JUNGE AKADEMIE

In the poem “Written in Stone”, I employ the classical Tamil Sangam poetry tradition of framing love poetry using quoted speech, where several points of view are juxtaposed, creating an intimate world of He Said, She Said, What His Girlfriend Said to Her, and so on. Sangam poetry has an antiquity of over two thousand years, which is the reason for choosing to mimic its structures in this poem, to highlight that love has always had a striferidden existence, and that all of love is birthed in this continuum.

Sangam poetry also abounds in rich descriptions of nature and the ecological landscape, and here a woman looks back at her relationship with her lover, remembers all the metaphors that relate to stone, which is at once primeval and enduring. This is an intensely personal poem. Even as the world outside is turning increasingly sectarian and casteist, and men and women are being killed (honour killings) for daring to love against diktats, this poem seeks to preserve a tiny universe of precious intimacy.

The poem “The Discreet Charm of Neoliberalism” takes on the impossibility of wresting language away from neoliberalism’s total hijack of it. The examples cited result from my discussions with the Dalit woman leader of a powerful trade union in Tamil Nadu, who was lamenting about the sinister nexus between capitalists and the NGO sector – and how the NGO sector has been deployed to give a positive spin on the havoc wreaked by capitalism. Feminism and the empowerment of women are words easily co-opted by neoliberalism. Democracy, change, people, power – any word with a radical connotation is soon appropriated by neoliberalism. In this milieu, where do we look for a language that does not serve the exploitative ruling class? Can truth only be spoken between lovers? How can a poem – a space where truth is smuggled in for safekeeping – peel away the hypocrisy of neoliberal onslaught on language, simultaneously reiterating trust in words? This is what prompted me to write the second poem, which is again, evidently, an autobiographical poem. The waiting for the lover is symbolic, it signifies that there is still hope for love and truth, even as we live under a devastating economic system.

Meena Kandasamy

On the opening night of the JUNGE AKADEMIE’s work presentations on 3 March 2022, Meena Kandasamy will give a presentation of her political poetry.

WRITTEN IN STONE

WHAT SHE OFTEN SAID TO HER LOVER

How are you so stone-hearted? Why this stony-silence?

WHAT HER MOTHER SAID TO HER

What did he say? Did he even react? Did he commit, did he evade as always? Was he quiet as the sunken stone sitting at the bottom of a well?

WHAT HER FATHER SAID TO HER

I love you, my difficult daughter. I love that you love each other. Hear me out for I’m an old man: What will this world say? Will you be able to face all their stone-throwing?

WHAT SHE ALSO SAID TO HER LOVER MANY, MANY YEARS LATER

Those who reject you today Will tomorrow worship you in stone There will be your statue in every village Everyone will name their sons after you.

WHAT HE SAID ONCE UPON A TIME BEFORE THEIR STORY EVEN STARTED

From the hardest sun-facing rock, where there is not a drop of water there sprouts one lonely seed, sends forth its tiniest leaves, takes root. It is in the nature of stone to stay firm, to put stiff resistance, but faced with so much tenderness, such faith, it gives way.

This is the nature of love.

This is love.

THE DISCREET CHARM OF NEOLIBERALISM

In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.

Guy Debord

We call ourselves poets, believe our words are weapons against oppressors, walk around with bravado for being such truth-smugglers.

Neoliberalism is not a word that belongs in any poem, I reason while I paint my toenails red, wear kohl and wait for my lover who kisses me, always, on the eyelids first.

Love births a million poems. In the restlessness of mine, my lover sneaks through, a repeat offender, arriving first in my poems, then in my arms saying, ennadi chellam?

Neoliberalism knows how to spin, I say: When workers flock to sweatshops: the working conditions have improved and, when workers leave in droves: the community has been sensitized.

How to spin about a spin master? — a question I want to ask, but do not. He kisses me as though all words have been obliterated — makes love, making me birth afresh a language always, already there.

Days later, we take up where we left off — he says, they have reduced language to a rotting corpse, and I wince at the serrated edges of his words. Neoliberalism finds room in a poem.

MEENA KANDASAMY is a poet and novelist who was born in Chennai, India. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy (2010). Her critically acclaimed debut novel, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), tells the story of the 1968 Kilvenmani massacre. Her second novel, a work of autobiographical fiction, When I Hit You: Or, The Portrait of the Writer As A Young Wife (2017) was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018. Her latest novel, Exquisite Cadavers (2019), is a work of experimental fiction that investigates storytelling. She divides her time between London and Tamil Nadu. She received the Berlin Fellowship 2020 of the JUNGE AKADEMIE at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.