My Grandmothers House by Kamla Das
My grandmother’s house
- Kamala Das
About Kamala Das:
Kamala Das is one of the best poets in contemporary Indo-Anglian literature. Kamala Das, born in Kerala in 1934, is a bilingual writer. She writes in Malayalam, her mother tongue, under the pseudonym Madhavikkutty. Her poetry is an exploration of the geography of her own mind, and the lyric is an instance of such self-exploration. Through images of repulsion and horror, she brings out the emotional emptiness and sterility of her married life, and the intensity of her misery as a wife who had to submit to her husband whom she found repulsive, and with whom she had no emotional contact at all. She has won many prizes for her work . some of them being the P. E. N. Asian Poetry Prize, Kerala Sahitya Academy Award for fiction, Asian World Prize for literature, Kendra Sahitya Academy Award etc. She was short listed for the Nobel Prize along with Marguerite Yourcenar, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune, but has earned considerable respect in recent years.
Themes in the Poetry of Kamala Das:
The poetry of Kamala Das is a search for the essential woman, and hence the woman persona of her poems plays the various roles of unhappy woman, unhappy wife, mistress to lusty men, reluctant nymphomaniac {A woman with abnormal sexual desires}, silent Devdasi and love-lord Radha. Kamala Das has also been called a poet in the confessional mode. The confessional poets deal with emotional experiences which are generally taboo. There is a ruthless self-analysis and a tone of utter sincerity. E.V.Ramakrishnan rightly says, “In her poetry, Kamala has always dealt with private humiliations and sufferings which are the stock themes of confessional poetry.”
Reminiscent of the Poet’s Ancestral Home:
The poem is a reminiscence {a mental understanding of the poem by people} of the poetess’ grandmother and their ancestral home at Malabar in Kerala. Her memory of love
- Kamala Das
About Kamala Das:
Kamala Das is one of the best poets in contemporary Indo-Anglian literature. Kamala Das, born in Kerala in 1934, is a bilingual writer. She writes in Malayalam, her mother tongue, under the pseudonym Madhavikkutty. Her poetry is an exploration of the geography of her own mind, and the lyric is an instance of such self-exploration. Through images of repulsion and horror, she brings out the emotional emptiness and sterility of her married life, and the intensity of her misery as a wife who had to submit to her husband whom she found repulsive, and with whom she had no emotional contact at all. She has won many prizes for her work . some of them being the P. E. N. Asian Poetry Prize, Kerala Sahitya Academy Award for fiction, Asian World Prize for literature, Kendra Sahitya Academy Award etc. She was short listed for the Nobel Prize along with Marguerite Yourcenar, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune, but has earned considerable respect in recent years.
Themes in the Poetry of Kamala Das:
The poetry of Kamala Das is a search for the essential woman, and hence the woman persona of her poems plays the various roles of unhappy woman, unhappy wife, mistress to lusty men, reluctant nymphomaniac {A woman with abnormal sexual desires}, silent Devdasi and love-lord Radha. Kamala Das has also been called a poet in the confessional mode. The confessional poets deal with emotional experiences which are generally taboo. There is a ruthless self-analysis and a tone of utter sincerity. E.V.Ramakrishnan rightly says, “In her poetry, Kamala has always dealt with private humiliations and sufferings which are the stock themes of confessional poetry.”
Reminiscent of the Poet’s Ancestral Home:
The poem is a reminiscence {a mental understanding of the poem by people} of the poetess’ grandmother and their ancestral home at Malabar in Kerala. Her memory of love
References: 1. http://www.thegeminigeek.com/who-was-kamala-das/ 2. http://www.poemhunter.com/my grandmother’s house 3. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/kamaladas