Kolkata-based poet Sonnet Mondal echoes global voices with 'Verses in Times of Corona'

But for the creative mind , life and creativity have continued to  flow through without any halting, perhaps more vibrant now as humanity faces unprecedented challenges.

In the course of the pandemic creative voices from all across the globe sought expressions through webinar, online festivals and live sessions. The world of poetry has been very active too with a series of online poetry festivals being held with global participation.

Festival of Hope: a virtual poetry festival was organized by Versopolis Review, Europe supported by European Union and endorsed by UNESCO.  Another online poetry festival was organized by Kitaabkhana Bookstore, Mumbai and Indian Novels Collective.

The  United World of Poetry festival, an online event, was organised from Macedonia supported by Alfa TV, Macedonia.

All the festivals saw the participation of Kolkata based internationally acclaimed poet Sonnet Mondal who is going live at Glass House festival on 26th July.

Mondal, Director of Chair Poetry Evenings festival, has crafted five poems under the title “Verses in Times of Corona", responding to the lockdown, the human helplessness, solitude and muse of the people.

Moved with the pains of pandemic and ensuing suffering of migrant labourers, Sonnet translated his original compositions written in Bengali into English that found a larger canvass of audience moved by the crisis. 

In two of his touching compositions on the present crisis, Sonnet  writes :

Tangled

Stories of loneliness stay

warm inside my blanket, get

replaced without a sound.

Arms raised,  a leafless tree

prays for it’s death.

I wish I understood those bird-songs

struggling to break free from the branches.

Locked

Sometimes

the iron in a lock

must be thinking

why was I moulded

into something as such!

A life that came

with boldness

got swept into

isolation — by the tongue

of a melancholic rust

hanging like a slave

to the will of the key

and fingers.

“A crisis like this is an occasion of evocation specially for creative people be it writers, painters or poets like me. Moved by the general plight and pathos, words of human reflections and truths are given a voice through the inks of our pens.

"The pandemic awakens within us the extreme yearnings for hope, courage and fortitude to traverse the extreme conditions we are thrown in as human life seems so little in face of the magnanimity of nature” states Sonnet  who is also a  literary curator and author of Karmic Chanting (Copper Coin) and five other books of poetry.

Being a host of Kolkata's International Poetry Festival Chair Poetry Evenings, Sonnet has had the participation of many poets from across the globe here in Kolkata who joined him reflecting on the situation.

Poet Nikola Madzirov writes from Macedonia: "I am now in my hometown Strumica reading, watching films and writing.  It feels strange being a 'writer-in-residency' fellow in your own room, covered with the familiar sound of the birds, witnessing the birth of each single bloom on the apricot tree. At these moments when people are going away and the Earth is healing in solitude, it is important to feel your own and the pulse of the ones you love in order to avoid the shadow of the fear, yet not to forget about the scars of the world."

From Italy, a country much ravaged by the crisis yet one which showed resilience and grace , poetess Franca Mancinelli  adds, "This time for me is like a blank page. This is a silent time: not a passive and surrendering silence, but a silence as the main form of listening, with a strong presence in the dark of this period. Poetry always confronts itself with the beginning and the end, with the strength that comes from the end leading you to the start again. 'In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning' as Eliot wrote.”

China the epicenter of the virus too had resident Portuguese poetess , Sara F Costa stating, "Someone once said that all serious poetry is about death, and I think that doesn't mean the subject of death, but the acknowledgment of death. Paradoxically, this is so because poetry can only be about life. Existence and non-existence, the consciousness of death, shapes poetry. Faced with fear and uncertainty, a situation out of control, people are confronted with the possibility of death. I believe that good poetry is incredibly useful in times like this.  Poetry can be the key to collective sanity." 

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