Faded Pictures/ Songs and Sounds
If you know me on social media - Instagram or Facebook , you probably know I've had a busy, eventful April. And the reason is NaPoWriMo - National Poetry Writing Month. I guess they should start calling these things 'international' or 'global' (I mean I do think GloNoWriMo sounds just as catchy and will roll off the tongue just as easily come November,) but a hashtag is difficult to get rid off, and perhaps it's not really such a bad thing if all it takes is poetry or fiction to bring Lennon's dream come true, even if it's only for one month in the year. But I digress. The point is, I participated in NaPoWriMo and I had no idea, no prior plans to do it. I just fell into it. I saw a friend posting poems for weekly prompts by someone called The Airplane Poetry Movement, loved their poems so much that I joined up, and then I found out it was April so it was going to be daily rather than weekly prompts. And I somehow managed to finish the challenge. I've written 40 poems in May (because the whole thing became so exciting that on somedays I also responded to prompts by another page- Winter Tangerine) - which puts me a little less than halfway through for APM's yearly challenge of 100 poems.
But anyway, what is important to me is not the the number, but the experience. Once upon a time, as a young literture student in college, I might have considered myself as some sort of a poet. And then I had 3/4 of them published, and my faith strenghtened. But then came a long dry season when I just couldn't write any more, and whatever I wrote received rejection slips from editors and I began to feel that 1.I could no longer capture that intensity which had led to my few successful poems and 2. My style was very different from the kind of poems poets wrote today and I just couldn't fake that language. And at some point, I took T.S.Eliot's comment about only true poets continuing to produce poetry after a certain age and decided I wasn't a real poet after all.
Last month has changed this feeling. Yes, I still see that my style is different from others, that there is sometimes something markedly 19th century about my words, but I have learned to love my honest voice and write as the person I am, and not as someone who I should be. And so my new motto for the rest of this year's poetic journey is authenticity. And that means, for me, to be honest to the path that the words take me on, even if I can't explain what they mean, even if I can't understand myself.
On most mornings, I retain only a vague memory of the forgotten dreams of the previous night, and sometimes, all I remember is that I had dreamt, or remembering that I had dreamt. Last night seems like a different lifetime, and the colours and shapes and sounds fleet past in free-falling dance, but the narrative is wiped away, leaving me a clean slate for my myriad restless thoughts to crowd. It is like a painting but only the empty washed out canvas remains where the colours should be, a nightly play that has lost plot and character, leaving only the fading hints of spectacle and the dying strains of music as doors close to dark halls. And sometimes I think that's how I write- putting words next to each other, built together out of barely understood thoughts and swiftly shifting feelings and nothing solid to hold on to.
And may be dreams are really memories from so far away that we can no longer hold on to them, yet that is the place where the words come from, where we must go to find them- in a journey we can't control.
It's like when you are painting with water colours in your drawing book, and some of the tints and outlines seep into the page below, and then they take the painting away On that note, here's a poem I wrote for one of the prompts last month:
In a far-away where the coconut trees swayed
Like the monsters from moth-eaten noons.
I remember long conversations with the evening breeze in summer
When the Milky Way mapped the way to the sleeping dragon’s lair.
And I remember how new the world looked after rain,
So pure that it made all the stories possible.
Most of all, I remember the scent of sunlight on the pillows
On winter afternoons and my father’s newspaper
And my mother rubbing orange rinds on my skin,
And how back then we had all the time in the world,
And all the heart.
I hope, when I leave, and they strip down these walls,
The painted over yellow bricks would still remember me.
© Ruchira Mandal
But anyway, what is important to me is not the the number, but the experience. Once upon a time, as a young literture student in college, I might have considered myself as some sort of a poet. And then I had 3/4 of them published, and my faith strenghtened. But then came a long dry season when I just couldn't write any more, and whatever I wrote received rejection slips from editors and I began to feel that 1.I could no longer capture that intensity which had led to my few successful poems and 2. My style was very different from the kind of poems poets wrote today and I just couldn't fake that language. And at some point, I took T.S.Eliot's comment about only true poets continuing to produce poetry after a certain age and decided I wasn't a real poet after all.
Last month has changed this feeling. Yes, I still see that my style is different from others, that there is sometimes something markedly 19th century about my words, but I have learned to love my honest voice and write as the person I am, and not as someone who I should be. And so my new motto for the rest of this year's poetic journey is authenticity. And that means, for me, to be honest to the path that the words take me on, even if I can't explain what they mean, even if I can't understand myself.
On most mornings, I retain only a vague memory of the forgotten dreams of the previous night, and sometimes, all I remember is that I had dreamt, or remembering that I had dreamt. Last night seems like a different lifetime, and the colours and shapes and sounds fleet past in free-falling dance, but the narrative is wiped away, leaving me a clean slate for my myriad restless thoughts to crowd. It is like a painting but only the empty washed out canvas remains where the colours should be, a nightly play that has lost plot and character, leaving only the fading hints of spectacle and the dying strains of music as doors close to dark halls. And sometimes I think that's how I write- putting words next to each other, built together out of barely understood thoughts and swiftly shifting feelings and nothing solid to hold on to.
And may be dreams are really memories from so far away that we can no longer hold on to them, yet that is the place where the words come from, where we must go to find them- in a journey we can't control.
It's like when you are painting with water colours in your drawing book, and some of the tints and outlines seep into the page below, and then they take the painting away On that note, here's a poem I wrote for one of the prompts last month:
Once upon a time…
I remember nor ’westers from when the world was not yet flat
And my song like the skylark soaring out to a melting metal skyIn a far-away where the coconut trees swayed
Like the monsters from moth-eaten noons.
I remember long conversations with the evening breeze in summer
When the Milky Way mapped the way to the sleeping dragon’s lair.
And I remember how new the world looked after rain,
So pure that it made all the stories possible.
Most of all, I remember the scent of sunlight on the pillows
On winter afternoons and my father’s newspaper
And my mother rubbing orange rinds on my skin,
And how back then we had all the time in the world,
And all the heart.
I hope, when I leave, and they strip down these walls,
The painted over yellow bricks would still remember me.
© Ruchira Mandal
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