CHENNAI: Bodies, caste, sexuality, desire, and violence — these topics filled the poems penned by Malathi, Kutty Revathi, Salam, and Sukirthirani, in the early 2000s. A new vocabulary of feminist writing slowly solidified. As translator Lakshmi Holstrom writes in Wild Women, Wicked Words, “for the moral police, such language was not permissible for Tamil women. So the poets were condemned and vilified.”
And soon, threats, anger and mass outrage followed. “Our poetry was asking questions and many men began issuing threats online. One said they would make us stand on Mount Road and light us on fire with petrol. In a society filled with patriarchy, caste and religious divide, feminist writing is needed. Our writing and poetry should show the way,” recalls Sukirtharani. But, what is poetry if not challenging the norm?
Despite the threats, these poets continued filling blank pages with fiery words, challenging language, and interrogating society and hierarchies. Around two decades later, the voices of Sukirtharani and Kutti Revathi echo in an intimate room at Krea University, on Friday at The Prajnya Trust’s Sunset Verses.
The bilingual reading session included Vatsala, Sivakami Velliangiri, and K Srilata. The evening aimed at celebrating 18 years of Prajnya as they formally pulled down their shutters. Poetry has been integral to their journey.
“Words penned, before editing, are raw and crucial to any writing,” says Sukirtharani. Irrespective of the form, poetry has the power to liberate, instigate revolutions and capture the inner worlds of women.
“In any language, women’s poetry plays a pivotal role that you can’t negate. There is a hidden agenda and conspiracy to erase women poets in the world. But language exists, and it is a power. Despite any societal power dynamics, women handle this beautifully,” says Revathi.
Beauty followed across genres with Vatsala’s sarcastic lines, highlighting violence against women, and Sivakami’s humourous prose-like verses on interpersonal relationships.
From Valli to Draupadi, the female characters in the Mahabharata are largely invisible. Srilata’s upcoming poetry collection delves into the “fault lines, cracks and fissures in retellings of the Mahabharata, ones which are quirky.” Her verses spotlight Valli, who is missing Sanskrit renditions but finds a place in local plays and ballads.
As all the women agreed, feminist poets must not limit themselves. Sivakami recalls leaving her manuscript How We Measured Time unpublished for 19 years, in fear of offending her brother.
Translation troubles
While novels may span pages, poetry can carry such feelings within four lines, moving society, says Sukirtharani. Yet, translation is another story that requires careful deliberation on how to transport readers to a new landscape in another language while perfecting punctuation, region-specific slang and retaining a writer’s tone. “There is a challenge, there is a missing aspect in the translation of mother tongues. I’ve draped my sari and if I do it again, there’s no issue and translation feels like a saree draped in reverse, with its designs hidden,” as Sukirtharani puts it artfully.
Translating women’s words is a challenge, especially as Tamil and English have a wall between them, says Revati. For Srilata, the path to translation was an accident. “I write with a fuller heart than I translate. There is an uneasy relationship between Tamil and English, there is no kinship between the languages.
If you were to translate between Tamil and Telugu, there are chances you’d get it as the idioms are the same. There’s always dissatisfaction, there are so many losses but so many gains, it helps (the poems) travel.” She adds a rare case where a translation may improve on an original as with Perumal Murugan’s Current Show where translator V Geetha improved on an ambiguous ending, and later editions had tweaked endings.
“Poetry has the capacity to provoke thought and evoke empathy and the reason we do so many creative events is we want to permit people to express themselves however imperfectly and rawly. The arts are important to social change and all of us need to find platforms and avenues, and must not to patronise them as if we are doing them a favour but to allow them into our lives because they do us a favour by freeing us,” signs off Swarna Rajagopalan, Prajnya founder.