You have a strong liking for fluid—its intricate flow and glide. There are plenty of references to milk, wine, blood, juices of passion in your poems such as “Single Malt,†quoted earlier, in the long poems “Line Breaks†and “Mount Vesuvius in Eight Frames,†and most recently in Rain, for example. It seems you want to achieve some kind of linguistic fluidity in your poems.
The concept of fluidity itself is, I think, quite interesting. In a sense it is a cross-over phase, or point of intersection, between the liquid and solid states. So, we are talking about an in-between state, a state that has its own definite rhythm, flow, deliberateness, and so on. It also is a state which typifies the unobvious. The clarity of liquid is very clear, and the concreteness of solid is equally concrete.
But the fluid state is almost like a penumbra, which is the title of a poem I have written. It is a space that allows you to do a lot because it is infinitely multilayered—it is much more textured, as much depends on the viscosity and density of the fluid itself. It is certainly a worthwhile, languorous, languid space to control and be creative with.
This brings me to your superbly written, inspiring treasure of a book, Rain [first issued as Monsoon]. This is at the same time beautiful poetry, prose poetry, and fiction, one that is balletic and precise, poetic and minimalist, stylised and wise, combining the virtual and visual—coalescing to convey the intensely special magic of monsoon rains as felt in the Indian subcontinent. This bold celebration reminds me of the words of the 1992 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Derek Walcott: “At the end of this sentence, rain will begin.â€
Rain [Monsoon] is a reflection on rain—its passion and politics, its beauty and fury, its ability to “douse and arouse.†I ultimately explore the various moods that water and fluids inherently unravel.
It is a sequence of twenty-two tightly wrought pieces set in three sections—the first octet, the second octet, and a single sestet. When it was first published as a limited edition in Dhaka by an arts foundation there in 2002, it was accompanied by wonderful pictures by a young Bangladeshi photographer, and the entire book was a duotone production. The new four-colour avatar with Monsoon reborn as Rain is published by Gallerie & Mapin in India and Grantha in USA. This book contains artwork by twenty leading contemporary Indian artists, such as Paritosh Sen, Paresh Maity, Jehangir Sabavala, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Jatin Das, Gieve Patel, and many others.
The evocative art that accompanies my writing in this book isn’t meant to illustrate the text, but simply to act as an aesthetic counterpoint, leitmotiv, and antithesis—thus creating a fine tension and balance between words and images.
Next in line is Dreaming of Cezanne, with accompanying watercolours by a New York–based playwright and artist, Anne Fleming. This book is a combination of prose poetry, meditative prose, and pure poetry that is landscaped entirely at the Hawthornden Castle in Scotland where I was awarded a fellowship and spent a month.
Using the same format, the third in the series is titled Wo|Man, a book of erotic poems with drawings by the celebrated Turkish poet and artist Ilhan Berk. The fourth book is called Ladakh, which has poems landscaped in the stark and vivid terrain of Ladakh itself as well as parts of Ireland. This book is accompanied by fine artwork by the Irish/Scottish artist Janet Pierce.
Your taste as a poet is very broad, open, and wide-visioned. You are a poet who cannot be conveniently pigeonholed.
Is the fact that you can’t pigeonhole me a good thing or a bad thing?
As a reader, I have enjoyed the varied landscapes that you portray, the stream of emotions, and themes that you give expression to. The good thing about all this is that Sudeep Sen is not a prisoner of a specific style, or a set of images, or even an agenda.
Well, I suspect you have answered your question yourself, which is precisely why I was trying to ask you the question back. I’m glad that one can’t pigeonhole me, because my interests, my themes, my forms, my rhythms are very varied indeed.
I still think in spite of having written a fair bit for the past fifteen years or so, I am still in the continual process of growing and learning new things. Every time I work on a new book, I realise that there is so much more to learn, and so much more to explore.
When it comes to writing itself, it is always a progression—you start from point A, to point B, and onwards. One of the most interesting forms of punctuation for me is actually the ellipse, the three dots […], which simply says—as such, nothing ends. It makes one’s way of looking at things as well as one’s own writing organic. I feel it is a good thing because otherwise if you work in a very myopic kind of a way, then you are only narrowing your scope further and further. Whereas simply being open to growth, you have the entire canvas and open palette to choose from. And that is very useful and at the same time unconstraining.
