I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Sampurna Chattarji’s poetry workshop conducted by Blogchatter on World Poetry Day.
Sampurna stressed on the importance of learning about poetry and its formats. She said the “perfect poem” is a mirage or chimera. She also said one must be confident about the nuts and bolts of the language one writes poetry in. One must “devour poetry” and study the craft. One must be able to take criticism, understand it, and equip oneself to be one’s own editor.
Sampurna has recently translated Joy Goswami’s prose poems. For those who love mathematics and poetry, she recommended Inger Kristenson’s book, The Alphabet, which is based on the Fibonacci sequence. She stressed that the best translators of poetry were other poets themselves. She also gave us a reading list and suggested we look up the first books of those we considered established poets. Incidentally, her first book was ‘Sight may strike you blind,’ which is currently unavailable. She read out a poem called ‘Evil eye’ from her first book. She suggested we pick up anthologies.
There’s so much more I learned from her during this session. I feel blessed to have attended it.
For more about Sampurna Chatterji, please visit her website.
