Impending insensitivity
 I
wonder what category became the bestseller at the Book Fair. Supposedly
it should be either translation or novel, obviously added to prescribed
school / university texts. But not poetry, that’s a sure thing.
I have been hearing folks complain of the troubles they have to go
through to get their poetry collections published. Now don’t blame
publishers for that. They do a business; goodwill one, so to say. At the
same time chaps have to think seriously of their survival in the trade.
And so do they cater to the demands.
Publishers don’t go for poetry, and they have their reasons. Poetry
collections hardly draw customers. Well, things are smoother when you
are an established author. When you flip through poetry collections – if
you have time for that – you will notice a major portion as author
publications. Usually 1000 copies are allocated for a novel, whereas it
could be about 200 for poetry collections. Short story collections are a
little luckier, having said that, since they print about 400 copies.
 All
these beckon one grievous fact that sends a shudder down our spines. We
are stepping – or already have stepped - into the threshold of an
insensitive society!
How can I come up with such a bold statement? Everyone cannot write
poetry, just as in novel, short story or any other creative writing.
Though hackneyed, William Wordsworth remains eternally genuine because
of his interpretation: ‘poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings’. You rarely can express your own powerful feelings in such
rawness in any other medium.
A novel, short story or any other writing may be written poetically
or lyrically, but poetry remains poetry all the same. You’ll get what I
say when you thumb through any established poet you name. Sometimes what
you see is poles apart from what the poet had intended to express. That
needs patience. That needs thinking. And that needs sensitivity, at
least a speck of it, above all.
Okay, I’m not going to drone on about what poetry is and stuff – it
needs space elsewhere, maybe sometime later in this same space. My
fascination with poetry, however, is little. I love composing poetry,
but I have an inferior feeling hovering around me that I’m but an utter
failure.
Didn’t I read someplace that almost Jatakas were versified during the
Kandyan kingdom? Yes I happened to read it in Sinhala Sahitya Vansaya, a
colossal research on the history of Sinhala literature, by Punchibandara
Sannasgala. Those Kandyan poets could afford such things, because they
had a demand. There had been people up for poetry, that means.
We celebrate such a tradition. What happened to that sensitivity? How
did it, though gradually, slip into oblivion? I don’t say that’s a
vanished tradition, but it’s vanishing.
I thought of sharing these thoughts because of a certain award
festival. Its patron’s name has alliteration with ‘google’, if I am to
exercise my liberty of exposing names. The choice for the best poetry
collection was very much criticized, not to speak of what newspapers
have been bitching about all the award festivals in general. This led to
a discourse on poetry in many newspapers plus www.boondi.lk. Those
critics had taken pains to prove why the particular poetry collection
does not deserve the ‘best’ choice. There must be personal agenda to
some extent, though I can say it’s interesting.
Even with so much lesser demand, poets do not cease to exist. I have
spotted a good number of poetry collections. I don’t think you can purge
the good ones off the bad ones. And so you cannot say this poem is
better than that. How can your ‘spontaneous feelings’ be labeled good or
bad?
It’s how you feel some poetry. Most of the poetry I read in
newspapers hardly strike a chord. But if there are more people to buy –
encourage, that is - that will be motivation for poets. More than the
quantity, we can have better hopes of quality.
That’s precisely why we read scholars, including those at the
university, lambasting each other. One professor says all Sinhala novels
are useless. Only the old is gold for him.
Another happily brings up inconsistencies of a novel to satisfy his
personal wrath with the author. All this comes to pass when sensitivity
leaves us to boil all alone. Insensitivity is now the order of the
literary circles.
When will we be able to bypass this era of crows cawing in aquiline
attire? I try to thrust that thought aside. After all worrying only
makes matters worse.
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