Vijay Seshadri:One more pride of India

                                Vijay Seshadri

Vijay Seshadri was born in Bangalore, India, in 1954 and came to America at the age of five. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where his father taught chemistry at Ohio State University. His poetry collections include 3 Sections (Graywolf Press, 2013), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; The Long Meadow (Graywolf Press, 2004), which won the James Laughlin Award; and Wild Kingdom (1996).

His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in A Public Space, AGNI, The American Scholar, Antaeus, Bomb, Boulevard, Epiphany, Fence, Field, Lumina, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the Philadelphia Enquirer, Ploughshares, Poetry, The San Diego Reader, Shenandoah, The Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, the Times Book Review, TriQuarterly, Verse, Western Humanities Review, The Yale Review, and in many anthologies, including Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets, Contours of the Heart, Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times and The Best American Poetry 1997, 2003, 2006, and 2013.

Seshadri has received grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts and has been awarded The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Conners Long Poem Prize and the MacDowell Colony’s Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement. He holds an AB degree from Oberlin College and an MFA from Columbia University. He currently teaches poetry and nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College, where he has held the Michele Tolela Myers Chair. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son. 

The 98th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music were announced on Monday by Columbia University. Seshadri's '3 Sections' is a "compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless," the announcement said.

The prize for the poetry category was given for a "distinguished volume of original verse" by an American author. A Columbia University alum, Seshadri would receive USD 10,000 reward. Here are some profound lines from his award-winning collection of poetry.

Some of his poems

VISITING PARIS

They were in the scullery talking.

The meadow had to be sold to pay their riotous expenses;

then the woods by the river,

with its tangled banks and snags elbowing out of the water,

had to go; and then the summer house where they talked—

all that was left of an estate once so big

a man riding fast on a fast horse

couldn’t cross it in a day. Genevieve. Hortense. Mémé.

The family’s last born, whose pale name is inscribed on the rolls

of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. As in the fresco of the Virgin,

where the copper in the pigment oxidizes to trace a thin green cicatrix

along a seam of Her red tunic,

a suspicion of one another furrowed their

consanguine, averted faces.

Why go anywhere at all when it rains like this,

when the trees are sloppy and hooded

and the foot sinks to the ankle in the muddy lane?

I didn’t stay for the end of the conversation.

I was wanted in Paris. Paris, astounded by my splendor

and charmed by my excitable manner,

waited to open its arms to me.

Bright Copper Kettles

Dead friends coming back to life, dead family,

speaking languages living and dead, their minds retentive,

their five senses intact, their footprints like a butterfly’s,

mercy shining from their comprehensive faces—

this is one of my favorite things.

I like it so much I sleep all the time.

Moon by day and sun by night find me dispersed

deep in the dreams where they appear.

In fields of goldenrod, in the city of five pyramids,

before the empress with the melting face, under

the towering plane tree, they just show up.

“It’s all right,” they seem to say. “It always was.”

They are diffident and polite.

(Who knew the dead were so polite?)

They don’t want to scare me; their heads don’t spin like weather vanes.

They don’t want to steal my body

and possess the earth and wreak vengeance.

They’re dead, you understand, they don’t exist. And, besides,

why would they care? They’re subatomic, horizontal. Think about it.

One of them shyly offers me a pencil.

The eyes under the eyelids dart faster and faster.

Through the intercom of the house where for so long there was no music,

the right Reverend Al Green is singing,

“I could never see tomorrow.

I was never told about the sorrow.”

Sequence

1. HELL

You’d have to be as crazy as Dante to get those down,

the infernal hatreds.

Shoot them. Shoot them where they live

and then skip town.

Or stay and re-engineer

the decrepit social contraption

to distill the 200-proof

elixir of fear

and torture the...the what

from the what? And didn’t I promise,

under threat of self-intubation,

not to envision this

corridor, coal-tar black,

that narrows down and in

to a shattering claustrophobia attack

before opening out

to the lake of frozen shit

where the gruesome figure is discerned?

Turn around, go home.

Just to look at it is to become it.

2. PURGATORY, THE FILM

He was chronically out of work, why we don’t know.

She was the second born of a set

of estranged identical twins. They met,

hooked up, and moved in with her mother,

who managed a motel on Skyline Drive.

But always it was the other,

the firstborn, the bad twin, the runaway,

he imagined in the shadow

of the “Vacancy” sign

or watching through the window

below the dripping eaves

while they made love or slept.

The body is relaxed and at rest,

the mind is relaxed in its nest,

so the self that is and is not

itself rises and leaves

to peek over the horizon, where it sees

all its psychokinetic possibilities

resolving into shapely fictions.

She was brave, nurturing, kind.

She was evil. She was out of her mind.

She was a junkie trading sex for a fix,

a chief executive, an aviatrix.

She was an angel

to the blinded and the lamed,

the less-than-upright, the infra dig.

And she was even a failure.

She went to L.A. to make it big

and crept back home injured and ashamed.

3. PURGATORY, THE SEQUEL

They put him in jail, why we don’t know.

They stamped him “Postponed.”

But he didn’t mind.

The screws were almost kind.

He had leisure to get his muscles toned,

mental space to regret his crimes,

and when he wasn’t fabricating license plates

he was free

to remember the beauty

that not once but a thousand times

escaped him forever, and escapes me, too:

ghosts of a mist drifting

across the face of the stars,

Jupiter triangulating

with the crescent moon and Mars,

prismatic fracturings in a drop of dew...

4. HEAVEN

There’s drought on the mountain.

Wildfires scour the hills.

So the mammal crawls down the desiccated rills

searching for the fountain,

which it finds, believe it or not,

or sort of finds. A thin silver sliver

rises from an underground river

and makes a few of the hot

rocks steam and the pebbles hiss.

Soon the mammal will drink,

but it has first

to stop and think

its reflexive, impeccable thought:

that thinking comes down to this—

mystery, longing, thirst.

Kwame Dawes:spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music

                                      Kwame Dawes

Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes moved to Jamaica in 1971 and spent most of his childhood and early adult life there. As well as poetry, he is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and plays; he also practices as an actor and musician. His poetry is profoundly influenced by his "spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music", and he has collaborated with musicians and artists to create a dynamic series of performances based on his poetry. His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius book remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley.

Dawes studied and taught in New Brunswick, Canada on a Commonwealth Scholarship, and as a PhD student he was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Brunswickan. From 1992-2012 he taught at the University of South Carolina; he is currently Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, and with Glenna Luschei editor-in-chief at the Prairie Schooner. Dawes is also a faculty member of Pacific University’s MFA Program. He is co-founder and programming director of the biennial Calabash International Literary Festival, which takes place in Jamaica.

He is the author of seventeen collections of poetry. The most recent titles include Duppy Conqueror (Copper Canyon, 2013); Wheels (2011); Back of Mount Peace (2009); Hope's Hospice (2009); Impossible Flying (2007), and Gomer's Song (2007). Progeny of Air (1994) was the winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. In 2001, Dawes was a winner of a Pushcart Prize for his long poem, 'Inheritance'. He is the editor of many anthologies, including Wheel and Come Again: An Anthology of Reggae Poems, and Red: Contemporary Black Poetry, and he is also the Associate Poetry Editor of Peepal Tree Books, where he edits their impressive Caribbean Poetry list. Dawes received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012.

In 2009, Dawes won an Emmy Award in the category of New Approaches to News and Documentary Programming - his project documented HIV/AIDS in Jamaica, interspersed with his poetry, photography by Andre Lambertson, and music by Kevin Simmonds. The website Livehopelove.com is the culmination of this project.

In these recordings made specially for the Poetry Archive, Dawes' command of a range of tones and styles of delivery is demonstrated - from the powerful social commentary of 'Yap', a brutal account of homophobic violence made all the more disconcerting from the voice's impersonal reportage, to the melodious, rhythmical lament of 'Trickster', where the explorations of language become a path, 'a way to tell how I would be met on the road.' 'Sketch' is a tender portrait of illness that draws on and then questions the power of words to heal and console, revealing the impermanence of a wish, however keenly felt, to 'clean a grey line where your brows were…these markings of what you have suffered'. 'Wheels', meanwhile, alertly and humorously catalogues the doubts of a 'gangly televangelist', and 'Rituals Before the Poem' gently satirises the reverence around poetry's typical subjects, striking a tone of playful instruction - paralleled in Dawes' 'Memos to poets' (viewable on his website): over 100 short pieces originally broadcast on Twitter, that include everything from acidic witticisms on writing, to memorable, aphoristic adages that challenge and appeal to the wisdom of poetry reader or writer.

               

Some of  his poems

A Good Woman Blues

O Lord, Berta, Berta, O Lord, gal oh-ah,

O Lord, Berta, Berta, O Lord, gal well.

Go ’head marry, don’t you wait on me oh-ah,

Go ’head marry, don’t you wait on me well.

Might not want you when I go free oh-ah,

Might not want you when I go free well.

When you are out on the road, hustling

shelter in some taking-woman’s hovel,

when you wonder how long you will be

a broke blues man with only some

twenty-year-old story of how you were

somebody, how you sat in the same

studio where big-ass Ma Rainey

used to sit and drink bourbon; of how

people knew you, knew your voice,

how it was to buy a suit, walk

the country street and hear your

voice on the radio, and it has been

so long these stories like your clothes

have gotten so thin they don’t keep

you warm no more; and when out

there, you walking to the crossroads,

where you meet all kinds of monsters

and ghouls, and where you learn

how to limp and use your big

stick to part the arms of women,

you have nothing to keep you going

on dark nights when everything

feel like crap, and you are fifty

years old and you are not dead

and you have nothing to show for it;

no child whoever called you daddy

cause you never stayed long enough

for them to smell your skin,

and for you to hear them say it;

and you know that going back,

you will spoil all the lies

those women told for you, about

their daddy who will walk

around with his big hands

and his only instrument; who can

make a woman take off

all her clothes on the spot

and leave her man just by

the weeping and lonesome

feelings he can make with the piano.

That sharp-faced, cool-eyed man,

their daddy, who took a schooner

to France where everybody knows

his name—if you go back

with your tired self, looking

for a nip of booze to keep you warm,

and some fried chicken

for old time’s sake, what good

will that do? So all you have

is this one truth: that Cleo

is your Penelope and until

they nailed that coffin,

she stayed the one good thing

you ever did; she was a good

woman and she loved you,

and sometimes that is all a man

needs to keep on walking,

sometimes it all a man’s got;

all that has kept him from

the chain gang to the juke joint,

along those lonely roads

cutting across America—

that Cleo is all he ever had,

and Lord knows, she waited,

but you can’t outwait God,

Lord, Berta, Berta, you can’t

outwait, the Lord.

 If You Know Her

If you know your woman, know her rhythms,

know her ways; if you paying attention

to her all these years, you will know

how she comes and goes, how she slips

away even though she is standing in

the same place, you will know that her

world is drifting softly from you, and she

may not mean it, because all it is

is she is scared to be everything, scared

to be finding herself in you every time,

scared that one day she will ask herself,

all forty-plenty years of her, where

she’s been; if you know your woman,

you will know that mostly she will

come back, but sometimes, when she

drifts like this, something can make her

slip; and then coming back is hard.

If you know your woman, you can

tell by the way she puts on heels,

and she does not sashay for you

because it is not about you—how

she will buy some leather boots

and not say a word about it,

and you only see it when she walks

in one night, and she says she’s had

them forever; you will see the way

she loses the weight and pretend

its nothing, but when she isn’t seeing you

looking, you can see how she faces the mirror

lifts her chest to catch a profile,

and how she casually looks at her

ass for signs of life. If you know

your woman, when you are gone, she

will find things to do, like walk

alone, go see a movie, find a park,

collect her secrets and you won’t know,

because she is looking for herself.

And she won’t tell you that she wants

to hear what idle men say when she

walks by them; because what you say

is not enough. If you know your

woman, you know when she’s going

away and you will feel the big

hole of your love, and you can’t

tell why she’s listening and humming

to tunes you did not know she heard

before, and she will laugh softly

at nothing at all. If you know your

woman, you will see how she comes

and goes, and all you can do is wait

and pray she will come back to you,

because you know that your sins

are enough for her to leave and not return.

Avoiding the Spirits

Berniece: I don’t play that piano cause I don’t want to wake them spirits.

They never be walking around in this house.

          —The Piano Lesson, August Wilson

When at sunset the congregation gathers

in the low light of St. Helena’s old gray

Baptist chapel; they guard their hearts

from the whisper of the low-bellied trees;

calling on the blood as they brush off

the dew on their coats by the burial ground.

When they sing, the sound has the flat

simplicity of prayer, a sound that brings

heat to your neck, tears to your eyes

because you can hear in the rugged

rafters, hewn from old-growth trees

at the water’s edge, the voices of all those

people who had nothing but lament

and Jesus to fill the gap of a stolen life.

The sisters can’t make a man cross

that threshold unless he has come

to lay someone to rest or to witness

a child’s blessing or a daughter’s

wedding, for a man can’t hear the flat

voices in the church and not feel

the droop of his shoulders

and the weight of his dangling

empty hands that have too often

hung helpless for prudence’s sake, for good

sense, making him not a man

but an empty shell, a creature

who laughs to stop the shame

of not being able to keep his family

together and safe. No, he will rather

sit in the dark cathedral of the juke

joint and let the blues of sardonic

regret and caustic distance

wash him, make him know that

he is alone on the road, and all

he’s got is his story. My people

long gave up on the ancestors

    when they learned that those

   stepping out of the woods

  are the crippled gods, the beaten

  gods, the blackened and burnt-out

   tongueless gods, the broken

   gods, the castrated gods, the shadow

  gods with questions, asking

  us if they will ever heal, asking

 for a balm from the living. Who wants

 to pour libation for the burdened

  spirits? Silence is our salvation,

 that and the reassurance of this earth,

 this clear air, this forgetting.

Conceição Lima,

Conceição Lima, 

Maria da Conceição de Deus Lima (Santana, December 8, 1961), also known as Conceição Lima, is a Santomean poet from the town of Santana in São Tomé, one of two islands in the small nation of São Tomé and Príncipe situated in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western coast of Africa. She studied journalism in Portugal and worked in radio, television and in the print press in her native country. In 1993, Conceição Lima founded the weekly independent publication O País Hoje (The Country Today) which she directed and wrote for during its circulation. She received a degree in Afro-Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from King's College in London. Lima resides in London where she works as a journalist and producer for theBBC Portuguese Language Services. Her poetry has been published in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies in several countries. O Útero da Casa was her first book of poetry and was published in 2004 in Lisbon by the Portuguese publishing house Caminho. Her second book (also poetry), A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó, was released in 2006 by the same publisher.

Lima is a post colonial writer, one of the few poets who came of age after the independence of her country in 1975. She started writing poems as a teenager and, in 1979, at the age of nineteen, traveled to Angola where she participated in the Sixth Conference of Afro-Asian Writers. She recited some of her poems and was probably one of the youngest participants present. Conceição Lima considers this to be the first phase of her career as a poet. The second phase of her career started with the publication of her poems in newspapers, magazines and anthologies.

In 2009, Conceição Lima traveled to Póvoa de Varzim (Portugal) and visited the Colégio de Amorim where she shared with students stories of her childhood and memories of family members who influenced her the most. She remembered her father and confessed that he was the one who taught her the power of words. When she was a child, her dad would compose music for her mother when she was mad at him. As a child, Conceição soon realized that words have the power to bring peace because her mom would make amends with him. However, she also realized that words can hurt; after all, it was her father's words that had caused her mom to be upset in the first place. Lima also revealed that her father always knew she would be a poet because of her very vivid and creative imagination.

Her publications

·         O Útero da Casa (2004)

·         A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó (2006)

Some of her poems

Cataclysm and Songs

Happy what's left of me after I'm gone
If only one of the songs sung
Lives beyond the person singing in me now.
Yet I would not save from the slaughter
A single one of the songs I sang and sing.

Instead from the entrails of oblivion
I would steal the laughter of children
And the age of the proverb.

And so to those who come
I would offer intact the enigma of light

Three Contemporary Truths

I believe in the invisible
I believe in the levitation of witches
I believe in vampires
Because they are

Travellers

They bore sunsets and roads
Thirst for the horizon called them

- Who do you belong to?
Who are your people?

That's how our grandmother held out
A mug of water to the traveller