I think of Elizabeth Bishop as my gateway drug to the world of poetry. She taught me about concision and alchemy, accuracy and curiosity. We were both New Englanders who very quickly moved away from New England to travel to different parts of the world, Bishop to South America and me, to Africa, and eventually, India.
This month I had the amazing honor of being a featured reader at the Kolkata International Poetry Festival in Kolkata, India. I read on a hotel rooftop under the stars, on a large pleasure boat floating down the Ganges, and in an auditorium on Shakespeare Lane. It was an experience of a lifetime to meet poets from all over India as well as other parts of the world.
When I arrived, I was blurry-eyed from 27 hours of air travel and contending with a 13 and 1/2 hour time difference. (Why, oh why the 1/2?) It was difficult to get my bearings. I have a Turkish friend who says that in the first days after a long flight, you live twice. I think of it more as a dreamscape where everything you see, hear, smell, taste is unbelievably heightened.
I remember my first morning, waking at first light to watch a car pull along the thin median strip and cut giant bouquets from the flowering bushes planted there. At first, the men appeared to be city gardeners, carefully trimming the greenery. However, once they each had cut their bouquets, they quickly jumped back in their car (still running) and were off again. Another man strolled by with a large broom over one shoulder, and an older woman sat alone on the sidewalk. This was home for the next week.
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Often when riding in a taxi or an auto rickshaw, I would see cars coming directly at us as the driver negotiated an 8-way rotary. Sometimes there would be an emaciated cow wandering the street in this city of 7 million people. Sometimes there was a sleepy pack of stray dogs.
I don’t claim to know if driving in Brazil is as hazardous as in West Bengal, if the culture and mythology of these two countries have anything in common at all. However, when I took the stage to open the Kolkata International Festival, I instinctively opened the festival with the first three stanzas of “One Art,” by Elizabeth Bishop:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master,
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that there loss is no disaster.
Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster;
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I didn’t know if anyone would recognize her poem, but it seemed the right way to introduce myself to this festival audience and then to read my poem, “Compass,” which begins with the small detail that Elizabeth Bishop always kept a compass in her front jacket pocket. Perhaps I needed her spirit to accompany me on this journey.
Later, I found out that poet Sarabjeet Garcha, founder and publisher of Copper Coin Press, was a huge Bishop fan; of course we became instant friends. Another dear friend I met was amazing poet, Jona Ray, author of Firefly Memories.
To visit (or live) in a country that is not yours by birth is an enlivening and sometimes, bewildering experience. A student came up to me at the festival and told me I had an excellent personality (!) and someone else told me I was the best poet that they’d ever heard read — it was a time out of time experience.
Now, typing this post in the quiet of my Seattle home, the cold wind beating the trees and electrical wires outside, it all seems unreal. A world where poets and poetry take center stage. A place where poets from all over the world come together? Yes, dear reader, this exists.
After the festival finished, I visited my friend, the fabulous poet and educator, Anil Oomen, who was on sabbatical, conducting research in Southern India. Anil is from Kerala, a state in the south of India with the highest literacy rate in the world. It is also famous as a home for writers, painters, filmmakers, and fabulous fish.
How did we meet? Nearly 29 years ago, Anil took a poetry class with me in Eugene, Oregon. I was a newly minted MFA graduate and he was a stay at home dad who needed to get out of the house. In that little class of seven, held after hours in Black Sun Books, Anil brought in a poem (a palindrome) about his first language, Malayalam. The language of Kerala where he was born and lived his first five years. All of a sudden, he was teaching me about this incredible language and culture. From that poem (later published in the South African journal, Carapace, that I was guest editing at the time) the idea came to me that someday Anil and I would travel together in Kerala. 29 years later, we have.
I think bringing poets together to generate new work in beautiful places might be my dream for retirement. As of now I have a poetry retreat scheduled in a castle in France this coming May (one spot left!) and a few places left for the 16th year of Poets on the Coast in LaConner, WA (90 minutes out of Seattle) which happens every September.
However, the newest endeavor is a writing retreat in Kerala, India at the retreat center pictured above. Anil and I are planning to take a small group of poets & writers to this beautiful area (pictured above) in November 2027. “Poetry On the Water” will include a day writing on a houseboat and hopefully, a trip to Fort Kochi with the only synagogue in India (which still holds Saturday services).
I will admit, I had a bit of trepidation before my trip; I pre-poned my worries (an Indian English word which means the opposite of postponed. All of my concerns of heat, bugs, inoculations, were unfounded. I loved India and can’t wait to go back.
If you want to be kept up-to-date with news of the “Poetry On the Water” retreat (photo of Kumarakom Lake pictured above) just drop me a line.