National Poetry Month 2023: Students across Kolkata colleges showcased their love for poetry

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry brings light and rhythm to an otherwise mundane world. It can also serve as the perfect medium to express subjects that may otherwise be difficult to express, emotions that are not easy to convey. In 1996, the Academy of American Poets declared April to be National Poetry Month to honour the brilliance and influence of this art.

Over time, this event has gained major significance in literary and creative circles with people coming together to express themselves and share their art at one of the largest literary festivals in the world.

To celebrate National Poetry Month 2023, Edugraph brings you some aspiring poets from colleges across Kolkata.

Playthings by Pritha Bhattacharya, Jadavpur University

I put my feet in the water

For some time, I am food for the fish.

Trees, bough down

As if they are the setting sun,

Preparing for darkness

To envelope my small town.

We live between two mountains,

We are a bridge made of flesh and bone

We are nobody’s final destination,

Not a place people call home.

But we have the railway station

And the river and a petrol pump

And it rains here sometimes,

Baba says it’s bad for the crop.

Men come down carrying guns,

Their eyes follow us around-

They eye our people

And dig deep holes in the ground.

Hundreds of children visit,

Dressed in rags, baskets on their heads

They come home dirty

But their parents are happy instead.

Somebody lives in the hole

Somebody kind, who gives them coal

Maybe he does not know

There is very little grain to cook.

The good children come back,

The naughty ones are found dead by the brook.

Their bodies float in the water,

For some time, they are food for the fish.

People come down grieving,

And say God is selfish.

Pink by Debarati Pal, Jadavpur University

Handcuffs on my hips,

Flesh squeezed between

The pink Barbie dress,

Cut to mark the contours,

Imagined by the tailor’s

Acute, measuring tape.

She began to hate pink that day.

The fittings, the colour

Too feminine a pallor,

Keep your knees together,

Serve and obey everyone.

Curtail on your fats,

Begin to love what it takes

To fit the imagined measuring tape.

Let football be an orphaned memory,

Limbs in pink frocks don’t play.

She began to hate pink that day.

You bind my legs,

Put a sieve on my mouth,

My rebellion like tea leaves

Mutiny in my throat.

Don’t cut your hair

Let it grow long

The smoother the fall,

The more your man’s arousal.

A wind rises,

The pink dress flutters

A dictator’s flag.

But this time

The wind was a storm

It tore off the dress

What remained

Only the naked body,

A body full of scars

Syncing, overflowing

With words liberating

From the contours

Of the tailor’s measuring tape.

Persephone by Roopsa Sanyal, Bethune College

One, two, three…

Here comes yet another morning

As I sit on my throne-

Counting the little, red seeds that are now quite grown.

Three, four..

I think about my mother and how

Much I loved her,

Before I started loving him more-

I think of my sisters and my brothers,

My father,

And,

My sceptre.

Never did anyone ask

Where I myself would like to bask,

If it was the glory or the dark

If I wanted the raven or the song of the lark.

For six months I live here

And six others in the sun,

On the days I do not want to remain another

Second in either place-

I still have nowhere else to run.

I’m no less than his trophy wife

That he once wanted to keep,

I always wished to care for and sow

But,

They just wish to reap.

My people cry when crops don’t grow,

My husband sulks when they do.

My family does not stand a chance,

Agrees my graceful Aphrodite too.

Five, six...

The curse that I had consumed

Has fared me well enough, I assume.

“Naive, old Persephone,”

I heard their chuckles say,

The sounds reverberate from all those years back-

In my ears, here as I lay.

The six beads of red,

That had been my song of Swan-

Have given me the power to get

Out there-

And rightfully be the queen I am,

In stupendous Fate’s turn.

On the Death of Eternal Vice by Anushka Sinha, Sister Nivedita University

I ramble and rove by the ugliest of days,

And yet methinks the skies lie-

Of the inert and pale sun's peering austere rays,

And numbing, frigid the ether so dry;

My tears freeze bolstered by the hostile wind,

Lost in the forests of prejudice and artificiality.

From the horizon afar the echoing cries ringed

The doom has come for the exquisite juvenility.

But from your fallacy my rectitude I derive,

In the agony of blistering, fiery, and roaring hell

The vizard fell and the truth did revive

With maimed wings I live to apprise the tale;

The fallen angel endures to agitate:

For one to precede those sins and gravitate.

Rhythm of the Winds by Subhangi Roy, St. Xavier's College

She kissed Respect today.

Underneath the boundless skies of warmth and compassion,

Two bare souls, they conversed.

Fingers clasped, lips touched, crevices felt

Like clouds that floated above

After receiving pecks of breeze.

Their minds embarked upon the depths of novelty and familiarity.

Stars had fallen on Earth,

Mortals never knew why.

Maybe to rediscover the truth of reality,

Or to pin their territories of being and vitality.

The breeze whispered,

The breaths reassured,

To know what's theirs,

The Nature conspired.