Shaleen Kumar Singh’s Reveiw of Write Son Write

K.V. Dominic’s Write Son Write

1228/2011

Write Son Write is K. V. Dominic’s second anthology of poems or better to quote poet’s own words – ‘an outcome of my 14 months poetic voyage from Sept. 2009 to Nov 2010.’ The poet has now established himself both as editor and poet in Indian Literary firmament by editing a number of anthologies and also composing poems which are qualitative and reflective both. As the poet believes poetry as the ‘shortest’, ‘captivating’ and ‘didactic’ literary form, he chose it for voicing his concern in a time of ‘busy’ and ‘peaceless’ life. And also being a sincere visionary of contemporary bitter realities, he exhibits a bit of his cause of inspiration as follows:

Since reading habits of modern man diminish considerably and she/he substitutes that habits to watching T. V. and such visual media, I believe that it is my duty as a writer to promote poetry at any cost. [Preface]

In his preface, Dominic raises several worthwhile reflective points in which he declares out rightly that ‘Fiction has become an addiction to present readers’ and also, ‘a majority of Indian poets writing in English publish their excellent anthologies spending thousands from their pockets’. He puffs up and earlier mentions that he had ‘already published four edited books consisting of innumerable critical articles on the poetry of established and emerging contemporary Indian poets in English.’ [Though when Dominic was editor of Indian Journal of Postcolonial Literatures, how much place he could spare for poetry lovers and poets, is still not known. Also he edits three journals now Writers Editors Critics, International Journal on Postcolonial Literatures and New Fiction Journal (A journal purely of fiction). Does this not show the poet’s double standards of theory and practice? Does this not demarcate that ‘an addiction of fiction’ has not spared the poet too? Besides, the poetry anthologies edited by the poet were on both ‘established’ and ‘emerging’ poets? What his editing has contributed to console the heads of self-published poets is still unknown. How far his editing of four anthologies has played significant role in the promotion of these poets is also not made clear by the poet.

However, his poems have been well-advocated by esteemed poet and critic PCK Prem who hyperbolically writes that ‘there are very few poets who have shown so much anxiety and anguish towards the poor and the exploited’ I would recall the names of O.P.Bhatnagar, Keki N Daruwalla, Nissim Ezekiel, Dilip Chitre, Namdeo Dhasal, I.K.Sharma, A.N.Dwivedi, Keshav Malik, I.H.Rizvi, R.C.Shukla, C.L.Khatri, R.K.Bhushan and a host of others who have written so much of social reality that they are recognized first as social conscious poets than anyone else. But excluding these minor pitfalls, if we come to adjudicate the present collection, we will find the book carries 31 poems spreading in 99 pages graphically presented by Dominic’s former student. Most of the poems of the collection are addressed ‘to’ or ‘for’ some person or thing which established that the poet remains sensitive to the things and persons around him. Poems like ‘Musings from an Infant’s Face’ (69), ‘Teresa’s Tears’ (81), ‘Train Blast’ (85), ‘Water, Water, Everywhere’ (91), To My Deceased Cats’ (85), ‘An Elegy on My Ma’ (38), ‘Massacre of Cats’ (44), ‘Hunger’s Call’ (66), and ‘Victory to Thee, Mother India’ (42) are highly emotive and meditative poems. But poems like ‘Attachment’(51), ‘Musings from an Infant’s Face’ (69), ‘God is Helpless’ (63), ‘For the Glory of God’ (61) are the poems that exhibits Christian faith rooted deep in the poems of the poet. One can mark the excerpt from his ‘Attachment’:

What difference is there

between men and animals?

For He resides in all.

Why should I seek Him

in churches and prayer halls? (51)

Like a true and honest poet, Dominic brings people’s hypocritical and dual character of men. In the poem ‘Massacre of Cats’ (44), he relates a story of his cat which was murdered by the poet’s neighbour one day. He exhibits their hypocrisy and says:

My materialist neighbours

Go to church everyday

Read the Bible everyday

But never read the part

To love other beings

As fellow beings. (46)

Many poems like ‘Coconut Palm’ (56), ‘Lines Composed from Thodupuzha River’s Bridge’, ‘Crow the Black Beauty’ (57) and ‘Flowers’ Greetings’ (59) describe the beauty of nature, while ‘Nature Weeps’ (71) and ‘Water, Water, Everywhere’ (91) reflect the other furious face of nature and the poet’s vision of observing the things from multiple angles also comes to light.

To sum up, the present volume of Dominic’s poetry is a rosary of variegated flowers both fragrant and poignant. He is surely not one of those self published poets because Sai Sudarshan Kcherry, the owner of Authorspress is above board and also one of those chosen few publishers who publish poetry unmindful of its sale and business compulsions.

Write Son Write: (A Collection of Poem) K. V. Dominic, First Pub. by GNOSIS (An Imprint of Authorspress) New Delhi: GNOSIS. 2011. ISBN: 9789381030257, Price: (USD):10.68, Pages: 99. Reviewed by Shaleen Kumar Singh