Delhi International Arts Festival 14 18 December 2008
At the October residency for the Oxford University Creative Writing MSc (on which I teach poetry) the renowned Indian poet, Sudeep Sen, was the guest reader. He brought a welcome sense of internationality to Oxford and read from several of his books, including the literary magazine he edits - Atlas. I also read a poem during the evening - Sur le Pont des Arts - which Sudeep praised. After the reading, he asked me to send my last collection, Fathom, to Atlas for review, and a few weeks later I was honoured to receive an invitation to read at the Delhi International Arts Festival - part of the Delhi International Arts Festival.
Writers from around the world gathered in Delhi for this prestigious five day event. There were representatives from the following countries:
Bangladesh | Botswana | Canada | China | Cyprus | Denmark | Egypt
England | France | Guyana | Holland | Hungary | India | Iran | Iraq
Israel | Macedonia | Mexico | Nigeria | Norway | Pakistan
Scotland | Slovenia | South Korea | Sri Lanka
Turkey | USA | Wales.
Their work has been published in (and translated from) the following languages:
Bengali | Danish | Dutch | Egyptian | English | French | Hebrew
Hindi | Hungarian | Iraqi | Kannada | Korea | Macedonian | Malayalam
Marathi | Norwegian | Persian | Punjabi | Slovene | Swedish | Turkish | Urdu.
As part of the festival, we had the chance read our work and meet other writers from around the world as well as talking to publishers, magazine editors and agents.
Sur le Pont des Arts
He's looking at a painting of a river and trees,
houses roughly charcoaled in against a foggy smudge,
a foreground blob that could be a terrier's shadow
or a black hole of invisible light, dark matter
sucking viewers into the artist's untidy mind,
showing them the dissatisfied wife left clearing plates
after a silent Sunday lunch, the son who bores him,
the treasured daughter who ran off to the Pyrenees
with a specialist in sustainable energy
who builds houses out of cartons and solar panels,
where rotas of guests are needed so that they can pee
frequently in order to keep the bathroom lights on.
He's looking at a painting of a river and trees
and thinking about his mistress whom he hasn't seen
for three weeks because she's gone to stay with a sister
he knows she's just invented; now he's thinking about
his new hat, a smart homburg, and how superior
it is to the artist's floppy hat which is hiding,
probably, a mess of impasto passing for brains;
he's thinking of the terrier, who has just caught up
and is now regarding him with small, adoring eyes.
He's thinking it costs him more to feed the terrier
than buying the new homburgs he prefers to his wife.
He's thinking his mistress is a liar, the artist
is an impostor, the artist's wife and son should leave,
the artist's daughter and her husband are complete fakes
and that his own wife is less attractive than a hat.
He's thinking that his terrier is an expensive
excrescence; in fact, he's wishing he was someone else.
He's looking at a painting of a river and trees.
There are more of Jenny's poems on the DILF web site.