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| Wednesday, 10 March 2004 |
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Sita joins : 'The Knitters in the Sun' A GODE PERSON and OTHER POEMS Author: Sita Kulatunga Even Shakespeare admitted that women could also dominate poetry. In "Twelfth Night", we have these lines: The spinsters and the knitters in the sun. And the free maids that weave their thread with bones Do use to chant it." So many women poets that country can say of - the words of the womb-women, beautiful to listen to and so varied the language that echoes every note in the scale. To this cohort, all gleaming, comes Sita Kulatunga, offering us her first slim book of poems that tells of her own striving for harmony based on a deep respect for times that have so quickly slipped by. When I think of our women and of the songs they must sing, I sometimes ask myself: are we still in that rut where, not so long ago, we actually stereotyped our women poets? There were, according to "Male" classification, the "dedicated poets" (like Elizabeth Barret Browning) who directed much of their emotional energy into romantic devotion. Then, the "eccentric spinsters" like Emily Dickinson or Edith Sitwell, usually taken for those who never really recovered from some unhappy liaison and wrote to express their eccentric views. Also, there were the "mad girls" - the women so well personified by Sylvia Plath - tormented lives and early suicide. With this sort of stereotyping, it needed tremendous effort to conquer. Women's poetry needed to be taken seriously and command real respect. I'm quite ashamed to say it, but for many, many years, men held the reins and it was generally the fashion to consider women poets as "drifters" with their own whims and fancies that were fickle and who would remain a sort of "sub-species" of the Great Male Poet! What a lot of crap! The male world even raised women poets in a way, making of them but "ugly sisters' who try as they would, couldn't cram their feet into the glass slippers of true poetry. No, I am not kidding. I read a critique on the first book of poems by Sylvia Plath. Judgement and sentence were passed: "She steers clear of feminine charm, deliciousness, gentility, supersensitivity, and the act of being a poetess"! Compliments These are the sort of back-handed compliments women poets have had to become accustomed to. It is to the credit of this country that the proportion of women poets easily outnumber the men - and we now have "a new kid on the block" (if Sita doesn't mind the rather droll phrase) who, with so many others, has broken to smithereens that wall of male prejudice. And I don't think I am being too harsh, either. Or am I? Penguin UK published an anthology of poems titled "Worlds" in 1974. The compiler, Geoffrey Summerfield, had this short, scatty insult for women poets. He wrote: "I regret the omission of women poets from this book. This is simply due to the fact that Britain in the last fifteen years, has not produced a women poet of real stature." So okay - let's get on with the matter in hand (did the actress tell that to the Bishop, I wonder), and consider Sita Kulatunga's venture into that huge tsunami that is women's poetry in Sri Lanka. I am not worrying myself with the educators, the critics, the academicians, editors and publishers have to say. They could all be "goblin-ridden" as Rossetti said, and for all I care. Sita has that quality to be quite devastating, yet make special substance out of the most ordinary domestic things. Another thing, she is writing as a woman of things we mere men cannot possibly write. The verses are, in a sense, exploratory and she seems to light a life-fuse with each. Rather than quote her, shall we extract some themes? Themes GLOBALIZATION: While Shuttleworth floats in space on a two million dollar-a-day journey, breathing "borrowed breath", an earth-bound Gunapala of the barren paddy plot and chena, gasping with a papuwe mahansiya, cannot afford a six-hundred rupee inhaler. Take you pick: Be a gloating, global Shuttleworth or a worthless sick-and-shuffle shuttle. A LOVE POEM: Such doom-thoughts of killer squads, tyre pyres, dogs feeding richly on human entrails - a land parched and bloodied. A baby! Why bring a baby into so God-forsaken a world? But the psychosis melts like sun-shredded mist when the baby comes with its heaven smile and wrapped in its own new paradise. Yes, a world can turn within a world: one hard-carapaced, but within it a new turning orb exudes the sweetness of life as we wish it to be. A GODE PERSON - The podihamine strain that puts to naught the modern society of Western-apers with their mobiles and senseless jabber. The Gode person will learn of the facts and fallacies of life, of the worst of hells, even the fear of not belonging to that casual social life that primps and preens and turns nothing into nothingness. TO A YOUNG FRIEND - (let me quote) "Marriage, my dear young friend, PITU PADAM NAMAMAHAM: The mother breaks free for years of ill-treatment to go, earn the dirhams, even risk another sort of ill-treatment in Dubai. But will they kick her there, will they come in red-eyes drunk as her husband does not beat her? Bend down at his feet, my daughter, pay obeisance, be always the dutiful daughter, but beware his kicking feet and all other parts of his drunken body he could assail you with. This is but a random picking, and what is quite exhilarating is the way something so seemingly common place is put into a mind-machine and eureka! We have verses that blast off from the depth of soul to an aurora but curtain the sky. What we have is "illumination". Strength It must have taken extraordinary strength and determination to make this leap, Sita made her mark with her previous books, the novel "Dari the Third Wife" and her short stories, "High Chair and Cancer Days". It is good to know that together with so many other women poets, Sita is exploring new ways of expressing herself. We are now able to face and examine a woman's consciousness. We now know that we can no longer leek on them, road their works and dismiss them as mere "token" women. Our women poets are not fragile individuals. They are not merely those who stand up only to proclaim how the heart melts and the tears run. Rather, they now reveal the depths of womanhood, for their poetry is deeply personal. There is goodness believed in and goodness felt. Also, a veritable basket of impressions: The May Day screeched and on 'May Day' while the proletariat marched with flag and drum and banner Prem died In one awful blast Oh well....that's Prem for you. Couldn't go out quietly, could he? This is a collection of random thoughts from here and abroad that have been given a festive dressing. A slim book, but it's very slimness belies the idea of that "Gode Person" who cannot pose or be poised like those aimless, shameless social gadflies. Sita has achieved once again, and when all is said and done, that is most important to us, her readers. - Carl Muller **** Back **** |
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