October 30, 2025e-Paper
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October 30, 2025e-Paper
Published – October 30, 2025 03:52 pm IST
This fall it may not be raining poetry but new shoots and sprouts are hard to ignore. Be it Rhapsody Roads of Ravi Shankar Etteth or Mukul Kumar’s Catharsis or Amy Singh’s Singing Over Bones: Poems of Love and Resistance, the market is embracing meter, sonnets and couplets. Poetry collections are finding ready takers and booksellers are happy to display poetry books, a rarity in recent years otherwise an honour reserved only for Vikram Seth’s Summer Requiem.
The days of English poets struggling to get publishers seem to be over. And lovers of poetry are growing in number too. A poet in Delhi said, “I got a royalty of ₹26,000 for my book”. This itself is a pleasant surprise considering not long ago many poets were forced to publish their own books. Another piece of evidence came from the Bangalore Poetry Festival. When he returned from the fest, Ravi Shankar said, “The response was tremendous.”
What has led to this change? “In recent years, social media has opened up possibilities. Not as much on Twitter or Facebook but Instagram really helped poets find a ready audience. Slowly the publishers realised there was a ready market for poetry,” says Ravi Shankar whose book is a brilliant collection of poetry, images and music. “The poems opened visual boundaries. I used AI to visualise a poem. I put music to long poems. Sometimes I needed five days to get the mood right, at others things fell into place easily. But essentially, Instagram has opened people’s eyes to poetry,” he explains.
Ravi Shankar’s book is a novel experiment with a visual preceding a poem. And the poem itself being set to music. The book comes with a barcode on the back cover, probably a first for English literature in the county.
The new appreciation for English poetry is acknowledged by veteran poet Sukrita whose book of poems, Yellow, was published by the Sahitya Akademi and got rave reviews. Says Sukrita, a regular at poetry discussions at literature festivals, “Certainly in English, more and more people are writing poetry, good or bad.”
It has been a long road for English poets. Recalls Mukul Kumar whose poetry collection, Catharsis, has taken him to various literature festivals across the country, “Howsoever great poetry is, its commercial viability remained a challenge. For this reason, publishers had generally been wary of accepting it. One had to waddle through the rejections. I too started with self-publishing as my debut collection Irrepressible Echoes came out that way. As my poetry gained visibility, I could get published the traditional way. The first cheque of royalty from my poetry publisher remains my most treasured acquisition.” Incidentally, Kumar had the honour of his book being put on display at the iconic Bahrisons in New Delhi.
The new found popularity and commercial viability has something to do with better works coming in the public domain. Says Ravi Shankar, “Vernacular poetry has always been popular. Unfortunately, among English poets there is now nobody of the stature of Gulzar or Javed Akhtar. “Things are changing. Poets are beginning to cross an invisible barrier and touching the heart of the readers. “Poetry is the song of the soul, the soul that is nourished by melancholy,” says Kumar, adding the reason for the success of his book, Catharsis, “It is the eternal language of my bliss.”
“Poetry books are getting a lot of love,” sums up Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, editor-in-chief, Om Books, who has also published another poetry collection this summer. Called Lal Ded: Songs of the Naked Poet, it an interpretation by Arvind Gigoo.
Published – October 30, 2025 03:52 pm IST
The Hindu MetroPlus / poetry
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