Rochelle Potkar's Blog, page 63

Poetry galore

Three places, this month, where I will be sharing my poetry.

In Chennai on 3rd & 5th June

In Mumbai on 9th June

Pick and choose, or better still… come for all.

I’m so excited I will be reading some newer pieces.

Postcards from Hong Kong

On non-poetry Wednesdays, this window of my new Hong Kong house in Kennedy Town keeps me busy. It changes every other time with the slightest tweak of mist, sunlight, cloud, and rain… leaving me spell-bound for the whole day.

Today I glimpsed a rainbow, strawing from the sea, my heartbeat stilling…

Yesterday I saw three planes orbiting this sky at three different altitudes – needles pin-pricking the haystack of clouds.

Only Nature can shut us up and out. | I will miss this window in June when I leave for India.

And then comes the poetry in Hong Kong, every Wednesday. Fringe club or Peel Street.

I’ve realized wherever I go (few places: Europe, S. Korea) I don’t search for people of my skin or nationality, but mad people or writers and poets. They are my biradhari – however moody, crazy, bi-polar, funny, serious, kinky, smoky they might be. | Literature and madness is religion. The word is god and prayer.

And so yesterday I walk around Central – supposed to be the main junction – the pot where everything climaxes and culminates – I walk its lanes to find Orange peel half-expecting rinds at my feet.

Dark is this alley, glistening with young flesh, – stars of the night rendering in goosebumps – comedy night invitations, music, clinks of drinks at the brinks of outdoor restaurants, people in black: shimmering or plain… I walk higher asking for Orag…ange peee…eel. Half a mind saying I am not going back if I don’t find it in time amidst Orange free and Hong Kong House, pubs, and restaurants.

Then it happens –a door, a pathway, a stairwell, an elevator. Orange peeled into soft mute glitz and treasure of treasures – sheer pleasures – a bunch of poets lacing the rectangular glass of a tiny, cozy room. Everyone has a drink in their hand.

And Henrik, and Rama, and Blair, Akinsola, and Vishal, Andrew, Malini and Laura… – and such a crackling variety of poetry packed into one night, I’m stunned. High on wine and the discovery of the craziest lot with energy, verve, joie de vivre they will take a glass room levitating on the hallucinate of comic camaraderie alone. | It’s nice to see serious poets reading serious stuff, but lovelier to see crack-us-by-the-minute poets reading serious stuff, soul-searching stuff, hilarious stuff, riveting stuff. | I am charged like a bulb. I too add voice to this with three poems of which Golden city was appreciated the most.

And I come away smiling all the way through the MTR – an inner smile under a poker face. And then grinning once I reach home.

[Sorry no photos of this event.]

But me reading my poetry at Cyberport, a Wednesday earlier.

 

Turn quote

And life happens when I’m not looking, or looking the other way – at another lifetime’s worth of experience and ahsaas. So this appeared a while ago and I’m sharing it here only now.

Another of my quotes, unquoted on the deck of Observer Out Post.

“The reason for sexual assault is power and oppression more than uncontrolled lust. It is the belief that they can get away with their crimes, because the laws are not swift in implementation, neither the punishment very severe.”

Rochelle Potkar

Writer, Poet

A tête–à–tête captured in Kashmir Observer, April 3, 2015.

A tête–à–tête with Farooq Shah, Chief Correspondent of Kashmir Observer, April 3, 2015.

http://www.kashmirobserver.net/news/i...

Observer Out Post, quote unquote

That time of the little day when my quote appears on the deck of a newspaper: Observer Out Post, quote unquote.

QUOTE UNQUOTE

“Most Indians wouldn’t know the difference between the blurry lines of life and art. Once upon a time this may have been the land of Kamasutra but we are too disconnected into darkness with our interpretations of female sexuality now.”

Rochelle Potkar

Writer, Poet, Storyteller

*

(a cropped effort)

My Chicken soup story is here: S for stumble, S for stable

The Chicken soup for the Indian Entrepreneur’s soul is out.

My story ‘S for stumble S for stable’ covers an online doctor-patient portal -Mediangels.com, and the challenges its doctor-entrepreneurs faced in running it against the backdrop of inadequate healthcare financing and poor healthcare infrastructure.

 

Media. media.

And some coverage in the media on poetry and the city Mumbai.

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-mumbai-and-the-poems-within-2064820

http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/PiIf2yCkU724MEaeTO1UIM/In-Mumbai-the-poetry-never-ends.html

*

I think poetry is on a silent revolution in pockets of our nation. High time! Everyday someone calls to whisper a line of rebellion. Open-mics, addas, book launches, festival hours, poetry competitions, contest deadlines, quotes, and stanzas.

Everyday someone speaks of line breaks, enjambments, lyric, cadence, a breath too near, a breath too far.

… or of ambitions of taking poetry far up, or bringing it down. Elitist thoughts clashing with popular notions ‘n approaches. Some complete, some half-baked.

Should quality poetry* be preserved in hallowed altars and corridors, or should it be washed down the dirty gulleys and lanes of our city and living perimeters? When we talk of the sale of poetry books, who should the buyer be? The person near the altar or in the gulley? Should quality poetry go to people or people come to it?

Everyone has an opinion, but mind you, however intolerable those might be from porous factions, it follows lyric and cadence, and hence can be pardoned.

Truth is hard, harsh. I don’t want its bitterness if not in a chant.

And then this that appeared here. A byte of sorts. Disconnected from poetry, but categorized under media.

http://transasianews.com/cinema-tv/4399-cbfc-disallows-screening-of-erotic-hollywood-movie

 

*quality poetry – only sounds like kwality walls icecream – is poetry that works. I can’t define it more than this. It  probably is a pantheon, its pillars being of beauty, sensuality, temporality, meaning, music, movement, beat, a reminder of worlds, an amnesia of existence uff, I can’t define it.

This corpse stirs under my wanting fingertips… ;)

You, of course, know what Exquisite corpse is. But for the new ones: Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver or rotating corpse is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. (Wikipedia source def)

I know that exquisite corpse happens with short stories as well, with each writer adding one new paragraph. I haven’t seen the end of these or what happens to such stories. Are they good? Effective? Successful? So I can’t comment. But I recently heard from a poet-friend about tanka-linked haibuns, authored by two haijins. So collaborations of all kinds are welcome. Even those with the Self and recurrent characters in anthologies, frame stories, novel series…

I’m digressing. I was supposed to hoot about my achievements. I was supposed to tom-tom about this. I was supposed to market myself:

…so in this 2015 Poetry prize Exquisite corpse by Indiana Review, we got to see not only the first line: ‘She unravels a ball of copper wire’ by poet and judge Eduardo C. Corral, but also what the other poets sculpted out.

Super happy that my line too found a mention in the favorites. Go check:

http://indianareview.org/2015/03/2015-poetry-prize-exquisite-corpse/

Hope Street Poets, Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2015

Hope Street Poets, KGAF 2015 will be a memorable evening for me. There was just too much kohinoor to put into words.

Let me stay speechless, dumb as a flower under the sun | This evening will stay ever-brimming. Spoonfuls and sips taken from this spring, to fill my cup of other small evenings.

I met many interesting and great poets, and some for the very first time.

The poems I read were: Transmogrified, Raw forms, Disquiet, Thumbprint, Palimpsest, and Biscooti love.

(And since I’m absolutely in love with the essence, sense and concept of Time, the picture with the clock at my feet is my favorite picture. In what adorable act did somebody coyly place that clock there for timekeepers. Blown to bits with it.)

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In which Nivedita of Nivasini Publishers interviews me…

When did you begin writing?

RP: I began writing in 2007, trigged by a writing workshop I attended at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai. I wrote the story Tropical Estuary which five years later got published in an international magazine without a word changed.

What was your first muse, if you remember?

RP: My first muse was the silence of the estuary near Dumas, Gujarat that was the trigger point for my story ‘Tropical Estuary’. How noiselessly the sea and river make love, and for so so long. After that I have had many muses: objects, philosophies, nature, animal, science, ecosystems, and the behaviour of man, woman, and child.

What triggered you to begin writing and what keeps you going?

…

For more, hit the link: http://nivasini.com/in-conversation-with-rochelle-potkar/