“Self-expression as self-extinction”

January 26, 2010 M. Sridhar and Alladi Uma: How would you describe yourself as a poet?
K. Siva Reddy: I feel I am a Marxist poet. Marxism provided me with a perspective to go deeper and deeper into life. I believe the ‘left’ perspective has helped in the unfolding of human experience and for the rediscovery of the self and in seeing life in its varied dimensions.

MS & AU: You have been writing for more than four decades. Tell us something about your poetic trajectory.
KSR: Up to Bharamiti is the first phase. From Bharamiti, to Mohana Oh Mohana to Ajeyam is the second phase. From Naa Kalala Nadi Anchuna up to Posaganivannee is the third phase. From here my language becomes simple and there is much more depth of experience. There is also the rediscovering of both the form and experience. There is a return to the roots, the rural experience from Naa Kalala Nadi Anchuna. The philosophical angle creeps into my work in the later collections. The collective experience gets submerged in the personal experience in these poems. The demarcation of the personal and the public gets erased. A poem now may begin on a very personal note, but it ends with a collective consciousness. In a manner of speaking, nothing is personal. The poems are no longer loud as they used to be in the first four or five books which have had an oratorical style.

MS & AU: How would you respond to the critique that your poetry remains ‘modernist’?
KSR: I feel I have gone beyond the ‘modernist’ phase. I believe my poetry has moved closer to the poetry of Neruda and Latin American prose. Both in terms of form and content, I strongly believe I have changed from each collection to the other. From one collection to the other, I strive to break the form that tries to contain and to move ahead.

MS & AU: Have there been some major influences on your work – movements and other poets both inside and outside India?
KSR: I have been influenced by all left-wing movements including the Naxalbari movement. Neruda, Senghor, Yiannis Ritsos, the Greek poet, Vladimir Holan, the Czech poet, have been my favourite poets, though I never imitated any of them. I have read with great interest the Gujarati Dalit poet, Jayant Parmar, who has written a series of ‘pencil’ poems in a recent issue of Indian Literature. I do think I learn from even younger poets. I have studied the British poets of the ’30s and the Movement poets like Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes and the modern American poets. I am particularly impressed by Eliot whom I consider the greatest urban poet. Among the Telugu poets I admire Gurajada and Sri Sri. Though no Telugu poet in particular has influenced me, I have been trained in traditional as well as modern poetic styles. My training has made me acutely aware of the need to find my own poetic diction. The terseness of expression is something I have learnt from my study of the Telugu poets, both traditional and modern.

MS & AU: Do you have an audience in mind? What does it mean to be translated into English? Does that make you recognised as an ‘Indian’ poet?
KSR: In the beginning I had. Particularly in the early phases of my career when I imagined a huge audience before me whom I thought I was addressing. I therefore wrote in the oratorical fashion. Now, it is total self-expression. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is also an attempt at the self-extinction of personality that Eliot talks about.I am a Telugu poet first, an Indian poet next and then a world poet. Being a Telugu poet, I am simultaneously an Indian poet. Being translated into English, of course, gives one a wider reach. It is necessary for writers to be translated, to read others and to be read by others. There is no option but to be translated. Poetry is self-expression and every poet must read the self-expression of other poets. Experience is indivisible and needs to be shared. For example, poets from different languages have responded to the Gujarat riots. It is necessary for the varied voices to reach each other. This can be achieved only through translation into English.

MS & AU: How would you respond to the criticism that you romanticise the woman in your poetry?
KSR: Identity movements like the feminist and the Dalit movements have helped poets ‘extend’ themselves. For instance, the poets have become conscious of the use of words. Glorification of the woman and ill-treatment of the woman have been part of our tradition. This is reflected in our poetry too. As a motherless child (having lost my mother at a very early age), I may have glorified the mother. But I have never demeaned the woman. To record the feminine experience is not easy for a man. Romanticising a woman may have been a part of our traditional way of writing about a woman. But writing consciously after the feminist phase, there has been a definite change in the expression. One can re-learn life at any time from any one. I learn a lot from my one-and-half year old grandchild, for instance. I re-learn life from a child’s point of view when I interact with him.