Interview with taner murat
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Professor Ram Krishna Singh discusses his creative process and work in an interview with Taner Murat. Some key points: - He discovered his talent for poetry at age 12-13 when one of his poems was published. Other family members also dabbled in writing. - He believes literature can change how people live by bringing inner harmony and helping people understand different cultures. - His poems seek to release himself from inner emptiness and imbalance. He enjoys brevity, rhythm, and expressing personal experiences. Nature, relationships, social issues, and spirituality are common themes. - His writing process is usually fast, with shorter poems taking 10 minutes. He rarely revises and is open to feedback
Interview with taner murat
- 1. My interview with Taner Murat, Editor, Nazar Look(Romania), published in September 2013: http://issuu.com/kirim-tatarkitaplari/docs/nazar_2013_09_online#download --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- POET PROFESSOR RAM KRISHNA SINGH INTERVIEWED BY TANER MURAT Q: Professor Singh, at what age did you discover the poet in you? Perhaps, at about 12 or 13, when I composed my first poem in Hindi, which appeared in the children’s magazine supplement of a Hindi daily Aj (Varanasi). Q: Do you have other writers or artists in your family? Yes, my youngest brother and two of my sisters have also been dabbling in poetry and short story in Hindi, but I doubt they are active now. One of my uncles made a living by drawing, painting, making cinema slides, advertisements etc. It seems to me that our family has been blessed with good imaginative faculty. Q: Has literature the ability to change the way people live their lives? Even if the appeal of literature depends on the sensitivity of readers, poets and writers can be influential by, what someone calls, “the force of imaginative insight.” They can be helpful in bringing about inner harmony and balance in an individual, negotiating life in a highly tense or disturbed body politic, rival impulses and ideals, or conflicts and hostilities. Though I have no taste for didacticism in poetry, nor do I seek to preach or debate issues, I do believe people of one culture can understand the values of others through diverse literary exposure/interaction. This can help open their minds to grasp how one might be a full human being, with whom one could communicate, and at the same time live in the light of values widely different from ones own. So literature as negotiation of differences can make changes in the way people live their lives. Q: Help me understand your work. How would you describe it? As I said, I don’t stand for didacticism or preaching in poetry. Rather, I write a poem to seek a release from myself as much as from others; to feel free by unburdening myself, and experiencing an inner balance, feeling, probing, sensing, recalling, or whatever. If it turns out to be a good poem, it has beauty and meaning created out of a pressing sense of inner emptiness. It stimulates some sensuous, spiritual, or exalted pleasure, or generates some physical, emotional, or psychosexual sensation. I love brevity, rhythm, and ‘coloring of human passion,’ personal, lyrical, honest, and free expression, with seriousness in reflection and interpretation. Like everyone, I too pass through time, through unfulfilled desires, dreams and passions, through meaninglessness and purposelessness of an existence which questioningly stares into my eyes all the time just as I try to preserve all those small moments that offer pleasing sensations and rest to my otherwise disturbed nerves and inner being. I also experience poetry in the brief interfusion with sex which has a rare subtlety of awareness. I feel myself in words that acquire their own existence in the process of making in a form I may have no control over: I read a new meaning in and through my verses that are often an extension of myself.
- 2. Q: Who are your biggest creative influences? Since I have been mostly reading new and less known poets writing in English, I can’t mention any big creative influences as such. Yet, I must acknowledge the impact of my American poet-professor friend, late Lyle Glazier (of Vermont), whom I met in 1971-72 as a student and with whom I stayed in touch for about 25 years till his death. He was my best poet-critic friend. In fact I learnt from him how to edit a poem. He helped me edit my first collection, My Silence (1985). Reading his poetry, I discovered my own poetic sensibility. Then, the Psalms of the Bible have been my another influence, perhaps. Q: Do you have preferred themes? Were you always wondering about the issues you now wonder about? I don’t know. My fundamentals have remained unchanged. I have touched many themes: individual passion, mythical awareness, human relationship, social consciousness, and become my own veil and revelation. The themes of spiritual search, an attempt to understand myself and the world around me, social injustice and disintegration, human suffering, degradation of relationship, political corruption, fundamentalism, hollowness of urban life and its false values, prejudices and superstitions, loneliness, sex, love, irony, intolerance, hypocrisy etc seem to be prominent. In my haiku there is a deeper perception of the quotidian as well as things in their complex simplicity. Then, there is the theme of social reality, which is not devoid of the private and sexual. The use of erotic metaphors reveals the hidden truths about the individual or his /her social consciousness. In fact, in the oriental poetry and art, sexual experiences illumine inner realities and are not different from other human experiences such as eating or sleeping. There is some sense in love of the self through exploration of the body, or naked physicality, leading to love of the divine, or man and woman as one. Erotic theme or imagery in my poetry has a transpersonal dimension. Perhaps, the problem is not sex/sexuality but social attitude, false morality, hypocrisy, the socio-sexual standards that determine ‘civilized’ norms, that discriminate, enchain, and debase honest aspirations. Q: Is your work process fast or slow? It’s fast, I think. I have written most of my poems in the spirit of ‘here and now’. Shorter poems – lyrics, haiku and tanka – simply happen anywhere, anytime. It takes hardly 10 minutes to complete it. A long poem (beyond 15 lines or so) may take half-an-hour and some times, intermittently, a day or two! As far as prose writing is concerned, it takes some planning, reasoning, and note-making— understanding what I need to write—and then write, and edit, revise and re-write, till I am convinced that it meets the purpose of writing. Q: How many evaluations does your work go through before you are satisfied with it? Since a poem literally happens—I may get inspired by anything, anybody, any event, any person—I rarely revise or evaluate it. A weak poem makes me aware of its deficiency right at the start and I try to improve it within the first half-an-hour, or forget about it. May revise/rewrite it after a day or two. In fact, so much seems to be happening subconsciously or unconsciously that it is difficult to say what will inspire or get expressed when, where, or how. But when an empathetic poet-reader makes some suggestion for improvement, I am always open to change. Q: Rhymed poems or free verse?
- 3. I don’t think I ever tried to write rhymed verse in English. I have written only free verse. Q: Where do you write? The source of creative inspiration has always been mysterious. When and where it happens, nobody can say. I have composed poems while walking, eating, taking bath, defecating, reading, praying, interacting, travelling, or just relaxing. Q: Is there a time of day or night when you have energy that is more creative? No. There has never been a fixed time for my creative energy to be active. It may be spurred anytime, by my personal experiences with people in waking life, my dreamt dreams, seeing good paintings, or reading good writing. For academic or critical writing, however, morning hours seem more effective. Q: What gives you most enjoyment from your poetry? Do you admire your own poems? It pleases me most when a poem is published, or appreciated by a poet/critic. And, if someone’s comment reveals certain aspects of a poem I am not aware of, I am naturally inclined to appreciate it more. Q: When you write a poem, do you start with the title first? Or do you write the poem first and think of the title after? The truth is, I am very poor at titling my poems. I am yet to compose a poem with title integral to it. In fact, I believe in giving no titles to my poems. Titles tell too much, as Lyle Glazier once observed. These interfere with readers’ freedom of imagination. But if I suspend some poems by titles, it is only to facilitate their individual identification or separation from the rest of the poems. That’s all. Q: Why are modern poets neglecting the rules of poetry? It’s perhaps because they’re not aware of the rules, or because they vie with each other to subvert and create something different! This is also reflective of the decline in reading, learning, and industry, and shabbiness in human behavior and intellectual habits. Q: How do you balance reading and writing? If one has no time to read, one can’t write. As simple as that. Having said that, I must admit that I read everything—good, bad, trash, technical, journalistic, aesthetic, serious, literary, non-literary, popular--and try to absorb it. Maybe, sometimes use it, too, if it’s good. Otherwise, forget it. My forgetting is faster than my remembering. As for its process, let me also say that I have always tried to keep the academic writer separate from the poet in me, though when I review, or do a critical article, the academic in me is also active. I have also tried to maintain a balance between my academic activities that give me my bread and professional status, and poetic creativity that gives me an identity in Indian Writing in English but not money. Now that I have considerably reduced my academic reading (or research), I hope I will concentrate more on poetry practices internationally. I also need to read more to enjoy than to write as a reviewer, critic, or academician. Q: Do you exchange work with your students? If you mean exchange of my poems with students, it’s NO. I mostly teach ‘English for Science and Technology’ (EST) skills to undergraduate and postgraduate students who have little time to read literature. The M.Phil (English) students do read my poems as part
- 4. of their Indian English writing course. A couple of them have also explored my poetry for MPhil and PhD dissertations. Since my poetry is available on the internet (as also in the library), interested students read it on their own, and sometimes interact with me also. Some of them meet me to show their poems. Q: Will you only preface a good book? Yes. You’re right. The book must motivate me to say something fresh, or worth saying. A good book, however, stands on its own and needs no one for its introduction. So, I must match its level to be able to preface it! Q: When you are not writing, where would we most likely find you? At home, watching TV, or reading newspapers, or some literary journal or magazine. There is nowhere else to go! Dhanbad is no good for a poet writing in English. Nor is there a better place, away from the campus, to go to. Q: What is the best place to have lunch with a writer in Dhanbad? Dhanbad is essentially a coal city with no culture of its own. Since it is now one of the fastest growing cities of India, a few good hotels have come up but I doubt these provide the desired ambience for a writer to have lunch or dinner. Yet, I discovered a Resort early this year. One can leisurely drink, eat, and chat there. Q: Where can we find you on the web? One can google my name to find me on the web, but one can view some of my work on the following sites: http://rksingh.blogspot.in/ http://profrksingh.blogspot.in/ http://rksinghpoet.blogspot.in/ http://www.lit.org/author/R.K.Singh http://www.indianfaculty.com/Faculty_Articles/FA20/fa20.html http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Ram_Krishna_Singh http://collectedpoemsofrksingh.blogspot.in/2010/11/sense-and-silence-collected-poemsof.html http://indiasaijikiworlkhaiku.blogspot.in/2006/07/r-k-singh.html http://www.penpoetry.com/allpoetry/ram-krishna-singh.html http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ram-krishna-singh/17/195/890 Q: What is ahead for Professor Ram Krishna Singh? I badly need a change from the present deadly monotony of existence in the maze of routine: it has been a long journey from loneliness to frustration to depression, on the one hand, and search for purpose and meaning of life, on the other. Now, I eagerly look forward to a relaxed, retired life, with freedom to do or pursue whatever interests me-- to visit places I couldn’t, to read books I couldn’t, and to enjoy and discover myself, reading, writing, travelling, or whatever. --R.K. SINGH