Introduction: The worlds of Bombay poetry

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Notes

1. The Clearing House poetry publishing collective was one of the most innovative small presses of the time. For a historical overview of the collective and of the “Bombay poets”, see Hasan (2010).

2. Marathi writers have always referred to the city as Mumbai, however, and there isn’t the same ideological stance about the name of the city in Marathi as there is in English. The first line of Arun Kolatkar’s poem in Marathi, for instance, reads “Mumbai ne bhikes lavle” (Kolatkar 1977, 92–96) but translated into English it becomes “Bombay made me a beggar” (Kolatkar 2009, 73–76). Also see Meera Kosambi (1995) who analyses the social perceptions associated with the two different appellations of the city. In this special issue, we sometimes​ use “Bombay/Mumbai” to show these ​conflicted histories and the mixed bilingual space referenced in the name.

3. The Shiv Sena (literally the “Army of Shivaji”) is a far-right Hindu organization in Maharashtra that emerged as a separate entity in 1966 from the joint struggle by the Congress, the communists and others for the Marathi state of Maharashtra. When it was in power in Bombay, the Shiv Sena changed the name of the city to “Mumbai”, from Mumba Devi, a local Hindu deity.

4. The volume includes a chapter called “Poetry and the City” which consists mainly of the poems that were read by Gujarati, Marathi and English Bombay poets (such as Suresh Dalal, Nissim Ezekiel, Gieve Patel, Narayan Surve and Namdeo Dhasal) who attended the international workshop from which the book originated.

5. The original interview was in Marathi and was conducted by Manohar Jadhav and Mangesh Narayan Kale. For this issue it has been abridged and translated by Anagha Bhat-Behere.