AMU concludes two-day national conference on Indian English poetry

MUZAFFARNAGAR: A two-day national conference on “Indian English poetry: Toru Dutt to Vanavil K Ravi” was organised by the English department of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), concluded on Wednesday with a valedictory session held at the conference hall in the faculty of social sciences. The conference celebrated the contribution of Indian English poets, asserting the expression of Indian sensibility and emphasising upon the need to create a canon of itself.
The chief guest of the valedictory session, Dr Zoya Zaidi, a bilingual poet in Urdu and English expressed her views on the theme and said that language is a culture in itself, and not just a means of communication. She also recited some of her poems on the occasion titled “The bees announcement,” and “Life is an ocean deep and wide.” She concluded her address by singing a self-composed Urdu poetry “Áaiye baithiye.”
Prof Ameena Kazi Ansari delivered a speech on “From the creative to the critical: On evolving a poetics for Indian English poetry” and underlined the ways to read contemporary poetry through its poetics to evaluate Indian English poetry. She also drew attention to the subtheme of Indian experience and identity and talked about how literature is not only a mirror, it is also a map, a geography of the mind.
Discussing a new term “deshscape” used in the work of a Canadian scholar, Prof Kazi said that the nation according to eminent critics is a historical idea that emerges from tradition, culture, and ideas. She also talked about the art of translation and discussed how we have come a long way from Raja Rao’s idea of the spirit of Indian writing in English and how our identities have transitioned from colonial, postcolonial, to neo-colonial.
In her keynote address, an internationally acclaimed poet, critic, translator, and academic, Dr Sukrita Paul Kumar talked about “Owing the liminal: Indian English poetry” by insisting on liminality as a basic condition for writing Indian poetry in English. She also highlighted the ability to practice multiple cultures as an advantage of liminality between two or more languages.