Canaries On The Moon
By C P Surendran | 01 Jan 1900
The title also refers to a practice followed till the last century in England of flying canaries attached to a string down a coal mine shaft so the miners knew how far they could go down with safety. The point where the bird died on the string was the miner’s last frontier. The poems are all different from conventional poetry in the sense that they look to create a new constituency of readers.
“Surendran lives in a universe of landscapes. Elemental forces vein these landscapes. Sometimes they surface with horrifying impact, at other times gently. Essentially natural, these forces also run through Surendran’s cities and towns, so that the dominant impression I’m left with is that his cities and towns are landscapes too, contoured like natural phenomena, again darkly veined, fissures subject to unexpected shocks. This is just one of the features of Surendran’s work I am drawn to. His is a voice I admire and respect,” says renowned poet Adil Jussawalla.
“Surendran is one of the few Indian poets in English whose early promise has turned into mature achievement. From the outset his work has been fierce, bitter, and imbued with the sense that the world is a hostile place. This, in his early work, produced powerful imagery and rhythms. They are still clearly visible in his new collection, Canaries on the Moon, but what also emerges is a new and delicate lyricism. This is a truly admirable work,” writes well-known poet Dom Moraes.
Canaries on the Moon, as mentioned earlier, is the third collection of poems by Surendran, the other two being, Gemini II and Posthumous Poems. The 68 poems here consolidate Surendran’s reputation as a vengefully individual voice among English poets in India. The barely-contained, visceral quality of that voice breathes new life into seemingly dull, ordinary words, turn cliches on their heads.
It at once makes his poetry both exciting and accessible. Surendran’s poetic constitution is exceptionally gifted to perceive moments of truth, and the touch of the bizarre in everyday reality, the world within the world, or, to use one of his phrases, “the universe we miss in a blink.” Each poem here is glittering, hard, polished like a precious stone. And caught in its clear light is a whole world on edge.
Sample one:
Prospect
While you were sleeping
A dog yawned in the sun
And in the distance,
A train, blindfolded by a tunnel,
Window by window
Regained vision.
I thought of all the things
That could happen
When we are looking away,
The universe we miss in a blink.
— C P Surendran
Click here to order
.webp)
