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Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Charged and challenged! Joy Harjo (left) and Carolyn Forche at an Open Baithak in India Habitat Centre

A jugalbandi in poetry is not common. But contemporary American poets Carolyn Forche and Joy Harjo illustrated how poets can respond to each other in rhythm and theme. Performing for the open baithak at India Habitat Centre, they kept a scant but devoted audience riveted. Poems of atrocities chilled the audience into silence. Poems of hope proved to be as warm as a prayer.

Forche is a human rights activist and poet. She has worked in conflict areas from El Salvador to Lebanon to South Africa to the occupied West Bank. She is best known for “Blue Hour”, “The Angel of History”, and “The Country Between Us”. She has won numerous awards within America, while also receiving flak for being a “political” poet. Harjo, a proud Native American, has penned the well-recognised “The Woman who Fell from the Sky”, “In Mad Love and War”, and other books. She also performs her poetry and plays the saxophone with her band, Joy Harjo and the Arrow Dynamics Band. While the Delhi night was too cold for her horn, she did sing her traditional songs.

While they have been friends for many years, they can’t remember when they performed together last. “Jerusalem?” Forche hazards a guess. But is their work similar? Harjo continues, “We are a voice of an age. In hindsight, when I look at our work, I see that we bring forth a common consciousness of one body.”

En route to America from Kolkata, the poets reiterate the glories of Santiniketan. They performed at a peace reading there, which included their poems, Bengali translations of their work and Bengali poems. Forche says, “It was an incredible symphony of utterance. Joy played her sax. It was wonderful.” She says that while she couldn’t understand the language, she could recognise the phrases when she heard her poems in Bengali. “It’s like another music arises from you,” she says with eyes lighting up. Harjo continues the thread, “It’s an honour to have one’s work translated. It’s as if it has found another home. It goes on to live its own life.”

They have been “charged and challenged” by their brief six-day stay in India. Quick to laugh at themselves, Forche says, “Americans have this habit of visiting a place and coming up with grand statements. But let me be American.” Harjo rocks with laughter as Forche continues, “The fullness of life is available in India. The wholeness of experience can be found here. For a poet it’s thrilling.” Harjo nods in assent.

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