Mumbai: ‘Every book is a milestone’

Poet Hemant Divate says Poetrywala, his publishing platform, has been a movement to cultivate an appreciation for Marathi and English poetry in India. Pics/Anurag Ahire

Poetry is my goddess and my religion," says poet Hemant Divate, when we find him overseeing the proceedings at Mumbai Poetry Festival. The festival started on a poetic note, quite literally: the poet and his wife, Smruti, read out a poem of Tukaram from the book Says Tuka, in Marathi and English, respectively. "We prayed through Tukaram's poem," he reminisces. "I believe in poetry."

The festival saw the attendance of literary stalwarts such as Jerry Pinto, Siddhartha Menon, and Mukta Sambrani, and was held to commemorate Poetrywala, Divate's publishing platform, turning 20. Ask him what's the biggest milestone over the past two decades, and he says, "Every book we published is a milestone."

The couple started the Marathi magazine, Abhidha, which later morphed into the quarterly AbhidhaNantar, which was started in 1992 to cater to Marathi literary circles who wanted access to contemporary poetry, literary criticism, and essays. A little over 10 years later, Poetrywala, officially known as Paperwall Publishing, was born in 2003. "It's a movement, not just a publishing platform, because our aim has always been to showcase the work of contemporary poets, the voices of people who are different from everybody else." It's a matter of "zing" - feeling that spark when one reads a piece of written work, which helped him and his wife filter poems through the lens of good and bad.

Over the years, Poetrywala has added big names to its list, but also served as the launching-pad of indie poets and fresh voices, who went on to win prestigious awards such as the Tata Literature Live Poetry Laureate Awards. Eighty published poets and 160 poetry collections later, Divate says Marathi poetry is in a niche of its own, because its poets think in a different way: more on themes of middle-class suffering and life's challenges.

Having worked in close conjunction with poets and writers across decades, Divate says the landscape of Marathi poetry, and, for that matter, English, has changed yet stayed the same. "The 1960s generation of poets focused on modernist poetry. After 1990s, globalisation changed the world, and by extension, how people saw it," he recalls. "It suddenly went from black-and-white Bharat to a colourful India." One thing didn't change, though - the themes of nostalgia and yearning for a better, golden era long past. "Only 10 per cent of modern poets write about new themes," he muses. The reason, he feels, is because poets from the ancient past are being read and studied instead of contemporary poets from the last decade.

For him, poetry is inseparable from life. "You start out by writing poetry, and later, poetry gets written by you. It gets you - it just comes out of your head onto paper," he says, earnestly. "I express everything through poetry." He extends his index finger and thumb, demonstrating how a story can be hold in a limited amount of ‘space', yet convey much meaning. After a lifetime spent with poetry, he says being a poet has taught him how to be honest about life.

"You're creating a new language when you're writing poetry," the poet says. "It's like daydreaming, transporting yourself to a world of your own creation." He says he has a soft corner for poets, and is thrilled when we say we are also, humbly, aspiring to be a poet.