Sudeep Sen: Language

Vishnu, Photo by Spoortesh Honey – pexels

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21st March is World Poetry Day. To celebrate it, here is a poem by Sudeep Sen.

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Without translation, I would be limited to
the borders of my own country. The translator is
my most important ally.
— ITALO CALVINO

Language

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1

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    My typewriter is multilingual,
its keys mysteriously calibrating

     my bipolar, forked tongue.
Black-red silk ribbon spools, unwind

     as the carriage moves right to left.
In cursive hand, I write from left to right.

     My tongue was born promiscuous —
speaking in many languages.

     My heart spoke another, my head
yet another — the translation, seamless.

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2

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     Auricles, ventricles pump blood —
corpuscle-like alphabets, phrases, syntax

     cross-fertilize my text, breathing life.
Texture enriched — music, cadence

     spatially enhanced — osmotic,
polyglottal — a polygamy of grammar.

     Letterforms dance, ligatures pirouette —
ascenders, descenders — pitch perfect.

     Imagination isn’t caged in speech —
speech cannot be caged in language.

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Sudeep Sen is the International and Poetry Editor at Ars Notoria and a leading international poet whose prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions), EroText (Penguin), Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms (Bloomsbury), Anthropocene (Pippa Rann, Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize), and Red. Edited landmark anthologies include: The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi), and Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians (Pippa Rann). Blue Nude: Ekphrasis & New Poems (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize), Rock, and The Whispering Anklets are forthcoming. His photography represented by ArtMbassy, Rome/Berlin, is part of private/public collections. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for “outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.” Sen is the first Asian honoured to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival.