Modern Indian English Poetry: An Overview

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Poetry has always been the most popular genre in the literature and it’s said that the language of poetry exits when there was no language. The language of poetry delves deep into the sensation that’s why it’s defined as the spontaneous overflow of emotion and actions recollected in tranquility. Modern Indian poetry in English can be defined as poetry written/published from 1947 onwards (the year India gained Independence from British rule), by poets of Indian origin, born or settled outside India writing in the English language. After, the fall of colonial empire new literature from the colonized countries emerged depicting the local sensitivity and adding the local spices and color in terms of native cultural discourse on the world literature map. Historically if we see English language is not still having any regional base in India except some North East states and Southern states where it’s used as link language but slowly and surely it’s becoming the synonym to the vernacular. Despite its huge growth in education and economic sectors it still remains one of the minority languages in India spoken by just the 4% of the population. Despite the continuous pressure from the nationalist, English language remain at the heart of Indian society. Today English language has achieved the status, the language of governance, communication and therefore continues to play very important role in national decision making. It was the Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education” which exerted a fundamental and formative influence on the academic atmosphere in India. Although his intention of making people “Indian in blood and colour, but in English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” proved to be partially true, the decision to intro... ... middle of paper ... ...rint. 8. In an interview with Imtiaz and Anil Dharker, Nissim Ezekiel Remembered. Ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008, p. 46) 9. www.literary-articles.com/2013_11_01_archive.html 10. Kamala Das, “The Descendants”, Calcutta; Writers Workshop 1967. 11. Kamala Das “The Old Polyhouse & other poems”, Madras; Orient Longman 1973 12. Kamla Das, Summer in Calcutta, Everest Press New Delhi. P.10 13. Das, Bijay Kumar. “Post-1960 Indian English Poetry and the Making of Indian English Idiom.”Indian English Literature since Independence. Ed. K. Ayyappa Paniker. New Delhi: The Indian Association for English Studies, 1991. 115-23. Print 14. Surjit S. Dulai, “ First and only Sight: The Centre and the Circles of A.K.Ramanujan’s Poetry”, Journal of South Asian Literature, 24.2 (1989),p.160 15. Dr. Iyengar.S.R.K: Indian writing in English, New Delhi, 1983, p04.

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