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Where creativity resides
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The recent book reading at The Park conducted by Sangam House offered a peek into the world of writers
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Photo: R. RAVINDRAN
expressive best (From left to right): Honggyu Son, N.S. Koenings, Joshua Furst, Sharanya Manivanan, Salma, Mridula Koshy and Tom Alter
From unnamed manuscripts just beginning to take form to stories written decades ago. From Tamil poetry with raw feminist undertones to magical, fantastical Korean literature. From a mythological re-imagining of Karna as a woman to an urgent, intense portrayal of anger and frustration on the New Jersey turnpike.
The recent book reading at The Park conducted by Sangam House, the international writer’s enclave in Puducherry , gave its audience a brief window into the world of the writer and the poet — a world of words, imagination and endlessly different styles of self-expression.
Seven writers and poets from across the world participated in the reading, all part of the inaugural winter residency programme at Sangam House. Some, such as Joshua Furst of the U.S. and N.S. Koenings of the Netherlands chose to read from creations they are working on.
“It doesn’t have a name yet, but I call it a cri du cif $Capital { return "Œ"} else { return "œ"}ur, a ‘cry of the heart’ and it’s about conflict — not global necessarily, but emotional,” explained Furst before he began his rapid, urgent reading — the story of a man who travels hours to visit his wife in her parents’ home in New Jersey, deftly capturing the tensions and emotional undercurrents in the various relationships he sketches.
Koenings’ work, on the other hand, had a dream-like quality to it. “I’ve experimented with words to create a slideshow rather than a more straightforward style of writing,” she said about the piece that, according to her, was “turning into a novel.”
Young Delhi-based writer Mridula Koshy, however, decided to read an older piece instead — a short story she wrote three years ago. “I’ve been working on a novel for about a year, but I felt very superstitious about reading something that’s still in process,” she admitted with a smile. Set in a typical Delhi colony, the story lyrically explored how people ‘see’ one another across the different divides in Indian society.
Poets Sharanya Manivanan and Salma also read from previously published works, their styles evocative and provocative in very different ways. While Sharanya’s works were characterised by their voluptuous, visual descriptiveness, Salma’s Tamil poetry was powerful in its honest and deeply personal exploration of Tamil women’s identities and their experiences (an English translation was read to the audience by Arshia Sattar, organiser of the Sangam House residency programme).
Special guest Tom Alter stepped in to read the English translation of Korean author Honggyu Son’s The Human Myth — a flowing piece on the fantastical ruminations of a man who believes he’s different from the rest of humanity — before reading some of his own writings.
Not surprisingly, theatre and movie personality Alter was perhaps the best performer of the evening, engaging the audience with his trip down memory lane as he read a story he’d written 39 years ago, and even venturing into song at one point (“Mere sapno ki rani…”). He then read the first two pages of the novel he’s currently working on, saying, “If I’d written the same two pages anywhere else, they wouldn’t have turned out this way – all credit to Sangam House.”
Fittingly, the question and answer session that followed covered plenty of literary ground as well, from translation between languages and writer’s block to cricket writing (which famous cricketer should write a novel first) and the daily schedule at Sangam House, before breaking up into a more informal interaction between the audience and the writers.
DIVYA KUMAR
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