Hybrid Cross-pollinations: Re-reading Indian English Poetry as Networks of Publishing

In my project, I study post-Independence English poetry in India through Little Magazines and journals. I want to review and revise the way in which we consider the formative history of a cultural industry; in this case, Indian poetry in English. My research takes place through the study of publication histories of poets and how those “collectives" embraced a changing aesthetic in the postcolonial nation-state. It ties these narratives into a material history of poetry publication. In terms of cultural research, this project will go into the material trail of the publication of poetry as a cultural practice that is derived from networks of poets at work. A good part of this, for instance, would follow the publication history of individual poems through hybrid networks of editors and poets.

I would posit that since my project exists based on materialities of culture that has been produced through exchanges (medially or otherwise), the research question that I am delving into requires an approach that investigates these nuances. In bringing these questions to the fore, I see my own work complementing the research area of an alternative genealogy of Indian poetry. In creating a genealogy through the history of collectives and networks of poets, we take account of culture as something that is produced in doing and in being reflexive about the role of interpretation and translation in the case of a postcolonial body. The body of the text – both a literal body that is to be situated in culture and the poetic text – is, hence, to be seen as an irreducible object in the framework; its incommensurability not to be assimilated into an all-consuming ideological line of thought but brought forth as a fruit of crosspollinating practices.  

• Postcolonialism
• Indian poetry
• Popular culture
• Cultural Theory

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