Mr. Khondakar Ashraf Hussain, a professor of English, Linguistics, and Literature at Dhaka University, once summarized at the Katha South Asian Translation Contest awards ceremony in Delhi that “Poetry is what is lost in translation, but it reaches a broader audience.” 

Nevertheless, although organizations such as Katha, several poetry journals, and the Internet make occasional efforts, I find the contemporary poetry scene somewhat disheartening. It seems almost dull, with Indo-English poetry largely detached from real life. 

I observe that the topics (themes) tend to be either overly personal or too abstract. Similarly, the language is either too simplistic to evoke emotion or overly elaborate, intended to impress and mislead the reader.

Fortunately, there are more poets than fiction writers, but many remain unaware of their environment, the world, and the struggles of ordinary people. For many, the first draft is ready for publication. 

They believe that whatever they have written should not be changed, not a word, even by themselves. 

That may be why Lavinia Greenlaw seems correct when she remarks, “I think the innovations being made by the Modernists were genuine and powerful and lasting. Reading that work, reading Ezra Pound or Wallace Stevens or Marianne Moore, it still seems fresher than a lot of what’s being churned out now.” 

Earlier, we had numerous activities, including the Tuesday poetry reading sessions at the Sunken Garden in Mumbai, which Adil Jussawalla began on April 23, 1999, coinciding with Shakespeare's birthday. Now, to my knowledge, no such gathering happens in any city. 

And then there was the Writers Workshop and P Lal's passion for poetry. We owe a lot to these remarkable figures. 

Adil admitted: “They were started for a very selfish reason; I had a lot of poetry books that I wanted to read. I thought this would be a good way to encourage myself and others to read and listen to poetry. 

So, they read poetry on different themes in each session, with topics ranging from entrapment and release to exile, homelessness, sonnets, epics, and music.” 

Some thirty years ago, when the BBC asked its listeners whether poetry matters, some responded in verse. One enthusiast took a balanced view and said, 'Much poetry is garbage; some poetry is crap, but the poetry of Shakespeare charts life like a well-drawn map.' 

And as if replying to all those who wrote about the soul-lifting and enlightening quality of poetry, one Anthony said: "A poem is no use at all; it’s not an attractive thing; it merely messes words about to give a pleasant ring."

But ‘Poetry never dies, it just keeps finding new homes for itself, the Australian poet Les Murray said. And no doubt, he is a hundred percent right. I believe him.