A platform for poetry: The PEN All-India Centre and a Bombay poetry scene

ABSTRACT

This article introduces a brief history of the PEN All-India Centre in Bombay, before examining the role it has played in supporting Indian poets working in English. This organization has long constituted a vital meeting place for established and emerging poets, and must be recognized as an integral location in the history of Indian poetry in English. From the late 1960s in particular, poetry began to feature more prominently in the Centre’s calendar of events and its magazine The Indian PEN – reflecting wider literary and cultural shifts taking place across the city, as well as the role of individuals in shaping the organization. This analysis of the PEN All-India Centre offers a new and historical perspective, not only of a single institution, but also of Bombay’s literary culture, which has been so often occluded by accounts of the city as what Rashmi Varma has called a “cacophonic, polyvocal space of difference”.

Keywords:

• The PEN All-India Centre
• Bombay
• Indian poetry in English
• The Indian PEN
• little magazines
• Sophia Wadia
• Nissim Ezekiel

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank: Adil Jussawalla, for help in locating material on the early history of the PEN in India, and for his unfailing generosity with his time and material; Ranjit Hoskote, for enabling access to the PEN All-India Centre in 2015, and for his insights into the history of the organization; and Jennifer Robertson, for vital information about PEN’s current schedule of events. The author would also like to thank Havovi Anklesaria, Rafique Baghdadi, Menka Shivdasani and all those who gave up their time to share their recollections of the PEN All-India Centre, and whose words and advice were so helpful. This article could not have been written without access to the PEN All-India Centre, and to its wonderful archives of magazines, annual reports and correspondence. Most of the Centre’s events, however, now take place elsewhere, and PEN’s offices at Theosophy Hall are not regularly staffed. The author would thus like to thank staff of the Theosophical Society in Theosophy Hall for their administrative assistance and help in locating material.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in the late 19th century by the Russian occultist Madame Blavatsky and the American Henry Olcott. The organization promotes the study of spirituality, philosophy and comparative religions, and is committed to “form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour” (Theosophical Society 2016).

2. Bombay’s Poetry Circle was founded in 1986 by Menka Shivdasani, Akil Contractor and Nitin Mukadam. Shivdasani (1997–98) recalls that the group was, from the start, committed to “bring[ing] together all those who wrote poetry, or who wanted to write but did not know where to begin” (136). This informal group expanded in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, bringing out its own journal POIESIS, and organizing well-attended special events across the city. Many of the Circle’s early members went on to establish writing careers – among them Shivdasani, Ranjit Hoskote, Jerry Pinto, Arundhathi Subramaniam and R. Raj Rao. As Shivdasani notes, Poetry Circle received warm support from an older generation of poets too, including Ezekiel and Dom Moraes (1997–98, 136–142).