ENARADA, Mangalore, July 14, 2013:
In a world where people are always in a hurry and where its intellectual and creative class is reduced to mere observers and listeners, humanism has been the biggest casualty, said eminent Hindi poet, critic, translator and culture activist Ashok Vajpeyi.
He was addressing a group of audience consisting of poets, writers and enthusiastic public at the second annual James and Shobha Mendonca Endowment Lecture on poetry 2013 held at SDM College here yesterday evening.
The lecture was organized by Kavita Trust, a trust for the promotion of Konkani poetry in association with SDM P G Centre for management Studies.
He pointed out that the job of a poet is to militate against tyranny and that too against the tyranny of uniformity. He further added “Plurality of world, time and truth are the three essential requirements of poetry. If the world is uniform and there is no variety, there cannot be poetry because poetry cannot survive in an environment of predictability”, he asserted.
He described the relationship between poetry and the world as complex and multi-layered. “Language is not the creation of poets but is an inheritance given to them by the society. The world can do without poetry but poetry cannot do with the world. A poet is born out of the love and lure of the world”, he declared. He remarked that we are living in most violent times where civil wars, armed rebellions and terrorist activities have become an everyday affair. There is violence everywhere and we are being told there is no alternative. But poets cannot accept what is given to them on a platter. “Poetry is born out of imagination and poets are born to come out with different alternatives”, he stated.
Vajpeyi also came down heavily on the media saying language is under serious assault as media is using it in a most irresponsible manner. But he also said language takes its true shape in the form of poetry. We have to realize “it is not accidental that major religions have their major religious books in poetry. It is a special gift of poets to religion”.
The James and Shobha Mendonca Endowment lecture on poetry is an annual feature and of the important programmes organized by Kavita Trust and it was the second year of the programme.
