Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl, talks with Amit Shankar Saha, a poet and writer about his latest collection of poetry Etesian::Barahmasi.

Thank you Amit for taking time out to talk to The Wise Owl about your latest collection of poetry.

RS: I’m intrigued by the alchemy of rasas in your collection. Your poetry seamlessly blends Sringara (love and beauty), Adbhuta (wonder), Karuna (sadness), and Shanta (serenity). Was this a conscious structuring of emotional progression, or did the Rasas emerge organically through your creative process?

ASS: When I was writing my poems I was not conscious of what Rasas my poems were evoking. But there was a sense that my poems deal predominantly with love and beauty and there is softness to them through use of sibilant sounds leading to a sort of epiphany or ending with an elegiac note as if a hush has descended. When I consider these aspects from the perspective of Indian aesthetics I am able to immediately connect with the Sringara, Adbhuta, Karuna and Shantam Rasas. The obvious question that will arise is why I am applying Indian aesthetics to English poetry. But even though I am writing in English my use of this language is very Indian. I would prefer to make the language work in a way that it satisfactorily expresses my emotions rather than manipulate my emotions to suit the language it is expressed in. So the poems adhering to the Rasas were already there and all I had to do while formatting the book was to arrange them in that emotional progression. The creation of the poems was an organic act but the creation of the book was a conscious effort.

RS: In an age where poetry often leans toward activism, Etesian::Barahmasi chooses beauty as its focal point. Do you see beauty itself as a form of subtle resistance? How does it engage with, rather than escape from, the world’s complexities?

ASS: Yes, there is a kind of poetry that furthers a cause – but then it becomes convenient to label them as such identified by the very cause. Thereby they are often excluded from the literary canon. But it does not mean that poetry that puts the cause of beauty and aesthetics first cannot further a social cause. The very fact that we are able to make beauty exist in trying times or make silence speak amidst discord is activism. When a fish is angled out of water there is beauty in its struggle to survive and there is a loud cry in the silence of its suffocation in the air. These are subtle resistances rather than escapism. Appreciating beauty and understanding silence can create empathy and generate love. Through propagandist activism one can achieve an emergent result but sustenance lies in subtlety. Literature works through a sort of well-intentioned insidiousness.

RS: The title suggests a cyclical movement—seasons shifting, emotions evolving, time renewing itself. How do your poems reflect this eternal rhythm, and what inspired you to structure the collection around this theme?

ASS: In the two odes – Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn – Keats shows how one can defy death and impermanence through the natural cycles and through art respectively. In the Indian Barahmasa tradition too the eternal cycles of the months is used to show the cyclical evolution of human emotions. When I was structuring my book I had both the British Romantic tradition and the Indian Barahmasa tradition in my consciousness. I purposely wanted to operate on this cyclical pattern not only in the overall format of the book but also within each month division comprising of four poems because that is how my emotions evolved. I owe inspiration to two sources. One was the Calendar format of Contents that I found in I. Allan Sealy’s novel “The Everest Hotel”. The other was the seasonal division of sections of a book of poems by Ananya Chatterjee titled “Barefoot on Splintered Glass”. And because my aim was to depict a circle of time which bypasses all ends, even death, and the cyclical evolution of emotions within, I found it appropriate to adopt this format because nothing dies in the natural cycle, they rejuvenate like the seasons.

RS: Your poetry thrives on paradoxes and contradictions. Could you share a poem or a line that best encapsulates this interplay, and how such tensions enrich the depth of meaning in your work?

ASS: It will be difficult to call literature as literature if it has everything as expected (and this is where AI will fail in creating literature) without any element of surprise and I am not even alluding to any theoretical texts like Cleanth Brooks’s “Language of Paradox” or such like. Paradoxes and contradictions exist in my poems because I am living in a postmodern world that is filled with questions of undecidability, instability, indecisiveness and uncertainty. In my poem “Supposed to Be” I write:

There’s too much hiding

in art – metaphors,

secret codes and what not!

This 21st March

these twenty-one lines

are not about you.

In these lines I am saying that these lines are not about “you” but by addressing them to “you” I am contradicting myself. The paradox is created because a poem is both personal and impersonal at the same time. This is how depth is created because immediately the reader comes to know on reading the poem that he or she is not being able to access a layer of meaning that is very personal to the poet. I have said earlier in my interviews too that my poems have three apparent layers of meanings – the aesthetic, the social and the personal. The aesthetic will fall into the tradition of appreciation that the reader is aware of, the social will appeal according to the group the reader belongs to and the personal will stay a bit elusive and can just be speculated. This is the richness of literature.

RS: You encourage readers to experience your poems aloud. What role does sound, cadence, and rhythm play in shaping the emotional impact of your verses?

ASS: As we know the emergence of poetry was in sound long before words and languages came. The earliest human beings made different sounds related to their work or for expressing certain emotions like fear or anger just as animals do. But the moment they imitated bird songs it was a non-utilitarian act and poetry was created. So sound is vital for a poem as I earlier recounted the use of sibilant sounds to created an atmosphere of hush-ness. A lot of a poem is conveyed in the sounds it creates even when the meaning eludes. The pattern of sound, the pattern of form and the pattern of meaning all have to align. We know the poem is ending when Keats says “And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.” The sound of these words conveys the closure. The sound creates the mood. These four lines of Vikram Seth’s poem “Soon” convey so much by the sound they make:

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Stay by my steel ward bed

And hold me where I lie.

Love me when I am dead

And do not let me die.

RS: The natural world in your poetry is not just a backdrop but an active force intertwined with human emotions. How do you approach nature in your work—as metaphor, mirror, or something more visceral?

ASS: As a modern poet I am trying to present the unpresentable – the idea of immortality, permanence, eternity and as stated earlier I can do so only through nature and art and hence these two have to be intertwined with my emotions. But nature comes in sometimes as a metaphor and sometimes as a mirror and sometimes in a more visceral sense (like the heart of a plant or when trees run amok or where I become grass). Many of the natural imageries came into my poems when I shifted to the suburban town of Bolpur/ Shantiniketan from the urban Kolkata and started teaching in a university located in a rural setting. Also there was the influence of fellow poet Ananya Chatterjee whose poems are filled with the elements of the seasonal cycles and natural imageries and many of my poems are in response to her poems.

RS:  Were there particular poets, artistic movements, or philosophical ideas that shaped your vision for Etesian::Barahmasi? How do you see your work in dialogue with literary traditions, both classical and contemporary?

ASS: I already stated about the influence of Ananya Chatterjee and the Barahmasa tradition. Regarding philosophical ideas there is nothing in particular though I do have a poem titled “Something Existential”. I write with the consciousness of the Western tradition of poetry since my formal education has been in English Literature. And I gained some knowledge about the Indian traditions of writing through English translations of Indian writing. But there is in the subconscious the Indian ethos. In my mind the East and the West intersect and my poems can be read ideally with the awareness of both Western and Indian aesthetic traditions and literary theories simultaneously rather than exclusively in one tradition where it may appear wanting or anomalous.

RS: Your collection is praised for its inventive language and striking imagery. How do you balance innovation with accessibility, ensuring that poetic experimentation still resonates with readers?

ASS: I write mostly in a very conversational style and once the reader is well into my poem I slip in the inventiveness that surprises but also gets seamlessly absorbed by the reader.

RS: Your poems transcend the moment, engaging with time, space, and emotion in profound ways. How do you hope Etesian::Barahmasi will be read and interpreted decades from now?

ASS: Irrespective of how, I just hope that Etesian::Barahmasi will be read and interpreted decades from now. If that happens then, like John Keats said in a letter to his brother George, I too can say that I think I shall be among the Indian poets. Thank you.

Thank you for taking time out to talk with The Wise Owl about your poetry and creative process. We wish you the very best in all your creative endeavours.