My rejoinder to the following review// Because poem appears in the book///

https://feminisminindia.com/2021/06/22/book-review-collegiality-and-other-ballads-allyship-or-taking-voices-away/

I am glad the review exists. No sarcasm. We do rarely see ‘criticism’ in Indian English poetry, so any kind of criticism is welcome. But (and I don’t want to use the word bias), the piece reeks of righteous anger — anger at the perceived wrong done to women and feminism by doing a book of poems written exclusively by people who don’t identify as woman. But this is the premise of the very book. Perhaps the book is not for you, but every book has a right to exist.

To condemn the book just because it purportedly collects ‘feminist poems’ by ‘male poets’ is resorting to essentialism.

Granted the book has its issues. To be honest, I don’t like the title. If I were involved in the book, I’d have made different choices. But it’s a personal opinion. Dismissing the poems just because they are on ‘women’s issues’ (sorry, couldn’t think of an appropriate word) is a rushed judgement.   

Another accusation against the book is its crimes of ‘voice appropriation’. It’s a sensitive subject that demands a nuanced reading (I know, I did my PhD on the subject, how mainstream authors appropriate minority voices in Indian fiction in English). Personally, I don’t support appropriating someone’s voice willy-nilly, but at time, it can be a stylistic choice, because if you write it from the male POV, it may sound condescending. (But must you, as a man, tell a woman’s story? That needs a large discussion. But depending on the situation, my answer would be yes, simply because the stories must be told, the voices must be heard, and often, a woman may not be able to tell her own story. But it must be done with empathy and compassion. The onus is on the writer.)

Now, a point about the comment on my poem. The reviewer writes, “The choice of footnote gives away the gender bias in Sarma’s ‘In Which We Eat’, a poem about Draupadi requiring to feed more mouths than there is food. After exhorting Draupadi/ Yagnaseni to eat the last morsel, the poem inexplicably ends by offering the last morsel to Jayant Mahapatra instead. The footnote explains Draupadi’s predicament but gives no reference for Mahapatra or the fisherman that Mahapatra will feed. Real men don’t need footnotes.”

I am so happy that the review read the poem. To be honest, I did not write it to be a feminist poem — far from it. It was talking about hunger, and Draupadi was a take-off point. The third section of the poem invokes a whole host of people, both men and women.

As to the lack of reference to the fisherman that Mahapatra will feed, it’s missing because it refers to Mahapatra’s poem ‘Hunger’, which has been a staple of school and college courses and I assumed everyone who reads poetry in English in India will get it. Perhaps its my male bias, after all, or my English Lit bias. I will make sure to include it the next time I publish the poem.   

(I am still not explaining the reference. Please read Mahapatra’s poem!)