Rare honour for poet :-

His participation in the Struga Poetry Festival in Macedonia last year got him a nomination for the prestigious International Visitor Programme (IVP) of the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of States held from August to November this year.
For poet and columnist Thachom Poyil Rajeevan, the only participant from India, it was a great honour as no Keralite has got the nomination recently. In Macedonia, American poet Christopher Merrill, who is also director of the International Writing Programme (IWP) of the University of Iowa, was impressed by his new genre of poetry in Malayalam.
Back home from the US, he says that the writing programme has been useful at various levels since he could meet many excellent writers and poets from different nations and interact with them.
"It provided me with the opportunity to travel to various parts of the US, visit cultural and educational institutions and learn how they function,'' says Rajeevan, who is also Public Relations Officer of Calicut University. Ten writers, including Victoria Caceres (Argentina), Kurt Folch (Chile), Ahamed Aladi (Egypt), Sulkhan Zhordania (Georgia), Khalid Jaffer (Malaysia), Amma Raj Joshi (Nepal), Michal Hvorecky (Slovak Republic) Azam Abidov (Uzbekistan) and Asim Mohamed Al Saidi (Oman) participated in the programme.
"Meetings with the Congressmen, visiting the House of Representatives and touring the Folger Shakespeare Library and Theatre, the Library of Congress, the American Folklife Centre, the Smithsonian Institute, the Hiroshima Museum and Sculpture Garden formed the first leg of the programme,'' he says.

Residency programme :-

The most important segment was the residency programme at Iowa university that included individual writing, panel discussions, classroom presentations, translation workshops and public readings. Initiated in 1967, IWP is the first international writers' residency at a university and it remains unique in world literature.
Rajeevan says that Iowa has a congenial atmosphere for writers. Thirty-four sponsored programmes in which international writers participated were held in Iowa in 2004.
"This year also saw a fleet of acclaimed writers from the erstwhile USSR and China pitching their tents. Their revelations on their miserable plight during the totalitarian rule caught our attention,'' he says.
A number of tours and field trips were part of the programme. They were planned in such a way that one could explore the natural beauty of the American countryside, understand life in the villages and visit the historical sites. The visit to the Greenwich Village, immortalised by the Beat Poets, in New York was also memorable. "Touring the Amana Colonies and the Meskwaki Indian Settlement where the early settlers still lead an undisturbed lifestyle and the native American community living in the historic setting of Santa Fe, New Mexico gave us a glimpse of another side of America'', Rajeevan says.

Local writers :-

At all places, the visiting writers got associated with local writers. Reading, public functions, special sessions and receptions were organised for encouraging the presence of emigrants from the writer's country, he says.
"But...my readings... were noticeable because of the absence of any Malayali face... there was not even an Indian in the audience,'' Rajeevan recollects.
Rajeevan says the programme helped him understand how others see India, its politics and culture. Also why our citizens fail to project a right image of ourselves and what ails our system. It was really disgusting to hear that from a French or an Arab.
"Yes, I know, there are many Indians in my country, poor people, they need only money, they will do anything for money and food. Still, a Vaikom Muhammed Basheer book in the Iowa University Library or an Adoor Gopalakrishnan poster on a notice board in Harvard or a Wisconsin professor who talks in Malayalam about M. Mukundan's stories were enough for me to be confident of our language and culture,'' Rajeevan says.
Biju Govind in the Hindu December 12, 2004

Worth lauding :-

The first piece of news comes from my home state, Kerala, where a group of young poets and writers in Kozhikode (Calicut) — not heretofore considered a bastion of English-language publishing in India — have launched a new imprint, Yeti Books. Their logo is the famous footprint of the Abominable Snowman, not a figure commonly associated with tropical Calicut, but symbolic both of the leap of imagination they have undertaken and the "barefoot" nature of their enterprise. I have four Yeti volumes before me as I write this column, and they make an excellent impression.
They are attractively designed, carefully proofread and handsomely printed and bound; there is none of the shoddiness one associates with the many amateur literary operations that have emerged from small-town India.
The quality of Yeti's writers is equally impressive. Poetry appears to be their forte, which is not surprising considering that the imprint's principal founder, Thachom Poyil Rajeevan, is himself a poet of some standing in both Malayalam and English. Dom Moraes heads the Yeti list, and Anita Nair, whose fiction has already made its mark, emerges with a debut collection of poems that, Rajeevan proudly informs me, is already in its second edition.
I asked Rajeevan by e-mail for information about the background of his associates and himself, the challenges they have faced in getting their project off the ground, how they were managing financially and so on.
Whether out of Rajeevan's modesty or the vagaries of electronic communication, I do not have answers to these questions. I can only assume that Yeti is a labour of love and that its financial survival requires the support and dedication of distributors, libraries — and above all, readers. The niche that Yeti is seeking to carve out for itself — of high-quality poetry and literary fiction, some of it in translation — is not necessarily remunerative. But the fact that there are young men and women in India prepared to dedicate their creative energies to this sort of publishing augurs well. The Foreword to Rajeevan's own books of poems, He Who Was Gone Thus, reveals that he is a Public Relations Officer of the University of Calicut who writes in his spare time. That the University of Calicut harbours such talent in its midst is itself a priceless public relations asset of which I hope the University's administrators are proud.
The second new venture is the development of a series of school textbooks at Oxford University Press (OUP), on the theme "Peace and Value Education for National Integration". National integration is a term we were used to hearing much more in earlier times, but in the aftermath of the Gujarat atrocities, it has acquired new meaning and urgency. The OUP series editor, Mini Krishnan, has already stewarded the publication of a well-regarded series of translations from various Indian languages into English, but this new project has a special resonance for those who believe that Indian publishing can contribute to the development of an integrative national consciousness.
Her publishing philosophy, Ms. Krishnan explains, is to produce educational materials that serve to remove prejudice and instil peace and understanding in young children — and to do so across the communal divide that some politicians have been so eager to foment. The series' subjects will include material designed to enhance inter-communal relationships, the need to understand human differences and related themes. The writers will be Indians of Hindu, Muslim and Christian backgrounds, and the books will be designed so serve not only as textbooks but also as workbooks, so that children can learn for themselves, and process through their own minds, the values of peace, tolerance and co-existence without which "national integration" will remain a hollow slogan.
I do not know either Thachom Poyil Rajeevan or Mini Krishnan well, and I have no commercial or professional interest in the success of their ventures. But both seem to me to exemplify something of great value to the future of India. They represent the spirit of those who are not content to take the world as it is, who have ideas of how to improve the life they see around them and who are untiring in their pursuit of these ideas. By choosing the far-from-lucrative field of publishing (literary publishing in Rajeevan's case, textbook publishing in Krishnan's) they have also sought to devote their creative energies to an activity that is beleaguered everywhere in the world and desperately in need of nurturing in India.
So more power to their pens (or, these days, to their keyboards). May Yeti's handsome volumes of poetry stir thousands of souls and make their idealistic publishers a profit, and may OUP's national integration series (still on the drawing boards) move millions of young minds towards integration and away from hatred. And (to remind well-heeled readers of my earlier appeal) may the Indian Review of Books be revived to review them both
Shashi Tharoo in The Hindu, January 18, 2004

Many Moods :-

INDIAN poetry in English has come a long way from the romanticism and sentimentalism of early poets. The contemporary scenario is dominated by modernist, post-modernist and surreal tendencies. The two collections under review confirm the modernist persuasions of poets. As is common to all good poetry, these collections also emanate from both personal and professional experiences of the poets. While Rajeevan has already published two poetry collections, Rain Rising is Menon’s maiden attempt. Both collections capture the moods of the poets in myriad themes, ranging from history, mythology, professional experiences and personal relationships.
Rajeevan begins with a nostalgic reminiscence when he visits a museum and is reminded of an acute sense of loss. He also captures the immense sense of loneliness in contemporary life, thus expressing the modernist dilemma: "The night burned out/but not the cot/nor the door/the room/the house/or the street/Lying on earth/I alone/burn." From abstractions like "A Lament," "Pains," etc., Rajeevan shifts to concrete images like "The Tree," "Crystals," etc. He makes interesting use of metaphors, for instance, peon-breeze. The third section of the volume abounds in poems on animals like "Worm," "The Fish," "Tortoise," etc. There is also an obsessive awareness of the self and experimentation with the visual shape of the poems. Words are used with economy and precision, with an emphasis on understatement
Kamaldeep Kaur Toor in Tribune, April, 2004.

Poetry doesn’t fit publishers’ purse :-

IN this age of the novel and the novelist, even though one keeps hearing the occasional shriek bemoaning the death of the genre, poetry and poets everywhere have literally been put on the backburner. In India, the sole promoter, the Writers' Workshop, has been like a terminally-ill patient. Almost everything appearing from P. Lal's rusted, obsolete printing mill has been doing greater damage than the situation warranted. The faded colours of sarees ripped apart to adorn the cardboard of the binding now seem to celebrate the death of the muse itself. And the books being churned out make the celebrated WW, the institution that nursed the talent of almost everyone who can be even remotely called a poet, begin to look like an aging whore.

Meanwhile, the mainstream publisher, behaving like an adolescent who narrowly escaped getting caught with a prostitute during a raid, never returned to the scene. Poetry has never raked in big profits, though poets have. Anita Nair has been making waves for a while now as a novelist. But it was left to a new enterprising publisher, Yeti Books from the backwaters of Kerala, to bring out the poet in her. The book is beautifully produced, in fact the production is better than any brought out by a mainstream publisher in a long while. And that did the trick. One almost instantly wanted to hold and fondle the book as if it was a woman. That the poems carry with them a whiff of fresh air, and the imagery is refreshingly new adds to the experience

There suddenly appeared hope. And I am sure several others like me must have instantly wanted to stroke the embers of a long-buried desire to publish a new volume of poems. Inquiries revealed that the man who has dared to swim against the tide is Thachom Poyil Rajeevan, a no mean poet himself. But more of that later. Sample this first: "Isn't it shameful that a country like India, with one of the world's oldest poetic traditions, hasn't got a single publisher for poetry (at least in English)? It seems like there's an undeclared 'ban' on poetry. These experiences made me think of starting a new publishing house with a view to giving prominence to poetry, translations and new writings." Laudable thought, no doubt.
And he further states: "Initially, Yeti's main focus will be on creative writing, both English and translations from the Indian languages. Anything that's creative and has a bearing on our life is acceptable. We don't have any genre, author or nationality discrimination. But we are determined not to publish purely academic work or pulp." The policy or philosophy makes good sense. You cannot survive by merely publishing poetry in English in India, or by publishing new, experimental poetry or by publishing indiscriminately. That has led to the degeneration of an institution like the Writers' Workshop.
Rajeevan will have to tread judiciously. He plans to publish both prose and poetry in English translation. It makes sense. Viability, and I should know better from my own experience in the matter long ago, alone can make the crocodile swim on sand.
Rajeevan is conscious of the pitfalls. He is also ambitious, and plans to bring out a book a month. He feels: "Publishing poetry may not be as lucrative as publishing fiction or biographies. The situation was not very different in Malayalam till recently. But new poets turned the tide through small publishing. Since 1980, it has been the small publishers who bring out almost all the new poets' first collections in Malayalam. As some of them became economically successful, the big houses have begun to show some interest in poetry. Poetry may not sell in millions, but, properly published—this we can say from our experience—it won't bring you a loss either." And therein lies the essence. The big or mainstream publishers in India are not into it for any kind of public service, or for promoting literature or culture. They are in it to make money. And in that sense they are no different from someone who might be selling mangoes.
It is the bane, and, indeed, the tragedy of publishing in English in India that most publishers are themselves illiterate. Many can't even speak two sentences correctly. And it is not that most titles published convert into instant cash. In fact, most academic or general titles take the imaginary tortoise leap in the bookstores, and would actually take as long to sell as any good creative writing book. This is obvious from the visibility of such titles on footpaths as remainders. This is also obvious from the dwindling print runs. It is understood that the first editions of these books these days rarely go over 500 copies, and even less.
What's probably wrong and, therefore, makes less business sense is that by nature as well as design poetry volumes are slim. And considered slow sellers. But slow sellers compared to what? True, they cannot be as highly priced as any atrociously written, badly produced, unedited doctoral dissertation that constitutes the backlist of any publishing house in India. And for most of them a book has never been a footprint. It is buttered bread. And they like to lace it with thick gravy. So it is important that a new enterprise engaged in publishing and promoting good creative writing must succeed. And one sees in Yeti Books a ray of hope.
Suresh Kohli in Tribune, January 19, 2003

from Looking beyond back waters :-

The poet Thachom Poyil Rajeevan puts it bluntly: "It's true that Kerala women can read and write (and) are doing better than Bihari women or the women in the neighbouring states in the professional and social spheres. There may be pilots, doctors, ambassadors, and Supreme Court judges among them. But they cannot come out of their houses after six in the evening. If anyone dares to do so, she is not safe outside in the dark. Any man she comes upon on the way is a potential intruder into her modesty. I don't know whether women in Bihar face a similar threat in public places. But I have seen girls in Madurai Kamaraj University in Tamil Nadu walk fearlessly and safely to hostels late at night after completing their work in libraries and laboratories. Yet I cannot expect (to see) a girl after six or seven on the campus of the university where I work. I have seen many Malayali women walk with confidence in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi. But when they come to Calicut or Trichur, they become timid. Kalyanikuttys," he concludes, "despite all their claims to literacy and empowerment, are not safe in their home state." That is a sad enough indictment coming from a man
Shashi Tharoor in The Hindu January 29, 2006

from The Greatness Of Poetry :-

In saying that, let me just finish by recognizing a few other poets, for so many are never recognized, I mean good poets: Robert Bly, Donald Hall, John Knoepfle, James Wright, Cesar Vallejo, Georg Trakl [German], Phil Ellis, Ambrose Bierce: Thachom Poyil Rajeevan, and last, Sukanta Bhattacharjee who wrote: “The Eighteen Year Olds,” an impressive poem.
Dennis L. Siluk , Mar. 21, 2005