Prabhu Guptara
Prabhu’s poems have been published since the 1960s, in magazines and anthologies. Two collections of his poems, Beginnings & Continuations, were published in the 1970s by Writers Workshop, Calcutta. He edited An Anthology of Contemporary Indian Religious Poetry in English, as well as Selected Poems of Leela Dharmaraj. In January 2017, Skylark Publications, UK, chose him Poet of the Month, and he is included in Debrett’s People of Today.
Mini Interview (2019)
Your poetics?
I feel that poetry exists somewhere on the horizon between imagery, sound, psychology, philosophy, politics, history, life experience, the natural world, structure, word-play and silence.
Your influences?
While I am not uninfluenced by contemporary poets, and my own work is perhaps more in that vein, I like to suffer from the illusion that the influences on my work started with the Sanskrit and Hindi classics but, so far as English is concerned, with Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and The Canterbury Tales, and ended with W B Yeats, Dylan Thomas, TS Eliot, CS Lewis, and WH Auden.
Why is the Matwaala fest and collective relevant and needed?
I don't know why others need festivals and collectives; I need festivals to celebrate (in my adolescence, we used to say "Any excuse is good enough for a celebration!), and I need Matwaala to encourage, challenge and refine my work.
I feel that poetry exists somewhere on the horizon between imagery, sound, psychology, philosophy, politics, history, life experience, the natural world, structure, word-play and silence.
Your influences?
While I am not uninfluenced by contemporary poets, and my own work is perhaps more in that vein, I like to suffer from the illusion that the influences on my work started with the Sanskrit and Hindi classics but, so far as English is concerned, with Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and The Canterbury Tales, and ended with W B Yeats, Dylan Thomas, TS Eliot, CS Lewis, and WH Auden.
Why is the Matwaala fest and collective relevant and needed?
I don't know why others need festivals and collectives; I need festivals to celebrate (in my adolescence, we used to say "Any excuse is good enough for a celebration!), and I need Matwaala to encourage, challenge and refine my work.