“We were like cartographers, mapping the city”: An interview with Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

Abstract

is one of the most distinguished "Bombay poets", whose career spans six decades, from his first work Bharatmata: A Prayer (1966) brought out by the Ezra-Fakir Press he founded to his recently published Collected Poems 1969-2014. His contribution to the Indian English language tradition has been far-reaching, not only through his poetry itself, but through his role as translator, anthologist, editor and critic. In this interview, conducted on April 20-21, 2016, Mehrotra ranges over his extensive career, reflecting on the transnational web of genealogies, associations and translations that lie behind an "Indian poem", on his friendship and artistic collaborations with Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawalla and A.K. Ramanujan, on the break that Indian writers and artists of his generation were trying to make, and on the way his own poetry was inspired by the American Beats. He also discusses his role in the little magazine/small press movement of the 1960s and 1970s when he edited ezra and damn you: a magazine of the arts, and co-founded the Clearing House collective. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was described by his close friend and fellow poet Adil Jussawalla as the "firebrand" of the poetry scene in the 1960s and 1970s (Kohli 1991, 139). A key figure of the little magazine/small press movement, whose poems first appeared in Indian and American little magazines, he published four collections of poetry and recently brought out his Collected Poems 1969-2014 (Mehrotra 2014). He is also an incisive critical voice, whose editions, anthologies and essays, such as The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Poets (Mehrotra 1992), The Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English (Mehrotra 2003) or Partial Recall: Essays on Literature and Literary History (Mehrotra 2012), have been instrumental in shaping the field of Indian poetry in English and forcing us to revise the obvious cartographies and linear genealogies of what is commonly known as "Indian literature". The Absent Traveller, his translations of Prakrit love poetry from the 2nd century AD (Mehrotra 1991) and Songs of Kabir, his "recastings" of Kabir (Mehrotra 2011), are recognized as classics.

Afterword

“…They communicate with each other through the rooftops or employ coded taps on the walls separating them. 102 One becomes a spy for Spain and exploits her position as a concubine, thereby shaping history and politics. 103 Enslaved women-Circassians, Christians from Calabria and Valencia, and sub-Saharan women from Abyssinia and Sudan-build mutual bonds in the lodging houses before they are sold, and by sharing stories their 'sadness turn[s] into joy and happiness'.…”