Zilka Joseph | September 2019

Two accomplished women and poet-activists of the Indian diaspora, Usha Akella and Pramila Venkateswaran, who started Matwaala, a collective to support and showcase poets of South Asian origin and which works towards abolishing a hierarchy in literary publishing, held this year’s Matwaala festival in New York from April 3–5. There were events at New York University, Nassau Community College, the Red Room, and Hunter College. The poets featured, who live in different cities in the US and UK and come from different backgrounds, age groups, professions, and who have varied world views and religious beliefs, shared their brilliant and insightful poems, rich in history and politics, issues of gender, social justice and identity, personal storytelling, and family narratives. Each voice rang clear as a bell, and the styles were distinct to each poet and as remarkable. The audience was moved (as was I as a participant) by the power of each writer. When strong and unique voices like these are not often included in the conversation and in the canon of contemporary American literature, or in anthologies and festivals, we have to speak louder to remind the gatekeepers that we exist, that our work is vibrant, various and alive, and that we should be given the same platform as everyone else, and be read widely and celebrated as a part of living American literature.

This year’s festival marked several significant milestones. On April 3, Matwaala launched their e-anthology called MAPS: Matwaala Anthology of Poetry by South Asians (which Venkateswaran and I coedited) on their website. We want to say a special thank you to Anannya Akella, who designed the elegant covers for the book, and Francisca Li who worked tirelessly on the website. Also, Kavita A. Jindal, a poet from the UK, launched her new chapbook called Patina. Salman Rushdie attended our reading on April 3 at NYU and we want to express our gratitude for his support. In addition, on April 5, at a memorial reading at Hunter College, we celebrated the life and work of Meena Alexander—distinguished professor at Hunter College and award winning poet, who passed away in October, 2018. We were moved that Alexander’s husband David Lelyveld graced us with his presence. A framed copy of “Poem for Meena,” written by some of the poets in the collective, was gifted to him. Later, Usha Akella’s new book The Waiting was launched. Supported by Nassau Foundation, a few of the poets offered a vibrant panel discussion at Nassau Community College on migration, the reinvention of form, feminist themes, and how personal/political situations enter our writing and capture our imagination. We were delighted to have Poets & Writers support us! We look forward to collaborating with them and with more organizations to support South Asian diaspora poets.

From the start, Matwaala began a tradition of honoring a poet, who is not only talented, but who actively works in the community to bring visibility to writers and their work. Past poets of honor have been Saleem Peeradina (Saline, Michigan), Keki N. Daruwalla (Mumbai, India), and Ralph Nazareth (Stamford, Connecticut) who have all played significant roles in creating awareness and making our voices heard. Matwaala’s poet of honor this year was Yogesh Patel, from London, who has worked selflessly to promote South Asian writing in a fairly hostile atmosphere in Britain, which still embraces its racist and colonial attitude toward immigrants. Patel fights against this attitude by offering opportunities to lesser known poets to get recognition through Skylark Publications and Word Masala—a non-profit (both of which he funds and manages), and honors talented poets with awards and recognition in the House of Lords. In his interview with Usha Akella published on the Matwaala site, Patel talks about his latest book Swimming with Whales. He says, “Whales can allow us to juxtapose their world with ours through the poetic eye, allowing an inventive experience that can manifest into human sentiments. This creates a fresh universe with the whale at its centre, be it as a migrant, lost child, mother watching the child butchered, in the afterlife, in yoga, mocking academics and politicians, or creating a new context for the science of earwax, as well as dragging us into wars. The whale’s world here allowed me to have no boundaries.”

This is what the founders of Matwaala, Akella and Venkateswaran, have been striving for since 2015. To break these boundaries and walls that we as South Asian poets face, and be accepted and recognized. Usha Akella has a Master of Studies in Creative Writing from Cambridge University, and is the founder of The Poetry Caravan in Austin, Texas, and Greenburg, New York. She has read at international festivals and won several prizes. Her newest book is The Waiting, published by Sahitya Academy, India. Pramila Venkateswaran is an award-winning poet who teaches English and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College, New York. Author of numerous books, essays on poetics as well as creative non-fiction, her most recent book is The Singer of Alleppey, published by Shanti Arts, and inspired by the life of her grandmother. These two generous women have spearheaded this festival and hope to expand it further in coming years.

The poets who participated this year were exceptional in their range and power. Each poet brought something incredibly valuable to the festival and each poem was memorable: Jindal’s sharp observations and satirical style, Venkateswaran’s compassionate and honest sketches of human existence, Ravi Shankar’s deft use of language and form, Vivek Sharma’s humorous and heartwarming family stories set in Himachal Pradesh, Nazareth’s powerful and fearless monologues, Sophia Naz’s use of Urdu within her musical and sophisticated poems, Yuyutsu Sharma’s vivid images of the Himalayas and Nepal, Akella’s deeply moving insights into life’s journeys and the soul, and Indran Amirthanayagam’s impressive “word-smith-ery” and startling images. As Venkateswaran writes in her foreword to the MAPS anthology, “Place, textures, smells, sights, and sounds entice us, as does the silence between the lines. The voices, fractured and full, whispered and full-throated, awaken us to the unity-in-difference that is South Asia. The diaspora joins in chorus against the fragmentation of peoples; instead of the narrow confines of communalism, the poets in the diaspora find in poetry their strongest democracy.”

Matwaala is one who is intoxicated, drunk on words and life, and that was the inspiration for the founders, and we were indeed intoxicated by each other’s work, as was the audience. The passionate founders, Akella and Venkateswaran, who plan to organize another festival in 2020, hope that more people will reach out to help this collective grow, that sponsors and writers in America (in all stages of their careers), will give of their time and funds to celebrate the entire range of voices of the South Asian diaspora and include them in the literary landscape in America.               

(For more information go to www.matwaala.com. Contact: reachmatwaala@gmail.com)

 

Zilka Joseph’s chapbooks, Lands I Live In and What Dread, were nominated for a PEN America and a Pushcart award respectively, and her book Sharp Blue Search of Flame was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book Award. She teaches creative writing workshops in Ann Arbor, and is a freelance editor and manuscript coach. www.zilkajoseph.com.