Birds of North Europe
This article is about a poem. For birds of Europe, see List of European birds.
"Birds of North Europe" is an award winning poem by Tabish Khair, the internationally acclaimed Indian English author and journalist. The poem won First Prize in the Sixth All India Poetry Competition conducted by The Poetry Society (India) in 1995.[1] The poem brought the first major literary award for Tabish Khair, who is better known as a novelist of repute.
Excerpts from the poem
- Twenty-four years in different European cities and he had not lost
- His surprise at how birds stopped at the threshold
- Of their houses. Never
- Flying into rooms, to be decapitated by fan-blades or carefully
- Herded through open windows to another life, never
- Building on this lampshade
- *****
- Did not intrude into private spheres. demanding to be overlooked
- Or worshipped. They did not consider houses simply
- Exotic trees or hollowed
- Hills. Not being particularly learned, he did not know the thread
- Of fear that knots the wild to the willed, not
- Being well-read, he
- Did not remember the history behind their old and geometrical
- Gardens, could not recall a time when the English
- Parliament had killed a bill,
- Shocked by a jackdaw’s flight across the room. He simply marked
- The absence of uncaged birds in their homes. He thought
- It was strange.
Comments and criticism
The poem has received rave reviews since its first publication in 1995 in the book Emerging Voices[2] and has since been widely anthologised.[3] The poem has been frequently quoted in scholarly analysis of contemporary Indian English Poetry.[4]
See also
Notes
- ↑ "Award Winning Poems - AIPC 1995".
- ↑ Poetry India - Emerging Voices by H K Kaul, Virgo Publications, 1995
- ↑ Contemporary Indian Poets by Jeet Thayil, Fulcrum, Bloodaxe Books, 1996
- ↑ "Fourteen Contemporary Indian Poets – Rana Nayar in The Tribune".
Online references
- Sixth National Poetry Competition 1988 - Award Winners
- An Interview with Tabish Khair
- | Contemporary Indian Poetry by Jeet Thayil
- India Writes - Contemporary Indian Poetry
External links
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 4/11/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.