Thachom Poyil Rajeevan, of YETI Publishers, a much acclaimed poet of recent times, was in Bangalore recently for a Poetry Evening jointly organized by Yeti and The Mango Tree Publishers of Bangalore. Excerpts of an interview with him: Define the journey as a poet, between the moment you first emerged and now? I cannot say exactly when the poet in me first emerged. All I remember is a feeling of loneliness and disquiet from the moment I began to be aware of things and events around me. And, for me, the only way to be in terms with the incongruities of realities was to dream them as I wanted them to be. All that I have written so far is nothing more than postscript to such dreams. But, above all, it was mainly a discontent in taking the world as it was. In the course of time, being older and experienced, my concerns and priorities may have changed. I’m grown up and my fantasies are no more rooted in animal kingdom and plant world. But, the daydreaming poet in me remains the same. Poetry, for me, has always been not a means to anything, but a thing in itself for a better insight into myself.



ques::    You termed your very first poem- a love poem, which your father said ‘was full of mistakes’ - as your abortive attempt. How important are encouraging words for budding poets? You being you, could ‘sprout and bloom’ after three decades and write love poems again. Can it be the same with others  ?


I’m thankful to my father for discouraging me after reading ‘my first love poem’, and pointing out the mistakes in it. It gave me the realization that writing poetry is not easy. Poetry is not just meaning, music, alliteration and rhythm. It’s something beyond all those formal ingredients. Whenever I felt discouraged, I felt the necessity of going beyond what I had done till that moment, of doing something new, of exploring new possibilities of life and expression. I don’t think discouraging a poet is negative.


ques::    You said in an interview “I don’t know what I do when I write a poem. To a certain extent, meaninglessness or aimlessness always delights me.” Are you not sending wrong signals to aspiring poets?

I was responding to a question about meanings. And, I still stick to what I said then, that the real meaning of what we write we don’t know clearly when we write. I say this from my own experience. I cannot write until I completely plan it in mind. Even so, it undergoes tremendous changes during the course of writing. A poem begun with a political design, in due course may end with apolitical suggestions.
Real poetry always disproves predictions, and all that we can say about poetry is about the poetry written till that moment. A good poem grows beyond interpretations, and has an organism in it that grows with time giving new meaning and experience. In all good poems there will be always something that doesn’t fully yield to our reason and intelligence; something like a Grecian Urn, the Tower, the Wasteland, etc.


ques::    Why the discord between ‘very successful poetry’ and poor commercial success? As a publisher how do you handle this problem?



This ‘discord’ is everywhere. Not in poetry alone and, that is the tragedy of our time. We have to be very much careful in setting our agenda and priorities now. We claim nothing more than that we have been able to bring out a few good poetry books at a time when all leading publishers shun poetry. The situation now has changed.

Interview by Durovicova Natasa in Periscope:::

DN• What or whom do you read to recharge your writerly batteries?

Rajeevan • Why doubt? It’s always the Indian classics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Originally these works are in Sanskrit. But, Thunchat Ramanujan Ezuthchan, a seventeenth century Malayalam poet rendered them freely into Malayalam. The very word Ezuthchan, in Malayalam means the father of writing. And we consider him as the Father of our language, Malayalam. Sometimes, I go to Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Jorge Amado. Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Violent Land. My way is to open them closing my eyes and begin reading from the page that turns out as if from nowhere. It’s like a meditation. In poetry, I get charged from the vacana poets and Haiku.

DN • What personal characteristic do you care most about in your life as a writer?

Rajeevan • The undying disquiet that is always within, making me restless, sleepless, and fidgety. The reason and source of which remain unknown to me.

DN• No matter what IWP organizes, writers seem to take away impressions of Iowa City that defy prediction. After all this time, is there something about your stay in the US that has remained particularly memorable?

Rajeevan • Surely. Mainly it’s the writerly ambience. A writer can’t be lazy at Iowa because he or she is always in the community of writers, where all acts and talks finally end up in a talk bout the work one is doing. I don’t think this atmosphere is available anywhere in the world. The very ambience of Iowa leads a writer onto his or hers next work. There’s no way out but to write.

DN • Is there music that complements or stimulates your writing?

Rajeevan • Yes, this a brilliant question because I always write with a tune in the background and I follow this when I drive also. The background more or less keeps me undeviated on the road I am navigating along, be it in thought or in real act. Music is the spinal cord of all artistic works. I mean the music unpolluted by words.

DN • What are you working on right now?

Rajeevan • I am giving the final touch to my first novel.

DN • What are the effects of the many digital and web-based literary activities in your region/language/literary circuits? Are you interested in, or affected by, these changes in the texture of language and modes of writing?

Rajeevan • The advent of internet and web-based literary activities has helped a lot in democratizing literature. The print media is capital-based and therefore there’s hegemony in it. Now, anyone with a computer and an internet connection can launch a website or a blog. This is very positive. In that, it reminds me of the invention of printing which revolutionized and made people-oriented the process of writing. At the same time one has to be very critical and sensitive about the quality.

DN • What writers, or what works, are in your opinion in need of more translation and attention? What literary neighborhood excites you at the present moment?

Rajeevan • I can answer this question only by taking into consideration the writers who write in Indian regional languages like Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil, etc, and comparing them with the Indian English writers. Take for example the Latin American writers or the Chinese writers. Their reputation is not because they write in English. We read the translation. But when it comes to India the Indian writers who are known outside Indian are only the ones who write in English, be it Arundhathi Roy, Vikram Seth or Amitav Gosh. I am not underestimating the quality of their works. But, at the same time, there are equally good, perhaps more outstanding writers in the regional languages, like Mahaswata Devi in Bengali, Asokamitran in Tamil and Uroob in Malayalam. I think there ought to be conscious initiative to translate such writers into English and other international languages.

DN • From your vantage point, should the state be involved in supporting literary creativity or literary institutions, and if so, in what ways?

Rajeevan • I don’t think so. When there’s a state, there’s a power. The position of a writer is always oppositional. When the state interferes, its policy and ideology come into play.

DN • What—if anything-- has given you a cause for political optimism in the last decade?

Rajeevan • The survival of democracy all over the world.