Yogesh Patel
Interviewed by Usha Akella
1. I want to begin this interview on a note of gratitude for the work you've done for the South Asian Community. The Matwaala poet-of-honor is extended not just for talent or poetry achievements but also for service to the poetry community. So, on that note, I'd like to ask you to share the work you've done in the UK through Skylark publications and the Word Masala Award.
First, we need to understand from where the drive and passion come. When it comes to Asians, the attitudes in the USA and the UK are inherently different. Britain, due to its imperial past still has not relinquished its prejudices, the sahib and chaiwala interaction. The whole landscape of publishing, magazines, institutions, education, government departments in the UK, and media suffer from this mental paralysis. Asians here in Britain have mainly pooled from the East African expulsion in 1972 while the USA took advantage of the brain drain from India. That is why the USA has Pulitzer winners like Vijay Seshadri, poet laureates like Pramila Venkateswaran and professors of language and literature like the late Meena Alexander vested with the acceptance of Indians that is still absent in the UK.
There is also something else to add to this background to understand the problems facing South-Asian poets and writers. The publishers in the UK and the USA consider India as a major market and have their own publishing subsidiaries there with the books from England and the USA channelled for sales. Hachette in India published Meena Alexander’s last collection. Hachette in the USA, she told me were to publish it after two years! I don’t know if they have since she has passed away. What is it saying about the western publishers and editorial policies?
Blunt talk as this makes me a persona non grata in the UK mainstream. Nonetheless, my activism stems from the ignoring of homegrown talent. In 2007, some English authors complained about the Decibel Prize ran by Penguin for the writers of Asian, African and Caribbean background forcing the prize to wind up because of the spite. There were no qualms about the gender prize like Orange, which, thank goodness, continues to the day. They also had no problems with the prizes entirely offered to only a certain age group. The colour-hatred thus forces you to fight as I do. I was with my friend Lord Parekh having tea at the House of Lords and we were deliberating my concerns. He encouraged me to act. Working to make a difference for the others has always been a driving factor in my life. It comes from a life of displacements, turmoil and struggles. Hence, the Word Masala project was born out of two triggers: A hullabaloo around the demise of the Decibel Prize and my discussions with Lord Parekh. Debjani (Chatterjee) coined the title Word Masala.
I funded and revitalised the Skylark philosophy as Skylark Publications UK, with new objectives to give voice and to promote South-Asian diaspora poets. I had just retired from optometry. It allowed me to devote more time to the cause. Our first anthology was published in 2011. Agents and editors had copies with the aim to introduce those selected authors and poets to them. At the London International Bookfair, many names were promoted with a direct approach. Word Masala Foundation subsidised, created and promoted the diaspora poets with their Award programme to enhance their presence. Skylark registered new ezine eSkylark with the British Library and started publishing an e-magazine with a poet-of-the-month honour bestowed on a poet. We researched and published a selection of markets, other opportunities and the listings of events with the South-Asian diaspora in mind. We created a review club to plug-in reviews of books by our award-winners. We also declared our eventual aim to have Poetry Film screenings. Zata banks had archived one of my poetry films, so I brought her as a guest at our event to inspire our poets. I am still curating it. Our first-collection award went to Mona Dash with the publication of her collection, A Certain Way, published by Skylark. Much of the work by Word Masala Foundation is not for publicity and remains behind doors, providing help on contracts, sorting out problems with publishers, advising on rights, personal advice to authors, promoting their work with magazines and publishers on a personal basis, editorial help for potential writers, and much more. My personal relationship with publishers and editors obviously plays a great part in my work away from the public eye. So, I am thankful to Matwaala Lit Fest that it honours me for something others don’t see.
2. Your work as a literary editor goes back prior to the Word Masala Anthology, way back to your publications in India. Please share.
To reply, I will use my comprehensive note published in PN Review. We published our first issue, from Aligarh, in 1969. Our aim was to publish poetry in translation from around the world and from the regional languages of India and to include emerging Indian poets writing in English. We published up to one hundred issues at a time before email, battling with stamps, dealing with the Indian problem of currency conversion, packing requirements of the postal service, the queues at lazy post offices, and no intercity telephone lines.
Skylark was founded by the late Baldev Mirza. A student of optometry at the state medical faculty, I joined Baldev as co-editor in 1969. I preferred to remain in the background and we set up letterpress printing in an Aligarh slum to meet our budget. Skylark continued to print in that rickety fashion until its final issue. Then it slipped into obscurity. Such labour-intensive printing would never do now. Baldev has died and many issues of Skylark are lost. I have a few random issues. But with postcolonial Indian English literature only in its second decade, the magazine had a profound influence. New voices had a podium where they stood alongside international poets in translation. I revisited Skylark’s surviving issues and a note from Terry Cuthbert in Oxford fell out of one: ‘Wazir Agha (Pakistan) is very much an excellent poet & you must be proud of getting his work in your magazine. You seem to be an important cultural event in India, and I know that many in your sub-continent love poetry, which is more than can be said with the average Englishman!’
Poets from Korea, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Austria, UK, USA, Canada, China, Bosnia, Argentina, Germany, Arabic region, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Russia, Japan, Israel, Norway, Chile, Hungary, and more countries worked with us. We published Borges, Neruda, Amichai, Tsutomu Fukuda, Carlo Copolla, Wazir Agha, Shivkumar Batalvi, Amrita Pritam, Niranjan Mohanty, Jayant Mahapatra, Kamala Dash, O.P. Bhatnagar, and other great and unknown poets, despite the punishing printing and postal drudgeries. Skylark did well with special issues, bought in bulk by certain embassies, and this inspired our special number on the diplomat poets.
We listened to and acted on subscribers’ suggestions. In one of our unique issues, we curated poems from German writers who went into exile during the Second World War. We first published a special American women’s poetry issue. We never dated our issues, so now I am unable to recall when this fifty-second issue appeared.
We dared to publish a Dalit poetry issue to voice our struggle against discrimination. There were others too: poems from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Austrian poetry. We managed to publish a handful of pamphlets. Skylark UK, which I established, still helps Indian diaspora poetry. Nostalgia is a good place but perhaps it is time to hang up my hat as my friend Tony (Anthony Rudolf of the legendary Menard Press) has! ‘The road that was my companion / disappears ahead / leaving me stranded here…’ (Raghuveer Chaudhary, Jnanpith Award Winner, translated from Gujarati by me).
3. What is your impression of contemporary UK diaspora poetry?
Some publishers have added the token poet or author to their list. My key test here is the number of poets they have published and what action they are taking to remedy the situation. Albeit, a token name allows them to look good as an inclusive publisher. Once the false piety of equality is served, no further action is needed. They then stop adding more names. When Skylark published the Word Masala Award Winners 2015, an official for the poetry group within the Society of Authors GB commented that many names were new to her. It shows how ignorant the non-diaspora poets are about other’s work!
All said, Daljit’s reinvention of the language to suit the diaspora identity is very impressive. He has not forgotten his roots and has been able to be bold to laugh at the British establishment. Imtiaz Dharkar, Mona Arshi and Sandeep Parmar are well-known names in the UK, but they are not diaspora poets in any true sense, as they are not concerned about our identity nor do they have any racial dimensions to express while the hate crime is on the rise in the UK! Many when approached, decline any engagement! Many of these poets have found their voice in the poetic generality.
To find real diasporic poetry one requires returning to a selection of Word Masala Award winners, also an indication of what my work represents. Lord Parekh laments that our writers and poets have shown no concern of capturing the voice of our generation and their struggles. It may be because there is a section of diaspora poets that have come directly from India and have no sense or appreciations of the historical context to Africa that some of us disposed diaspora writers retain. Poets like me are the third party to India, Africa and Britain; we are from all three countries but of none.
However, luckily, we have many Word Masala Award-winning poets who are engaged in contributing to this chronicle of migration. Debjani Chatterjee’s many poems; including ‘Sari’ and ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ (Read here: http://www.skylarkpublications.co.uk/debjani.html) are prime examples of how subtly some poets are able to capture the challenges immigrants face. In 2018, we saw Usha Kishore’s poetry collection, Immigrants, which Word Masala Foundation had managed to place with Eyewear Publishing. It explores the post-colonial conundrum and one’s duality of existence. Like Daljit, it tackles the ‘Raj’ attitudes head-on. In Scotland, Dr Bashabi Fraser of Napier University has never shied from her heritage, which we see in all her titles expressing her duality of identity: The Ganga to the Tay, Scots beneath the banyan tree, Tartan and Turban, Ragas & Reels. Mona Dash’s A Certain Way, published by Skylark Publications, a part of the Word Masala Project captures many realities, challenges and poignant moments to put us into neither-here-nor-there savannah of immigration and racial tensions. Yet it will be wrong to bundle these poets into one. Their many poems touch a wide spectrum of narratives. Rishi Dastidar’s intellectual poems in Ticker-Tape show a different sensitivity and like Daljit, he explores his English roots as a child of immigrants. He indulges in many current political, social, music, and sports-related concerns kicking the Britishness and sprinkling it with typical humour or sarcasm. Shanta Acharya’s poems are universal and frequently full of her Indian identity. I am still waiting for Kavita A. Jindal’s British poetry collection! Around July Nine Arches Press will bring out Jessica Mookherjee’s first collection. She is one of the most exciting poets to watch out for.
4. What do you think the diaspora needs to do to gain ground in the larger world of letters?
This is a tough cookie! Our visibility has a big role to play! We have to be constantly aware that the more we do group activities of the diaspora, the more it may lead us to us-and-them. At Word Masala Foundation, I have always kept ‘the larger world of letters’ – as you say – in proximity and mingled. Let me explain. I am not sure about the other countries, but in the UK, when I make a conscious attempt to attend poetry readings and book launches, I hardly see any South-Asian poets. If we are not visible at such events, how can we engage with the others? Again, it is important to choose the right ones so that you don’t waste your time. Reaching out and networking are achievable goals. Our diaspora events also need to create a wider audience, not just the diaspora audience bubble. We have to involve others on our platforms creating readings and debates on some challenging topics about us that make them ponder over them.
Publishers should be part of our platform as I have managed with time-consuming hard work and patience. Editors, organisations, event managers all should be made stakeholders in this game of outreach. Shouting, winging, correcting others rudely, posturing, and demanding anything of anyone usually backfires. Do ask why must they support you? What is in it for them? What benefit are you able to offer and show them? These benefits are not always monetary but could be to do with other related activities like equality for all. Yes, sometimes the shouting can be entertained indirectly as I did once standing for the election at the Society of Authors. The messages you put out will stay in some hearts. We have in the UK an agent who represents Indian authors but he works quietly behind the scene like all agents. We need more of them. Asian publishing ventures may be set up to fill the cultural gap. Co-operative publishing is another idea that can flourish. I ran an advertisement about Skylark in the Royal Society of Literature even though I knew it will not sell books.
I gave exposure to Matwaala along with Skylark Publications UK and Word Masala to create an awareness that we exist. Marketing is not about selling, it is about creating a need and desire for your goods. If one has difficulties in this area, one may need to convince a PR firm to be charitable to give some advice and create a plan. Well, these are the examples of some small steps one can take. What is happening at Matwaala slowly, and this year as a step up; it is indeed inspiring.
5. Your book Swimming with Whales simmers with contained anguish of homelessness. What inspired and drew you to the metaphorical exploration of whales for the immigrant issue.
For a long time, I was looking for a candidate for the narrative on immigration. In my research, I found Ruth Padel’s ‘The Mara Crossing’ extremely strenuous and a dry scientific probing that was too dull. Then I read Phillip Hoare’s ‘Leviathan’ that presented the universe I was searching for and had many-layered meanings hidden as gems. His articles made me remember the Thames Whale that captured the imagination of everyone internationally. Many poems emerging during the process leading to this, including a collection, were shredded. I do not publish everything I write. But I had found my narrative in whales. This now was my world of imagination. A new universe was crystallising.
Through these poems, I wanted readers to enjoy a meaningful whale-watching transcending from words to a new level of comprehension. The poems in this collection are not about the factual observations as in the poems of Whale Nation by Heathcote Williams. Whales can allow us to juxtapose their world with ours through the poetic eye, allowing an inventive experience that can manifest into human sentiments. This creates a fresh universe with the whale at its centre, be it as a migrant, lost child, mother watching the child butchered; in the afterlife, in yoga; or mocking academics and politicians, or creating a new context for the science of earwax; as well as dragging us into wars. The whale’s world here allowed me to have no boundaries. It had potential to offer the chance to confront religions, the inhumanity of wars and the challenges we face in normal life. The metaphor of a whale was also able to play with one’s identity, issues of immigration, racism, and many related ironies. Racism is territorial in terms of skin, culture and religion. The whale is not.
The poems here were a discovery of a soul for me, call it a whale song in the wilderness.
Whales in these are not shy of taking on the default of their living as a constant swim in the state of migration between the kitchens of Chukchi to the lounge of Baja. You mention homelessness. It is found here as the whale’s life suspended in constant migration. How can one live in this constant migration, a kind of prison and homelessness? One can argue that they too experience the general otherness. Well, then poems are for them too. Another poem, ‘Disenfranchised’ brings home my message of biographical similarity.
These poems derive meaning from whale’s wild and magnificent play as a carefree beast. This is a whale-watching experience of a fresh variety. I think – I hope – I have managed to offer an original take about these magnificent creatures, lending to them my narrative as well.
6. Poets who inspire you?
There are many in many small ways, here and there, but Ted Hughes and his Crow have been always next to my bed. I fact, I would want to take Crow’s defiance with me to whatever is or not after death.
7. What drives you year after year to work for poets investing time and passion?
I think it comes from struggles, my failures, rejections, and insults to which I never surrendered. That defiance translates into helping others with whatever little ‘moss’ I have gathered as a rolling stone!
8. Tell us a bit about your poetry columns and reviews.
I have written newspaper columns on a range of political and social issues that concern me. I have written management and technical articles in professional journals for the professions I practise. I mainly review to promote diaspora poets and the books of those who support me in my work. I have currently experimented with a genre I am working on, namely the Review Poems. Impressed with it, PN Review is the first to publish my review poems on the books by Mona Dash, Rishi Dastidar and Bashabi Fraser. I have a regular column in ‘Confluence’ and an open invitation from ‘The Book Review’ (India). I have other standing openings I can write for but it is extremely draining. Hence, I help in a limited way.
9. Finally, what is Yogesh Patel swimming toward now- as a patron of poetry, as a poet and as a publisher?
What am I working on? As usual, I am a rolling stone!
I am putting together an anthology of traditional Ghazals, wherein traditional ghazal meters with Daavaa and Dalil, are brought back to make the ghazals in English authentic.
I live next to the Heritage National Park. I am in conversation to start the annual Poetry-in-Park Festival with them. I am also exploring international anthologies on rivers, monuments, historical places of powers, etc.
Amidst this clamour, I have to concentrate on my own writing, which I have ignored for many years. There is a collection I am working on with no specific theme. And one more on the legends of the Thames as a natural continuation to my collection Swimming with Whales (which had a focus on the lost Thames Whale, Wilma).
In the end, the only thing that matters is what is published and support from others.
First, we need to understand from where the drive and passion come. When it comes to Asians, the attitudes in the USA and the UK are inherently different. Britain, due to its imperial past still has not relinquished its prejudices, the sahib and chaiwala interaction. The whole landscape of publishing, magazines, institutions, education, government departments in the UK, and media suffer from this mental paralysis. Asians here in Britain have mainly pooled from the East African expulsion in 1972 while the USA took advantage of the brain drain from India. That is why the USA has Pulitzer winners like Vijay Seshadri, poet laureates like Pramila Venkateswaran and professors of language and literature like the late Meena Alexander vested with the acceptance of Indians that is still absent in the UK.
There is also something else to add to this background to understand the problems facing South-Asian poets and writers. The publishers in the UK and the USA consider India as a major market and have their own publishing subsidiaries there with the books from England and the USA channelled for sales. Hachette in India published Meena Alexander’s last collection. Hachette in the USA, she told me were to publish it after two years! I don’t know if they have since she has passed away. What is it saying about the western publishers and editorial policies?
Blunt talk as this makes me a persona non grata in the UK mainstream. Nonetheless, my activism stems from the ignoring of homegrown talent. In 2007, some English authors complained about the Decibel Prize ran by Penguin for the writers of Asian, African and Caribbean background forcing the prize to wind up because of the spite. There were no qualms about the gender prize like Orange, which, thank goodness, continues to the day. They also had no problems with the prizes entirely offered to only a certain age group. The colour-hatred thus forces you to fight as I do. I was with my friend Lord Parekh having tea at the House of Lords and we were deliberating my concerns. He encouraged me to act. Working to make a difference for the others has always been a driving factor in my life. It comes from a life of displacements, turmoil and struggles. Hence, the Word Masala project was born out of two triggers: A hullabaloo around the demise of the Decibel Prize and my discussions with Lord Parekh. Debjani (Chatterjee) coined the title Word Masala.
I funded and revitalised the Skylark philosophy as Skylark Publications UK, with new objectives to give voice and to promote South-Asian diaspora poets. I had just retired from optometry. It allowed me to devote more time to the cause. Our first anthology was published in 2011. Agents and editors had copies with the aim to introduce those selected authors and poets to them. At the London International Bookfair, many names were promoted with a direct approach. Word Masala Foundation subsidised, created and promoted the diaspora poets with their Award programme to enhance their presence. Skylark registered new ezine eSkylark with the British Library and started publishing an e-magazine with a poet-of-the-month honour bestowed on a poet. We researched and published a selection of markets, other opportunities and the listings of events with the South-Asian diaspora in mind. We created a review club to plug-in reviews of books by our award-winners. We also declared our eventual aim to have Poetry Film screenings. Zata banks had archived one of my poetry films, so I brought her as a guest at our event to inspire our poets. I am still curating it. Our first-collection award went to Mona Dash with the publication of her collection, A Certain Way, published by Skylark. Much of the work by Word Masala Foundation is not for publicity and remains behind doors, providing help on contracts, sorting out problems with publishers, advising on rights, personal advice to authors, promoting their work with magazines and publishers on a personal basis, editorial help for potential writers, and much more. My personal relationship with publishers and editors obviously plays a great part in my work away from the public eye. So, I am thankful to Matwaala Lit Fest that it honours me for something others don’t see.
2. Your work as a literary editor goes back prior to the Word Masala Anthology, way back to your publications in India. Please share.
To reply, I will use my comprehensive note published in PN Review. We published our first issue, from Aligarh, in 1969. Our aim was to publish poetry in translation from around the world and from the regional languages of India and to include emerging Indian poets writing in English. We published up to one hundred issues at a time before email, battling with stamps, dealing with the Indian problem of currency conversion, packing requirements of the postal service, the queues at lazy post offices, and no intercity telephone lines.
Skylark was founded by the late Baldev Mirza. A student of optometry at the state medical faculty, I joined Baldev as co-editor in 1969. I preferred to remain in the background and we set up letterpress printing in an Aligarh slum to meet our budget. Skylark continued to print in that rickety fashion until its final issue. Then it slipped into obscurity. Such labour-intensive printing would never do now. Baldev has died and many issues of Skylark are lost. I have a few random issues. But with postcolonial Indian English literature only in its second decade, the magazine had a profound influence. New voices had a podium where they stood alongside international poets in translation. I revisited Skylark’s surviving issues and a note from Terry Cuthbert in Oxford fell out of one: ‘Wazir Agha (Pakistan) is very much an excellent poet & you must be proud of getting his work in your magazine. You seem to be an important cultural event in India, and I know that many in your sub-continent love poetry, which is more than can be said with the average Englishman!’
Poets from Korea, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Austria, UK, USA, Canada, China, Bosnia, Argentina, Germany, Arabic region, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Russia, Japan, Israel, Norway, Chile, Hungary, and more countries worked with us. We published Borges, Neruda, Amichai, Tsutomu Fukuda, Carlo Copolla, Wazir Agha, Shivkumar Batalvi, Amrita Pritam, Niranjan Mohanty, Jayant Mahapatra, Kamala Dash, O.P. Bhatnagar, and other great and unknown poets, despite the punishing printing and postal drudgeries. Skylark did well with special issues, bought in bulk by certain embassies, and this inspired our special number on the diplomat poets.
We listened to and acted on subscribers’ suggestions. In one of our unique issues, we curated poems from German writers who went into exile during the Second World War. We first published a special American women’s poetry issue. We never dated our issues, so now I am unable to recall when this fifty-second issue appeared.
We dared to publish a Dalit poetry issue to voice our struggle against discrimination. There were others too: poems from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Austrian poetry. We managed to publish a handful of pamphlets. Skylark UK, which I established, still helps Indian diaspora poetry. Nostalgia is a good place but perhaps it is time to hang up my hat as my friend Tony (Anthony Rudolf of the legendary Menard Press) has! ‘The road that was my companion / disappears ahead / leaving me stranded here…’ (Raghuveer Chaudhary, Jnanpith Award Winner, translated from Gujarati by me).
3. What is your impression of contemporary UK diaspora poetry?
Some publishers have added the token poet or author to their list. My key test here is the number of poets they have published and what action they are taking to remedy the situation. Albeit, a token name allows them to look good as an inclusive publisher. Once the false piety of equality is served, no further action is needed. They then stop adding more names. When Skylark published the Word Masala Award Winners 2015, an official for the poetry group within the Society of Authors GB commented that many names were new to her. It shows how ignorant the non-diaspora poets are about other’s work!
All said, Daljit’s reinvention of the language to suit the diaspora identity is very impressive. He has not forgotten his roots and has been able to be bold to laugh at the British establishment. Imtiaz Dharkar, Mona Arshi and Sandeep Parmar are well-known names in the UK, but they are not diaspora poets in any true sense, as they are not concerned about our identity nor do they have any racial dimensions to express while the hate crime is on the rise in the UK! Many when approached, decline any engagement! Many of these poets have found their voice in the poetic generality.
To find real diasporic poetry one requires returning to a selection of Word Masala Award winners, also an indication of what my work represents. Lord Parekh laments that our writers and poets have shown no concern of capturing the voice of our generation and their struggles. It may be because there is a section of diaspora poets that have come directly from India and have no sense or appreciations of the historical context to Africa that some of us disposed diaspora writers retain. Poets like me are the third party to India, Africa and Britain; we are from all three countries but of none.
However, luckily, we have many Word Masala Award-winning poets who are engaged in contributing to this chronicle of migration. Debjani Chatterjee’s many poems; including ‘Sari’ and ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ (Read here: http://www.skylarkpublications.co.uk/debjani.html) are prime examples of how subtly some poets are able to capture the challenges immigrants face. In 2018, we saw Usha Kishore’s poetry collection, Immigrants, which Word Masala Foundation had managed to place with Eyewear Publishing. It explores the post-colonial conundrum and one’s duality of existence. Like Daljit, it tackles the ‘Raj’ attitudes head-on. In Scotland, Dr Bashabi Fraser of Napier University has never shied from her heritage, which we see in all her titles expressing her duality of identity: The Ganga to the Tay, Scots beneath the banyan tree, Tartan and Turban, Ragas & Reels. Mona Dash’s A Certain Way, published by Skylark Publications, a part of the Word Masala Project captures many realities, challenges and poignant moments to put us into neither-here-nor-there savannah of immigration and racial tensions. Yet it will be wrong to bundle these poets into one. Their many poems touch a wide spectrum of narratives. Rishi Dastidar’s intellectual poems in Ticker-Tape show a different sensitivity and like Daljit, he explores his English roots as a child of immigrants. He indulges in many current political, social, music, and sports-related concerns kicking the Britishness and sprinkling it with typical humour or sarcasm. Shanta Acharya’s poems are universal and frequently full of her Indian identity. I am still waiting for Kavita A. Jindal’s British poetry collection! Around July Nine Arches Press will bring out Jessica Mookherjee’s first collection. She is one of the most exciting poets to watch out for.
4. What do you think the diaspora needs to do to gain ground in the larger world of letters?
This is a tough cookie! Our visibility has a big role to play! We have to be constantly aware that the more we do group activities of the diaspora, the more it may lead us to us-and-them. At Word Masala Foundation, I have always kept ‘the larger world of letters’ – as you say – in proximity and mingled. Let me explain. I am not sure about the other countries, but in the UK, when I make a conscious attempt to attend poetry readings and book launches, I hardly see any South-Asian poets. If we are not visible at such events, how can we engage with the others? Again, it is important to choose the right ones so that you don’t waste your time. Reaching out and networking are achievable goals. Our diaspora events also need to create a wider audience, not just the diaspora audience bubble. We have to involve others on our platforms creating readings and debates on some challenging topics about us that make them ponder over them.
Publishers should be part of our platform as I have managed with time-consuming hard work and patience. Editors, organisations, event managers all should be made stakeholders in this game of outreach. Shouting, winging, correcting others rudely, posturing, and demanding anything of anyone usually backfires. Do ask why must they support you? What is in it for them? What benefit are you able to offer and show them? These benefits are not always monetary but could be to do with other related activities like equality for all. Yes, sometimes the shouting can be entertained indirectly as I did once standing for the election at the Society of Authors. The messages you put out will stay in some hearts. We have in the UK an agent who represents Indian authors but he works quietly behind the scene like all agents. We need more of them. Asian publishing ventures may be set up to fill the cultural gap. Co-operative publishing is another idea that can flourish. I ran an advertisement about Skylark in the Royal Society of Literature even though I knew it will not sell books.
I gave exposure to Matwaala along with Skylark Publications UK and Word Masala to create an awareness that we exist. Marketing is not about selling, it is about creating a need and desire for your goods. If one has difficulties in this area, one may need to convince a PR firm to be charitable to give some advice and create a plan. Well, these are the examples of some small steps one can take. What is happening at Matwaala slowly, and this year as a step up; it is indeed inspiring.
5. Your book Swimming with Whales simmers with contained anguish of homelessness. What inspired and drew you to the metaphorical exploration of whales for the immigrant issue.
For a long time, I was looking for a candidate for the narrative on immigration. In my research, I found Ruth Padel’s ‘The Mara Crossing’ extremely strenuous and a dry scientific probing that was too dull. Then I read Phillip Hoare’s ‘Leviathan’ that presented the universe I was searching for and had many-layered meanings hidden as gems. His articles made me remember the Thames Whale that captured the imagination of everyone internationally. Many poems emerging during the process leading to this, including a collection, were shredded. I do not publish everything I write. But I had found my narrative in whales. This now was my world of imagination. A new universe was crystallising.
Through these poems, I wanted readers to enjoy a meaningful whale-watching transcending from words to a new level of comprehension. The poems in this collection are not about the factual observations as in the poems of Whale Nation by Heathcote Williams. Whales can allow us to juxtapose their world with ours through the poetic eye, allowing an inventive experience that can manifest into human sentiments. This creates a fresh universe with the whale at its centre, be it as a migrant, lost child, mother watching the child butchered; in the afterlife, in yoga; or mocking academics and politicians, or creating a new context for the science of earwax; as well as dragging us into wars. The whale’s world here allowed me to have no boundaries. It had potential to offer the chance to confront religions, the inhumanity of wars and the challenges we face in normal life. The metaphor of a whale was also able to play with one’s identity, issues of immigration, racism, and many related ironies. Racism is territorial in terms of skin, culture and religion. The whale is not.
The poems here were a discovery of a soul for me, call it a whale song in the wilderness.
Whales in these are not shy of taking on the default of their living as a constant swim in the state of migration between the kitchens of Chukchi to the lounge of Baja. You mention homelessness. It is found here as the whale’s life suspended in constant migration. How can one live in this constant migration, a kind of prison and homelessness? One can argue that they too experience the general otherness. Well, then poems are for them too. Another poem, ‘Disenfranchised’ brings home my message of biographical similarity.
These poems derive meaning from whale’s wild and magnificent play as a carefree beast. This is a whale-watching experience of a fresh variety. I think – I hope – I have managed to offer an original take about these magnificent creatures, lending to them my narrative as well.
6. Poets who inspire you?
There are many in many small ways, here and there, but Ted Hughes and his Crow have been always next to my bed. I fact, I would want to take Crow’s defiance with me to whatever is or not after death.
7. What drives you year after year to work for poets investing time and passion?
I think it comes from struggles, my failures, rejections, and insults to which I never surrendered. That defiance translates into helping others with whatever little ‘moss’ I have gathered as a rolling stone!
8. Tell us a bit about your poetry columns and reviews.
I have written newspaper columns on a range of political and social issues that concern me. I have written management and technical articles in professional journals for the professions I practise. I mainly review to promote diaspora poets and the books of those who support me in my work. I have currently experimented with a genre I am working on, namely the Review Poems. Impressed with it, PN Review is the first to publish my review poems on the books by Mona Dash, Rishi Dastidar and Bashabi Fraser. I have a regular column in ‘Confluence’ and an open invitation from ‘The Book Review’ (India). I have other standing openings I can write for but it is extremely draining. Hence, I help in a limited way.
9. Finally, what is Yogesh Patel swimming toward now- as a patron of poetry, as a poet and as a publisher?
What am I working on? As usual, I am a rolling stone!
I am putting together an anthology of traditional Ghazals, wherein traditional ghazal meters with Daavaa and Dalil, are brought back to make the ghazals in English authentic.
I live next to the Heritage National Park. I am in conversation to start the annual Poetry-in-Park Festival with them. I am also exploring international anthologies on rivers, monuments, historical places of powers, etc.
Amidst this clamour, I have to concentrate on my own writing, which I have ignored for many years. There is a collection I am working on with no specific theme. And one more on the legends of the Thames as a natural continuation to my collection Swimming with Whales (which had a focus on the lost Thames Whale, Wilma).
In the end, the only thing that matters is what is published and support from others.