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Overview
Awards
Award
Winning Poems
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Overview
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Awards
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Award
Winning Poems
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Organized in collaboration with the
British Council, India
| The Poetry Society in collaboration with the British Council,
India organsed nine
All-India Poetry Competitions
since 1988. Thousands
of poets have participated in these competitions.
Nine volumes of short listed poems were published under the series
POETRY INDIA. The
following are the names of the award-winners: |
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Eighth National Poetry Competition : 1998 |
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Ms.
Vicki Feaver was the chairperson of the panel of judges. Dr. J.P. Das, Dr.
Eunice de Souza, Prof. Shiv K. Kumar and Mrs. Imtiaz Dharkar were the
members of the panel of judges. Mr. Nic Humphries, First Secretary,
Cultural Affairs and Dr. Rajni Badlani, English Studies Officer of the
British Council Division, and Dr. H.K. Kaul, Secretary-General, The Poetry
Society (India) were the ex-officio members of the panel of judges. The Awards First Prize K.
Sri Lata for her poem In
Santa Cruz, Diagnosed
Homesick Second Prize Revathy
Gopal for her poem Lines
on Meeting a Cousin, Long-Lost Commendation
Prizes 1. Falguni Dutta for her
poem Homecoming 2. Supantha
Bhattacharyya
for her poem The Vigilante 3. Acushla R. Narayanan for her poem On Leaving College 4. Gopi Krishnan Kottoor
for his poem The Old Boy’s Silver Jubilee Reunion Award Winning Poems |
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IN SANTA CRUZ, DIAGNOSED HOMESICK by K. Sri Lata |
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At the gift shop by the wharf I bought an indigo octopus all arms... I, a newcomer to this out-of-the-way white-hippie town settle into the sea. My two-month hostility melts even as I see what divides me from home more clearly than I did from my airless plane. The sea knows ways of connecting too, fluidly hugging, in long-armed benevolence, the puzzle-edges of vast continents. |
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| LINES ON MEETING A COUSIN, LONG-LOST by Revathy Gopal | |||||
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"You have your father’s mouth," she says, "and the family nose we have all inherited. Such a gentle man your father, I remember him with great affection." She says nothing, practically nothing, a perfunctory word abut my mother. Silence fills the spaces between us, Where once we shared noisy baths And each other’s skirts. The years cannot be breached. Her muscular wrist, the strong jut of jaw, the rough palm on my cheek at greeting and parting, tell their own story. My mind the mirror, I meet my mother’s eye narrowed in recognition. It is hers, the same geometry of bone beneath the skin. I could match her now, word for word. I could meet her now on equal terms. I think I could draw blood. |
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| HOMECOMING by Falguni Dutta | |||||
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No, there is no road by the name you quote. This is no address of the long-haired girl of the furtive glances. The grass green field in front of your house ringing with your mother’s come-back-home calls is a couple of unfinished houses baring iron fangs. No, the rains no longer wake you up drumming the asbestos roof. This is concrete. The children do not raise sand temples under the ghost crowded tamarind tree. No, there is no tamarind tree. |
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THE VIGILANTE by Supantha Bhattacharyya |
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Smack in the middle of the road he sits, Anonymous, inscrutable, at peace. Every morning I have to circle him On my morning constitutional- A one-eyed, broken-armed god, Coated in layers of vermilion, A few dried garlands around his neck, Stubs of incense sticks stabbed Into half an ant-infested sweetmeat- Inside a ruined little temple, With only the sighing wind And sparrows playing hide-and-seek Through the brick-toothed cracks For company. I leave plenty of daylight Between him and myself. It’s not politic to cross a god. Squatters warm around tyre-fires And speak in awe-husband tones, Of how there are never any accidents On that stretch of road (Well, seldom ever), How women can walk unharmed Even at the dead of night, No ferments of race or caste, In fact, trouble steers clear In that tiny community Through which the road twists. Having lost my faith On a long ago cold wet day Of sad-eyed doctors Stone-eyed corpses, I still somehow find the idea Of a mindful watchdog Handicapped, undemanding, Yet trying his best To maintain a semblance of order In an alien world, Strangely comforting. |
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| ON LEAVING COLLEGE by Acushla R. Narayanan | |||||
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A drop of mercury Sinks into the heart of the river And is carried by an innocent current Around it everything changes Forests to cities to farmlands to deltas And it learns to wean its way out of fields And crevices and beaks and claws And thermometers It sees a bull-frog on a lotus leaf Big, beady eyes and dark green skin They swim together for a while And the memory sticks unlike any tangible thing The lion gazes at his reflection And notices the little bead as it passes through his eye Intrigued for a second And life goes on Until the ocean is just a few shells away. |
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| THE OLD BOYS’ SILVER JUBILEE REUNION by Gopi Krishnan Kottoor | |||||
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So, you came all the way from Silicon Valley Just to attend this? See our greying crony there How much the classic absent minded professor Of the English movies he has become Forgetting our names, our faces, his own home town Making sad efforts to remember The bylanes of yesteryears. Ah, Alex, baldy Big shot in the International Academy of Pure Sciences I still remember your thickly sprung coiled jet of hair As you wept in the class dunce corner Punished for your diarrhoea flowing down nay blue knickers In History class and we called it The Great Plague. Hello, old pal shaking hands with me You were our squirrel. You sneaked that to the Principal Got us all flogged in the assembly sun. We christened you again. Judas. The name stuck. Those were the days. Those were he days, friends, When our little sticks used to sniff up every passing girl Stiffening like red needles in hot valves Tuning into faintest beeps Of smiling pig-tailed stations. Remember Jube Hit by a military truck, thrown into NDE And calling himself God? Handsome David Whose sister threw acid all over his face ‘cos he blew up her lover story? Where is he now? Gone. Disappeared with his disfigured face like a sad river Leaving just a wasted bed of dry sand. Well, cheers. Beer turns topaz in gleaned ice Held together in cold comfort. Now, in spite of his busy schedule, our handsome Rector too Is amongst us, off his priestly overalls Sipping bloody Mary, staring at the 3D wall poster Lighting Cindy Crawford in the nude. Rev. Sir, boys will be Boys. Together again, those left of us, huddled together in coloured Wreath This dead of night (As stranger-time still wears us like loose rings In raining fingers of hawking clouds) We stab a little harder into leftover chicken steak Standing upright never quite mentioning Our bright little pricks turned to hurt greying cocks Dangling inside torn over-wrung briefs As burnt wires in long dead homes.
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