ANTHROPOCENE Climate Change,
Contagion, Consolation
by Sudeep Sen is a harrowing account of living with the effects of climate
disruption during a pandemic. Using various literary techniques such as haiku,
free verse, and prose poems, Sen from a “panoramic picture window” from his
study in New Delhi, India, captures the sense of dread from the
unpredictability of weather patterns and his isolation during the city’s
lockdown. And while the theme of hope resonates throughout the collection, Anthropocene
is a harbinger of a possible future if the trajectory of climate disruption
remains unchanged.
Divided into nine sections, Anthropocene
begins with “Prologue| Meditation,” in which Sen acknowledges his position of
privilege. As he states later in the collection, “Solitude is something that
most creative writers and artists crave, and yet when it is forced on you –how
does one cope?” (“Poetics of Solitude, Songs of Silence”). In wrestling with
this paradox, Sen relies on his dedication to his craft and epigrams from
Eliot, Yeats, Beckett, and especially Kurosawa, “The role of the artist is to
not look away,” to guide his inquiry.
Underscoring the second section, “Anthropocene|
Climate Change,” with a quote from “Easter 1916”: “a terrible beauty is born,”
Sen in “Climate Change 2,” puts his stamp on the memorable phrase with a
haiku: “climate change: changes/ the terrible beauty of/ unbearable heat.” With
an acute awareness of his environment, Sen records the disruptions that are
already taking place in India: “Tap water scalds everything it falls on—turning
all furnace hot. Heat rises from everywhere—surfaces, terraces, walls, linen,
food, water—everything is vaporous” (“Summer Heat”). The dryness of the land
leads to heatwaves, and in “Drought, Cloud,” Sen prays for rain, “It is bone
dry--I pray for any moisture/ that might fall from the emaciated skies.”
However, Sen’s prayers do not have the consequences he intends: “Rain where
there never was,/ no rain where there was” (“Global Warming”). Riffing on the
idea of the “terrible beauty” of climate change, Sen recognizes the rain’s
seductive ability to “douse and arouse” (“Rain Charm”). Yet, ironically in “Shower,
Wake,” he describes a frightening scene: “The September showers came too late,
giving ample time for a prolonged drought. But when they eventually arrived,
they brought with them the full fury of an unstoppered monsoon — the rain
pelting down hard, cracking open newly laid tarmac, exposing the earth and the
elements once again.”
Opening the third section, “Pandemic|
Love in the Time of Corona,” with an homage to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sen
combines Indian mythology “Krishna’s love for Radha” with a fixed focus on the
effects of climate disruption on the poor: “In thousands migrant workers march
home--/ hungry footsteps and empty highways” (“Love in a Time of Corona”).
Then, in “Corona Haiku 5,7,5,” Sen documents some of the routines that
predominate his life: “endless handwashing, /sanitisers, gloves, masks—a/ new
apocalypse,” and his impotence in the face of the pandemic’s advance, “dread of
death, death of/loneliness--our choices/ out of our hands.” As the death toll
rises, Sen laments the loss of his friends, “One by one they are dropping
dead/at the rate of a heartbeat,” and later in “Black Box: Etymology of a
Crisis,” he confesses, “Where are you?” I can’t hear you, touch or feel you.
All senses have evaporated. I have nothing. I have everything.”
In sections four to nine, Sen
contrasts the sprawling view of the city with his solitude by juxtaposing
photographs taken from the poet’s terrace, “day after day,” with prose poems
arranged in columns that resemble silos. Still, despite the expansiveness that
the photographs suggest, Sen is increasingly driven in poems such as “Fever
Pitch” into an interiority that comes close to solipsism, “All around me is a
vacuum--and beyond that glass--and beyond that a semblance of life and world.”
As an antidote, Sen retreats to his library for companionship and consoles
himself with quotes from Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, and John Milton. Perhaps,
as a refutation of Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, “myself am hell,”
Sen’s reaction to isolation is discovery, “And yet in this isolation and
solitude, there is an inherent yogic sense of centredness, where being with
oneself is both wholesome and multitudinous” (“Poetics of Solitude, Sounds of
Silence”).
Yet, hope, whether or not warranted,
arises from the poet’s “inherent yogic sense of centredness.” His practice
grounds him: “Through years of untutored regimen, this process has become
second nature, like any meditative practice” (“Poetics of Solitude, Sounds of
Silence”). Another way that Sen’s “centredness” shows up is in his
fearlessness, which sometimes, as in “Preparing for a Perfect Death,” borders
on gallows humor: “Then, the most difficult part--/how and where to die, what
to wear.” In a fitting metaphor for his hope, Sen asserts in “The Gift of Light’:
“The gift of light/ is life’s benediction/ in these dark times--/no matter what
or where/ there is always light.” The final poem of the collection, “Om: A
Cerement,” concludes with an invocation from the Upanishads, which Eliot
used in the last lines of “The Wasteland,”: “Om’s celebration now/ an unceasing
requiem. Yet we chant in hope, / for peace; Om Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.”
ANTHROPOCENE Climate Change,
Contagion, Consolation,
a timely meditation on the effects of the pandemic and climate disruption, offers
readers an opportunity to delve into a world of a poet who is attuned to the
changes in his body and environment. His focus on the plight of the migrants
and his attention to the lives of his friends rises to the level of prayer as
Simone Weil in Gravity and Grace muses, “Attention, taken to its highest
degree, is the same thing as prayer.” In this sense, Anthropocene is
both a prayer and a jeremiad. I hope we will listen.
About
the Author
Sudeep Sen’s
[www.sudeepsen.org] prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected
Poems (HarperCollins), Rain, Aria (A. K.
Ramanujan Translation Award), Fractals:
New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions), EroText (Vintage:
Penguin Random House), Kaifi Azmi: Poems
| Nazms (Bloomsbury) and Anthropocene:
Climate Change, Contagion, Consolation (Pippa Rann). He has edited
influential anthologies, including: The
HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (editor), World English Poetry, and Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians
(Sahitya Akademi). Blue Nude: Ekphrasis & New
Poems (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize) and The Whispering Anklets are forthcoming.
Sen’s works have been translated into over 25 languages. His words have
appeared in the Times Literary
Supplement, Newsweek, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph, Financial
Times, Herald, Poetry Review, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Hindu, Hindustan
Times, Times of India, Indian Express, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast
on bbc, pbs, cnn ibn, ndtv, air
& Doordarshan. Sen’s newer work appears in New Writing 15 (Granta), Language
for a New Century (Norton), Leela: An
Erotic Play of Verse and Art (Collins), Indian
Love Poems (Knopf/Random House/Everyman), Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe), Initiate:
Oxford New Writing (Blackwell), and Name
me a Word (Yale). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS, editor of Atlas, and currently the
inaugural artist-in-residence at the Museo Camera. Sen is the first Asian
honoured to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture and read at the Nobel Laureate
Festival. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for
“outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.”
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