Editorial (Poetry Month Special)

Poetry Month Special Edition of Learning and Creativity

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, “The night is starry
And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.”
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”

Tonight I Can Write
~ Twenty Love Poems And A Song Of Despair:  Pablo Neruda

While reading Neruda’s intuitive, sensory poetry rooted in his expressive organic images, I have time and again been awed by his unique, volatile poetic voice whose direct, evocative expression of life celebrates his sense of destruction, of mortality, and also of hope and regeneration. The epiphany that I derived from reading his poems resonates with other favorite poets of mine as well, including W. B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, and of course, the fiery Sylvia Plath and Maya Angelou. In all their works, I have been awed, struck and bemused with the beauty and truth of the voice of the poet with which he/she confidently, lyrically leads us readers from darkness to the sweet, comforting realm of the senses.

This exploration and transformation also brings us close to the physical and spiritual worlds that one experiences through writing and reading poetry, which is again, an act of immense transformative power.

While the poet creates a compelling world-within-a-world, conveys his metaphorical truths with precision and unflinching passion, the readers become one with the familiar, strange, vivid vision that he creates, having a sense of his own loss, displacement, memories and desires  from the poet’s world.

The expression of poetic or metaphorical truths has undergone a sea of changes since the influences of post-modernism. I would humbly say here that it is neither my intention to reflect on such a wide canvas of discourse in this little creative space, nor do I claim to have the requisite scholarship to expand on the discourse.

I would just like to add here that poetry writing in today’s day and age is still the completely abstract, messy, perceptive act that it always has been, while it has been grounded in the realities, disillusionment and organic symbolism of today’s fast-evolving, transforming, meandering world.

At the same time, the possibilities of poetic exchanges, interactions and reactions to the subjective, sensory, visceral depiction of the poets have grown in leaps and bounds with the advent of the radical, powerful online media and the ever-expanding web of online social networking. It is this very spirit of celebrating the various, multihued mental landscapes of the poets through their poetic, lyrical genius and the urgency to share it in an interactive, aesthetic platform that has given birth to our Poetry Special Edition of Learning and Creativity.

I would extend my sincere gratitude to most of my beloved poet and wordsmith friends of the Facebook literary group ‘Rejected Stuff’ for submitting some groundbreaking modern poems for our Poetry Special Edition. Our announcement/call for submissions to all poets and scribes across the globe commemorating the US National Poetry Month has resulted in the submissions of some avant-garde, lyrical, dramatically enriched, complex and evocative contemporary poems by established poets and authors as well as emerging voices that we have compiled in this edition.

While a collaborative romantic poem written by two authors residing in two distinct continents, time zones and cultures intrigued us with its unifying imagery, poems written as writing prompts for the NaPoWriMo in the virtual poetry groups in Facebook awed and baffled us with their imagery and poetic eloquence. Again, the soul-nourishing English translation of two exemplary Nepali poems made us sit up and think about the profound impact poetry actually has, that transcends languages, cultures and geographical boundaries.

It gives me great pleasure to unveil a beautiful collection of poetic works by our brilliant poets and contributors in our Poetry Special Edition of Learning and Creativity. Hope you will appreciate our vision and our effort in putting this together.

Enjoy reading stellar poems in our Poetry Month Special Edition

About the Author

Lopamudra Banerjee ( 71 Posts)

Lopamudra Banerjee is an acclaimed author, poet, translator, editor with nine solo books and six anthologies in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She has received the Journey Awards (First Place category winner) for her memoir Thwarted Escape: An Immigrant’s Wayward Journey, the International Reuel Prize for Translation (2016) and also International Reuel Prize for Poetry (2017) and other honors. Her poetry has been published in renowned platforms including Life in Quarantine, the Digital Humanities Archive of Stanford University. Her collaborative poetry collection with Priscilla Rice titled We Are What We Are (Black Eagle Books, 2022) has been 1st Prize Winner at New York Book Festival 2024 and her translation of a famous Bengali historical/biographical novel titled The Bard and His Sister-in-Law (Black Eagle Books, 2023) has received Honorary Mention at Paris Book Festival and Hollywood Book Festival 2024. Recently, her debut Bengali collection of poetry Draupadi Theke Nijoswi—Amra has been launched in Kolkata and also in the Dallas Public Library, Texas, with a performance of a psychological drama ‘Mukhomukhi’, in which she has made her foray as a playwright.
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