--Sunil Sharma
The IPA wants poetry that crackles on the page, very much like the dried leaves that snap up instantly under the shod feet on a jungle dirt trail, the creaking hissing cracking sound magnified by the contrasting silences of the desolate forest where the few wandering humans find themselves in the company of the soaring spirits that can talk to only the singing hearts of the poets. The spirits hanging from dust-laden tall trees near the static water-hole grab you on the brown-yellowish wintry afternoons in that wilderness. They hypnotize your mind and soul and take you back to a time when everybody was a poet by heart, greeting the rising sun in hymns and other sacred songs near the sacred grove. The trees were not mere trunks or branches but breathing spirits that guided you in life. You met the frolicking gods in the happy dale or a murmuring pristine river or, in a different electrifying setting, witnessed the bewitching Venus stepping out of a frothy sea!
Your poetry should sizzle on the white page/s. It should not have the coldness of the blunt steel or skeptic concrete in its veins. It should not suffer from the peptic ulcer or high blood-pressure. Anemic in poetry kills the very body of the experience being inscribed in the fluttering words. Rather, it should catch the flutter of the words dripping with the morning dew and infected with the fresh smell of a red rose smiling in that happy vale that only your eyes are destined to see! We want kind of pulsating lines that register like the ECG machine the rapid beats of an innocent heart feeling the joy of being alive in a multi-hued world that is still as mysterious as it was for the Neanderthals! The world experienced as fresh sensation on daily basis and as exciting as it is for a couple in love. Such intense poetry is eternal, appealing and enduring, a literary foil to an age that thrives on the culture of the instant gratification and forgetfulness!
IPA wants poetry that can gently carry you in its arms to distant lands immersed in mists, exploring the timeless realms of profound truths, with the aid of imagination and glittering words, dry- cleaned of accumulated dross of the preceding centuries of overuse. Poetry that opens up magical windows on perilous seas and locked well-guarded castles there, keeping a fair maiden imprisoned in that solitary rooms, watched by the giants. It tells us the secrets of an aching soul and the meaning of being a human being in most trying times. In other words, poetry that restores the child in us and that missing sense of wonderment that makes all of us natural poets fascinated by the racing clouds in the azure sky or flying sparrows across the green meadows dazzling in the summer suns! Poetry that brings us back our lost innocence and wholeness to a wounded spirit. It is a powerful song that erupts suddenly in dark recesses of soul and makes us…complete and cured!
If you can capture the agile moments in your tender tiny hands, render the winds and the storms in exploding words, then please send us your live poems to us as soon as possible.
Contact Dr. Shaleen Singh: drshaleen999@gmail.com
Or Dr. Jaydeep Sarangi: sarangij@rediffmail.com
