can be

Whatever you want to be

It's all within you to find a way.

 

 

#20210206

 

In order to have peace,

You must have faith in your heart,

To have faith in your heart,

You don't have to see,

To not see is to feel,

And to feel:

You Must Love.

 

YINA ROJAS

 

YINA ROJAS: Life and love enthusiastic, Yina, owner of Threaded by Rojas (on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & TikTok) shares her life experiences through all forms of writing. Her writings are anywhere from traditional poetry to free verses with a punch, right where you need it. She has been writing for as long as she remembers and continues to do so because ‘when you appreciate what life has to offer every day, one can find inspiration in the smallest of things.’

VILDANA STANISIC

 

VILDANA STANISIC

 

Writing As A Style Of Life

 

When pain grips my soul

and a tear is getting ready to go, then I call for help paper and pencil and with new verses, here I am.

 

I write to survive all these days, to get over the pain that goes through my head, I write when the situation is difficult because writing is my lifestyle.

When love knocks on the door of the heart, the soul when happiness exudes and then my rhyme begins to describe it.

 

Writing is my way of life because I don’t know how to live differently, so I grab a pen and paper both when I fall and when I admire life.

 

My verses keep me from all the monsters of this life, but they also share happiness with me when love and beauty come to me.

 

Writing is my shield from pain, from everyday life when dreams fall apart, and what else is a writer and poet, if not a record of my own soul.

 

 

Say No

 

Get up, woman, wipe away the tears,

punish what your youth has taken from you.

The sister stood up in her pain,

can such a man be loved.

Raise your voice stop the violence say,

think of yourself and your children.

Say no, tears on your face,

not on nights full of sighs and fear,

Not a slap in the face to every rude word,

No bloodstains on your clothes.

Arise, woman, and lift up thy voice;

you are not alone in your pain,

stand up because you have us now,

there is someone who loves you too.

 

 

Spring

 

Spring has arrived in our small area,

sunny May has arrived.

The old pear blossomed,

everything turns white

 

As the little bees buzz happily,

the sun is smiling from the sky.

Field flowers spread their scent,

with spring the whole of nature comes to life.

 

 

 

Nobody As A Poet

 

No one as a poet, sincerely love, nor purer and stronger in love burns. No one, as a poet, suffers when he loses, nor does he speak so wisely about life.

 

No one, as a poet, knows how to hide his tears or mourn what his life has taken. From his own pain, creating masterpieces, the poet’s soul in the poem is whole

 

No one, as a poet, touches the sky, in fact, creates his whole empire. An invisible bridge connects all cities, no one, like a poet awake, dreams.

 

VILDANA STANISIC

 

H.E. Amb.Dr. VILDANA STANISIC is a poet from Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has won numerous awards and recognitions in the field of culture and art. Vildana is an ambassador of peace and an ambassador of cultural creativity. She has published in various world anthologies and magazines. She is a member of the World Academy of Arts.