Part 30 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through Indian poetry.Gieve Patel’s poem “On Killing a Tree” is often read as a striking account of how difficult it is to destroy a living organism that has grown over years. Its plain, almost instructional voice creates an unsettling contrast with the violence of its subject. This discussion analyses the poem’s key images and phrasing without repro…
Part 27 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through Indian poetry.Mahadevi Varma, a leading voice of Hindi Chhayavad, wrote poetry marked by inwardness, longing, loneliness and a search for a presence that remains difficult to name. Her lyric world is often quiet rather than dramatic: a lamp, a path, a tear, a cloud or an absent companion can carry the weight of a whole emotional life.Chhayava…
Part 23 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through India’s wider literary inheritance.Kazi Nazrul Islam, born in Bengal in 1899, became known as the “Rebel Poet” for writing with extraordinary energy against oppression, communal hatred and social injustice. He is now especially celebrated as the national poet of Bangladesh, while his Bengali works remain important to the shared literary histo…
Part 22 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through India’s poetic heritage.Tukaram, the seventeenth-century Marathi saint-poet, is remembered for abhangs: devotional songs that speak in a direct, intimate voice. His poetry belongs to the Varkari tradition associated with devotion to Vithoba of Pandharpur. Rather than presenting spirituality as a privilege reserved for learned elites, Tukaram …
Part 8 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through India’s poetic heritage.Amir Khusro, the medieval poet, musician and scholar associated with the Delhi Sultanate, is remembered for work that moved across Persian and Indian-language traditions. His legacy sits at the meeting point of courtly literary culture, music and popular expression. Some verses and riddles popularly attributed to him ha…
Part 3 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through India’s poetic heritage.Mirabai, the sixteenth-century poet associated with Rajasthan and the Krishna bhakti tradition, composed songs of intense devotion, longing and spiritual independence. Her poems often speak in the voice of a lover who cannot accept a life without the beloved. In this tradition, Krishna is at once a divine presence and t…
Part 1 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through India’s poetic heritage.Rabindranath Tagore’s “Where the Mind Is Without Fear” is one of the best-known poems associated with India’s struggle for intellectual freedom and self-respect. Written originally in Bengali and also rendered into English by Tagore himself, it imagines a country where people can think freely, speak truthfully, learn wi…
