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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Reporting & Essays |
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Essay |
“YOUR MISSING PERSON”:
Clearing House and the Bombay Poets
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| The forgotten story of a poetry publishing collective |
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Published : 1 November 2010 |
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ALL IMAGES : ADIL JUSUWALLA, ARVIND KRISHNA METHORA, MELANIE SILGARDO AND RAFIQUE BAGHDADI |
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| "W |
E SHOULD FORGET ABOUT INDIA,”
said poet and critic Arvind Krishna
Mehrotra. He was speaking as a
member of the audience at a panel
discussion on ‘The Art of Criticism’ at the Jaipur Literature
Festival in January this year. The consensus on the panel
was that literary criticism has let us down—for several
reasons, but especially
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because our critics have not learnt how to make connections from book to book, how to revisit the past, and how to create a larger conversation about literature.
Over lunch the following day, I asked Arvind to elaborate.
“We are perpetually starting on a clean slate which is why
we’ll all go down the same hole. Which is the hole of forgetfulness,”
he said. Arvind thought this was true especially of
fiction writers in English, who have rarely felt bound to each
other. “There is nothing known as new fiction. But there
has been a new poetry. Poets are able to think of themselves
as part of a tradition. Few novelists were enthusing younger
writers but the poets were. Many younger poets turned to
the older poets when they started writing poems.”
I had sought out Arvind to talk about Clearing House,
the poetry publishing collective which he, along with poets
Adil Jussawalla, Gieve Patel and Arun Kolatkar, started in
Bombay in the mid-1970s. I saw a Clearing House book for
the first time in the late 1990s when the Cuttack-based poet
Jayanta Mahapatra sent me his The False Start (which the
collective had published in 1980). Its khaki cover featured
a stark image of two sheets of crumpled paper. The book’s
unusual squarish size and its elegant font, the simplicity of
the design and the wide space given to the poems on the
page, the lack of any form of advertisement in the whole,
and the beauty of the yellowing pages—all gave it an air of
fragility, an aura of having come out of a set of circumstances
that was now history. I have been curious about Clearing
House ever since.
What was Clearing House? Was it an entrepreneurial
undertaking on behalf of poetry or an expression of the
friendship amongst a group of poets, a gesture towards that
sense of fellowship that Arvind referred to? I wanted to understand
how these Bombay poets came to apply their collective energies to an unusual publishing experiment. But
I was also interested in the nitty-gritty: how many books
were published and what were the print runs? How were
they marketed? Who handled what? How did they put the
writing of poetry aside to make space for the practical business
of publishing?
In Arvind’s description of it, Clearing House sounded like
a straightforward venture:
In the early 1970s we all realised that we had manuscripts.
There were no publishers. Then Oxford University
Press under R Parthasarathy started the New Poetry
in India series. Some titles did appear under that.
But what would happen to the others? We decided not
to wait and formed a co-operative. I had been bringing
out magazines like damn you and ezra from Bombay and
Allahabad. And I knew something about the small press
scene in America… Clearing House was very successful
because the books were cheap. We made a pre-publication
offer. And Arun Kolatkar designed the covers.
The gentleman who has taken the seat to my left at the
lunch table starts to spontaneously join his voice to Arvind’s
recollections about the collective. “This is Vijay Tankha,”
says Arvind to me. “He teaches Philosophy at St Stephen’s
College and he reviewed the first four Clearing House titles
in The Book Review.” I am amazed at the serendipity. “This
is literary history,” says Arvind.
Eager to net other nuggets of literary history (not impossible,
given the huge concentration of the literary fraternity
at the festival), I speak to poet and scholar K Satchidanandan.
I ask him how and when he first encountered the Bombay
poets in Kerala. ‘Satchi’ goes back to the roots of his
own poetry. As he starts talking about European modernism
and how exposure to it changed his entire attitude to
literature, I realise that his reading of, for example, the 1976
Clearing House edition of Arun Kolatkar’s now-famous
book-length poem Jejuri, was part of the larger excitement
of being a modern poet in Kerala in the 1960s and 70s. And
that excitement—of discovering the Penguin Modern European
Poets series in a Cochin bookshop, of writing articles on Jean-Paul Sartre at the age of 19, of translating Allen
Ginsberg’s Howl into Malayalam—was in turn shared by
other Indian poets of the time, regardless of the language
in which they wrote. “I know that we were reading similar
things because in the conversations it was very clear that
we were,” says Satchi.
Nevertheless, there are differences. An interesting one
concerns poets’ ways of expressing modernity. Satchi’s memories
of striking out as a poet are closely connected with a
collective of 20 poets, critics and poetry enthusiasts led by
the stalwart Ayyappa Paniker, a collective expressly formed,
in the late 1960s, to give voice to the ‘new poetry.’ “Until then
only metrical poetry was written in Malayalam. We began to
use free verse,” says Satchi. The collective launched a quarterly
called Kerala Kavita in 1968. “It did entertain older poets
who were not really modernists but the bulk of space was
reserved for new poetry and writing on new poetry.” Satchi
tells me that Kerala Kavita eventually became an annual, not
only due to shortage of funds but also because the ‘new poetry’
later began to be published by mainstream journals like
Mathrubhumi, and their journal “lost its edge.”
The Kerala moderns not only challenged established poetic
conventions, they were also aware of the need to give
expression to their difference through journals like Kerala
Kavita whose specific mandate was to showcase the new poetry.
I can’t think of a comparable manifesto in the case of
the English poets, even though they were, at the very same
time as the Kerala poets, staking out their own territory. If
they did not gather under the aegis of a specific journal or
collective or publishing house, how did the English poets
in the 1960s and 70s view the pioneering poems they were writing; what name did they give to what they were doing?
What Arvind says about younger poets always having
turned to older ones is true, going by the testimonies of
younger poets (a testimony sometimes expressed in verse,
such as Ranjit Hoskote and Amit Chaudhuri’s poems on
Nissim Ezekiel). But does this valuable sense of personal
connection between poets amount to an identifiable sense
of tradition—if one understands this as laying claim to a
self-definition—in the way that Satchi and his contemporaries
laid claim to the title ‘new’?
In his introduction to The Oxford India Anthology of
Twelve Modern Indian Poets, Arvind makes a telling comment about Adil Jussawalla’s sequence
of poems Missing Person (which is possibly the most existentially
bleak book of poems ever written in the language).
Arvind writes, “In Jussawalla’s sequence, a missing person
is not just what our hero becomes, it’s what he is, his very
condition defined by absence, ‘the central absence of the
Indo-Anglian psyche.’”
This awareness of absence runs through not just Adil’s
poetry but his critical engagement with Indian literature
as well. Speaking at a conference in Singapore in 1986 about
the distrust of English language and literature among Indian
writers, he said, “But what if you begin to distrust your
whole being, distrust your modernity and everything that’s
made you modern? Can you write anything at all then when
it was the very force of modernism that compelled you to
write a certain kind of literature in the first place?”
When I visit Adil in Bombay to talk about Clearing House,
he says, “Something is missing. It’s a sense of literature.
What does literature mean in this country? Do we have a literary culture? How do we set about building it?”
This unmoored feeling seems to have prevented English language
writers, even poets, from subsuming their work
under banners. What they have done instead is make tentative,
private and small-scale attempts to form alliances and
have conversations, attempts of which Clearing House remains
the most interesting example.
| C |
LEARING HOUSE was founded in Bombay in 1976,
in which year it published four books—Arun
Kolatkar’s Jejuri, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s Nine
Enclosures, Adil Jussawalla’s Missing Person and
Gieve Patel’s How Do you Withstand, Body. Four years later,
it published Dilip Chitre’s Travelling in a Cage and Jayanta
Mahapatra’s The False Start. Arvind Krishna |
Mehrotra’s Distance in Statute Miles appeared in 1982 and HO Nazareth’s Lobo (1984) was the imprint’s last title. “I’ll tell you why we couldn’t reprint our books. We didn’t have the money,” says Adil, sitting in his Cuffe Parade flat, which was the address for Clearing House for most of its existence.
The other Bombay-based poetry publishing collective
that appeared almost simultaneously had an even shorter
life. Newground, started by Bombay poets Santan Rodrigues,
Melanie Silgardo and Raul D’Gama Rose in 1978,
published four books—launching with 3 Poets, which carried
poems by the three founders—before fading out. In the
late 1980s, Praxis, run single-handedly by Adil Jussawalla,
published three books of poetry. Other short-lived ventures
included The Hack Writers’ Cooperative started by Rajiv
Rao and Rafique Baghdadi, which published their joint collection 45RPM in 1983 and—earlier—Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s
Ezra-Fakir Editions from which appeared, among
other things, his long poem bharatmata: a prayer in 1966
(price 50 paise). “Like everything else in those days, it was
cyclostyled,” says Arvind.
None of these ventures developed into institutions; indeed,
for the most part, the poets seemed to have come
together only to publish themselves and their friends, the
focus was overwhelmingly on Bombay poets, there was no
clear differentiation between editorial and administrative
responsibilities and everyone pitched in, personal funds
were usually involved, and no one seemed to know much
about how publishing actually worked. “Some money was
spent foolishly,’ says Adil of Clearing House. “I thought we
would get orders from abroad, so I got a list of bookshops
abroad—Gotham in New York and so on—and we sent out
a flyer designed by Arun [Kolatkar]. A bookseller friend
of mine said, just don’t do it, nothing will happen. Sure
enough, there wasn’t a single order.”
A different flyer was designed for readers within the country,
inviting them to avail of a pre-publication offer. For a
total of 25 rupees, they could buy all four titles which would
otherwise cost them twice that price. The response was encouraging
and half the print run of 750 copies per book was
sold this way. When the time came to publish a new set of
books, a new flyer with the same terms was sent out, but
Clearing House found that this time there were much fewer
takers. It was as if, having once tried mail order for novelty’s
sake, readers felt no obligation to try it again. Printing
further titles was only possible if a sufficient number of pre-publication offers could be sold and since they were
not, Clearing House had to eventually fold up.
The Clearing House flyer adopts a tone both direct and
wry—the voice of poets speaking to their readers without
the bombast of marketing spiel:
You’ll get all four books for 25 rupees. Which is just
about what it’s going to cost Clearing House to print
them. Amazing how one comes across examples of selflessness
now and then in a world run on avarice… The
idea is simply this: To bring the poems within reach of
anyone who wants to read them. After all they [the poets]
have nothing to lose but their money and an entire
audience to gain.
Most Clearing House books did not make their way out of
Bombay. Much can be said about the intellectual fault lines,
the differences of language, history and feeling, that render
the edifice called ‘Indian literature’ something of a fiction,
but Adil thinks material factors like poor distribution and
infrastructure are equally responsible. If poetry published
in Bombay cannot be read in, say, Calcutta (and Clearing
House made very little headway in Calcutta), then thinking
of Indian literature as one whole is something of a trap,
thinks Adil.
While the publishing and distribution of poetry continues
to be a challenge, the localness of these poetry collectives
is also the mark of an achievement: the contribution
to a ‘scene’ in Bombay which laid the ground for the genre
known as Indian poetry in English. To appreciate this, one has to step back from instances of book publishing and look
at poetry-related activities as a whole in that city starting
from the years after Independence. A glance at the catalogue
in the back pages of Bruce King’s seminal Modern Indian
Poetry in English reveals that for several decades after
Nissim Ezekiel founded the magazine Quest in 1955, poets
in that city did more than write poetry.
The number of journals that appeared after Quest and
the speed with which they disappeared suggests a scene
charged with energy and risk-taking, with poets crisscrossing
between different activities, of which writing poetry
was only one. Ezekiel himself pioneered this kind of intense
and varied commitment to the field. Apart from writing and
teaching (and mentoring poets), he was editorially involved,
at different times, in The Illustrated Weekly of India, PEN,
Imprint, Poetry India, Kavi India and Freedom First. These
publications set the standards for Indian literary journals.
“The six issues of Poetry India (1966-67), edited by Ezekiel,
were one of the high moments of modern Indian poetry…”
writes Bruce King. “For two years India had a poetry magazine
of the highest international standards.” Several other
Bombay magazines with names no one remembers today
flitted past during that time—Bombay Duck, Opinion, Dionysius,
Blunt, Indian Writing Today, Tornado, Opinion Literary
Quarterly, Volume, Fulcrum, Keynote, Kaiser-E-Hind,
The Bombay Literary Review and so on.
“They all folded up eventually, some like mayflies,” says
Manohar Shetty, who edited the first three issues of Keynote
over 1982-83. “As the editor, I knew that the magazine
would not last too long given the erratic nature of its financing. So I decided to include as much as I could on the arts so
long as the going was good.”
Alongside magazine publishing, the figure of the poet-anthologist,
surveying the scene and trying to impose some
kind of order on it, properly makes its appearance for the
first time in the early 1970s. Saleem Peeradina’s anthology
of Indian English poetry first appeared as a special edition
of Quest in 1972 and was considered a critical response to P
Lal’s massive and apparently less discerning Modern Indian
Poetry in English which had been published three years
previously. “I was still a grad student in the English department
at Bombay University and I can never forget the confidence the people at Quest placed in me,” says Saleem. The
selection was issued by Macmillan as Contemporary Indian
Poetry in English: An Assessment and Selection, and is still
in circulation today.
Seen from the perspective of this dynamic, even frenzied,
literary activity, Clearing House and the publishing experiments
it inspired appear less like failed business ventures
and more ways of giving body and substance to the ephemeral
business of writing poetry in English. If there has never
been anything like a Bombay school of poetry, there has,
nevertheless, been this: a shared belief in the worth of writing
poetry in the English language and a sustained attempt
to give expression to this belief through a network of publishing,
distributing, reading, writing and editing activities.
The story of English poetry in Bombay is not just one about
individual poets but a story about the many ways in which
these poets tried to have conversations about poetry.
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Jaya Kanoria
28 February 2011
10:34 PM
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The University of Mumbai's 2nd Year BA course in Literature in English includes Indian Literature in English and in Translation. While the course is not meaty enough, students are exposed to poetry including selections from Jejuri. This is a wonderful article for our student's to read, because it brings alive the struggle that Indian English poets went through and continue to face if they want to be heard. In fact, an ex-student of Sophia College, where I teach, forwarded this to all of us. And I think it's because she grew to love Indian English poetry while studying it that she wrote that the article was "a very, very interesting read". Sometimes one is grateful for the trajectories that University syllabi follow.
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Ashwin
14 January 2011
09:00 PM
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Thank you Ms.Hasan, interesting piece. As a curious layperson, what is the impact the internet (and decentralised publishing) is having on Indian writing of poetry in India? Because reading this article one gets the distinct sense that these endeavours weren't *only* about getting the poems out there, they were also about forging bonds and creating a sense of belonging and community for Indian English poets. While the internet certainly provides the outlets for publishing, how do contemporary Indian-English poets get together and forge that sense of belonging? Has that changed at all?
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S
8 November 2010
10:57 AM
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It is appalling to note that such an interesting, (clearly strongly researched) article on Indian poetry in English, by the magazine's books editor no less--consistently gets Ak Ramanujan's name wrong. What editorial standards are these? He was a vital poet, that is stated as much even here, isn't it important to ensure there aren't ridiculous things like names misspelt? It takes away from the seriousness of intent and interest of the author. Brings one back to the general ignorance about poetry, ironically lamented in the article itself.
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ncnaidu
6 November 2010
08:47 PM
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i will have to scout for these titles by clearing house at the old book stalls all over india. i would love to
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Ranjit Hoskote
4 November 2010
04:25 PM
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Dear Anjum,
Congratulations on this article! It is interesting to see Clearing House through your eyes, since these wonderful books -- and their authors -- were such an integral part of my own growing up as a poet in Bombay.
On another note, though, I'd like to respond to a comment you make about my anthology, Reasons for Belonging (in which you feature). Do I really reduce cosmopolitanism to a question of physical location in the Introduction to Reasons for Belonging? When I speak of being "at home in a world in which the boundary between the local and the global has increasingly been blurred…", clearly this refers to a pervasive condition that would affect you wherever you are; there is simply no 'pure, uncontaminated local' any more. The entire argument in my Introduction is for a 'cosmopolitanism of attitude' that is related to cultural hybridity, regards the world as an archive and a domain of activity without borders, generates a dynamic bricolage from diverse resources, and isintimately associated with transcultural negotiations that continue inside one's consciousness -- irrespective of where one might live (whether New York, Shillong, Bombay, Allahabad, Delhi or Calicut, for instance). This cosmopolitanism has a lot to do with the fact that many of us work from distributed identities, plural allegiances and multiple locations. So the diversity of physical location is a subsidiary point, not the main one.
Warmly,
Ranjit
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Ashok Shahane
3 November 2010
10:12 PM
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A nice reminder of an exciting time. Nostalgic.
Failure of the critics looks like a common symptom when anything new is happening.
the whole sensibility that Clearing House nurtured was -- & probably is -- absent even in today's publishing world.
That's what made the Clearing House books a pioneering effort -- & it still remains pioneering even now. -- that's a pity.
thanks a lot for giving an opportunity to relive the era.
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Sumana Roy
3 November 2010
05:07 PM
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Thanks, Anjum. This one so much needed to be written. Excellent!
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Satchidanandan
31 October 2010
01:01 PM
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Thanks, Anjum for that wonderful reminder. sabitha and I have been thinking for some time of building up an archive of modern poetry in India-the little magazines , books published often by little publishing houses , group histories, book covers, photographs, discussions, debates , critical writings.. we are likely lose all that soon , esp with many of thepioneers alreday gone and many getting old.We also spoke once to Keki about it. Can we form some kind of a collective that first collects these magazines , books etc in English as well as the languages and then encourage young people to do reasearch and writing based on them? Arvind is right mostly about the failure of criticism.In Malayalam, we poets had to play that role too.( Ayyappa Paniker and myself particularly) as critics were far behind in their sensibility and even reading. Thanks for the stimulus.
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