An Overview of Kamla Das’s Autobiography and Her Poems
An Overview of Kamla Das’s autobiography and her poems
Aasthaba Jadeja
Indian women poets writing in English from Toru Dutt to Kamala Das reveal the mind boggling variety of themes as well as style that poetry is capable of offering. It needs to be remembered that poetry written by women need not be viewed only as feminist poetry. For the first time in Indian English poetry, the women poets of post- Independence and postmodern period portrayed in a subversive idiom their desires, lust, sexuality and gestational experiences. They enriched Indian English poetry with a wealth of new themes and experience. They developed a new innovative iconoclastic discourse to portray their repressed desires. Thus a new form of feminist poetry emerged and grew to give they Indian English poetry new strength, new diversity and new potent a new signs of maturity
Indian English literature has been making great strides during the last few decades thereby attracting the international attention. Infect, the post-independence period in the history of Indian English writing is generally equated with the modern period. It must be said in the light of all considerations that the post independence Indo- English prose and poetry has characteristics which make it distinctive and different from the writing of the earlier period.
The women poets of the present century have surely and confidently come out of the romantic entanglements, of the claptrap of the past tradition and succeeded in formulating a new tradition and a ‘new mode of articulation’ that is at once original natural and spontaneous. The poetry of Kamala Das, Gauri Deshpande, Mamta Kalia, Monika Varma of the older generation and Sumita Jain, Lakshmi Kannan, Meena Alexander, Vimla Rao, and Eunice de Souza of the present represents the genuineness and geometricality of the essential feminine sensibility.
Of all the women poets Kamala Das is chiefly remembered for her uninhibited adoption of the English language for the
Aasthaba Jadeja
Indian women poets writing in English from Toru Dutt to Kamala Das reveal the mind boggling variety of themes as well as style that poetry is capable of offering. It needs to be remembered that poetry written by women need not be viewed only as feminist poetry. For the first time in Indian English poetry, the women poets of post- Independence and postmodern period portrayed in a subversive idiom their desires, lust, sexuality and gestational experiences. They enriched Indian English poetry with a wealth of new themes and experience. They developed a new innovative iconoclastic discourse to portray their repressed desires. Thus a new form of feminist poetry emerged and grew to give they Indian English poetry new strength, new diversity and new potent a new signs of maturity
Indian English literature has been making great strides during the last few decades thereby attracting the international attention. Infect, the post-independence period in the history of Indian English writing is generally equated with the modern period. It must be said in the light of all considerations that the post independence Indo- English prose and poetry has characteristics which make it distinctive and different from the writing of the earlier period.
The women poets of the present century have surely and confidently come out of the romantic entanglements, of the claptrap of the past tradition and succeeded in formulating a new tradition and a ‘new mode of articulation’ that is at once original natural and spontaneous. The poetry of Kamala Das, Gauri Deshpande, Mamta Kalia, Monika Varma of the older generation and Sumita Jain, Lakshmi Kannan, Meena Alexander, Vimla Rao, and Eunice de Souza of the present represents the genuineness and geometricality of the essential feminine sensibility.
Of all the women poets Kamala Das is chiefly remembered for her uninhibited adoption of the English language for the
References: Das, Kamala. Summer in Calcutta. Kottayam: DC Books, 2004 Dhawan, R.K. ed. Indian Women Novelists. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1993. Set II. Vol.I. Jain, Jasbir. Writing Women Across Culture. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2002. Naik M.K. Dimensions of Indian English literature. New Delhi : Sterling Publishers Pvt.Ltd, 1984.