Why has Poetry at Sangam closed down?

Priya Sarukkai Chabria: Perhaps we need to go back to the beginning: Why did I take on Poetry at Sangam? To give back with gratitude to the art that has given me so much. When Arshia Sattar of Sangam House invited me to create an independent poetry journal on their platform, I used it to share the work of poets I read with joy. But I hadn’t imagined the amount of work this would entail, or how it would grow. Therefore, two years ago, I invited poet and novelist Mrinalini Harchandrai to join as Deputy Editor. She has generously given to Poetry at Sangam in numerous capacities, both creatively, and with the slog work.

Running Poetry at Sangam eats enormously into our time, energy and creativity – in the most unexpected ways. It demands, for instance, that we prioritize a new issue over our own work, irrespective of how immersed each one is in it. A poet friend once commented that it is, in a sense, “a sacrifice”. But I think perhaps sacrifice is not the right word because the journey has been extremely enriching. Besides, there are wonderful literary friendships one makes along the way!

Poetry at Sangam was a commitment made and importantly, it never was just “my baby”: It always was a cooperative and community effort. I have always been acutely aware of my responsibility to poets and translators who have shared their work with us – most often without payment – while in other literary journals many would have been paid handsomely. Their trust and belief in us is an invaluable gift.

Had you done similar work earlier?

Priya Sarukkai Chabria: Before Poetry at Sangam, I edited an online poetry archive, called Talking Poetry for the NGO Open Space in Pune for about five years. Sharing others’ poetry has been, for me, a work of love. But now I have many unwritten books in various stages of completion. And it’s time to shore up my energies for this as must Mrinalini – who has her debut novel coming out this year.

Besides, on a more mundane level, as Founding Editor I’ve had to find funding year after year to keep it afloat. Fund raising has never been my forte. While we’re deeply grateful to our earlier supporters, I must especially acknowledge the help given by Ashok Vajpeyi and the Raza Foundation who have stood by us for half of our 10 years of existence. However, expenses have skyrocketed. To put this into context: a decade ago, Poetry at Sangam was a bi-monthly publication and we could pay a nominal honorarium to contributors. We have, over the years, become a quarterly but are largely unable to pay our contributors. That’s a lot to ask from a lot of people over a lot of the time.

How, over this decade, have you and P@S endured?

Priya Sarukkai Chabria: We’ve managed to persist for 10 years because of the tremendous and unstinting collegiality – and love – we’ve received from the poetry community in India and abroad. A big shout out to each of you! And also, to our readers, our heartfelt thanks. But for the different reasons I have mentioned, it is not any longer feasible to sustain the journal with our specific vision and dreams. But I must add that I’ll miss working on Poetry at Sangam and will always treasure the experiences and the memories it has given me. It has also been a rich source of learning for me.

In the long run, as Ecclesiastes 3.18 puts it beautifully, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. / There is a time…”

What might happen to the archive of work by over 250 poets, besides essays and curatorial notes?

Priya Sarukkai Chabria: Poetry at Sangam is a significant resource containing 2500+ poems that we are proud to have published and supplemented with editorial notes. Our luminous guest editors have provided curatorial notes to their issues while the superb translators have written reflections on their practice and art. Besides, we’ve commissioned essays on poetics and, when possible, added audio recordings of poetry readings. In the near future it will continue as an archive on the Sangam House website.

P@S featured experimental poetry. Please tell us more.

Priya Sarukkai Chabria: I have tried to focus on courageous, heart-stopping poetry that may not easily find a home elsewhere. One wants to say, “Welcome” to such work.

Mrinalini Harchandrai: What I love about a poem is how it immediately allows for suspension of disbelief, while still touching a corner of your heart that seeks truth-telling. For instance, in his P@S note on poetics, Mexican poet Gazpar Orozco says, the way a child may throw stones into a river to “cross to the other side”, similarly the poet throws words into the “constant flowing of the waters, to arrive somewhere else”. Using logic to defy logic itself, he, therefore, declares that “poetry is also a form of time”. A stunning revelation, an experiment in thought. Poems can be the most unexpected multidimensional bridge. And thanks to Priya’s broadminded inclusivity, Poetry at Sangam was always open to different Englishes, like in Mustansir Dalvi’s Song of Songs, or the most daring form poems like Jessica L Wilkinson’s Paper Dolls: A Composite, where instead of requesting the poet to make edits to suit our journal’s format, we chose to work around the poems. However, the poems themselves are distilled with regards to ideas, emotions and language that navigate their terrain with spirit and maturity. P@S also features translation from languages that aren’t always accessible like from Ao-Naga and Tohono O’Odham, the Char Chapori region or the dying Náhuatl language. I would like to add that Poetry at Sangam is one of the only poetry e-journals in India featuring specially created audio to its published poems.

Many literary journals choose publishable work from cold submissions to their email inbox. P@S’s approach involved featuring people by invitation. Did you find that better?

Priya Sarukkai Chabria: Our impulse was to search and curate. Besides, as mentioned, I prefer experimental work in translation and poetry. Given this slant, there wasn’t much point in being open to cold submissions! Besides, writing rejection letters is heart-wrenching. Instead we entrusted our guest editors to bring in their own choice of translators and poets. This is how we – and our readers – discovered poets and their beautiful work.

We counter the idea of editor as “gatekeeper” by inviting guest editors – both Indian and foreign – with widely divergent sensibilities to publish poets that they wish to celebrate in our space. I think it has worked.

Mrinalini Harchandrai: Besides their poems, a really good way to get to know a poet is discovering who they read. I would say that this is Priya’s coup with Poetry at Sangam since she began inviting guest editors close to the beginning of the journal. Consequently, P@S offers the tastes of excellent poets like Alvin Pang, George Szirtes or Sumana Roy, to name a few among 22 guest editors over the journal’s 10 years of existence.

How much time and what kind of effort went into bringing out a fresh issue of P@S?

Mrinalini Harchandrai: It’s always exciting to read new work as it comes in, no matter who curates the issue. However, there is the nitty-gritty of production involved to ensure that we do justice to the fine work generously shared by our contributors. For instance, we both go through the texts with a couple of rounds of edits and formatting, and checks with contributors. Only after some back and forth do we green light them for upload. Thankfully, the digital medium of an e-journal makes things easier as compared to a print medium since changes can be effected in real time. More recently, we’ve also put in effort into our social media presence to broaden the reach of the wonderful poetry featured in each issue.

How hard or easy is it to get funding for a literary journal in India?

Priya Sarukkai Chabria: Hard – specially for a journal solely devoted to poetry. I cannot comment on literary journals that carry fiction, reviews etc. But I would like to add: may their tribe increase! Each journal will find a sympathetic readership if it provides quality content.

What, if anything, feels like unfinished work for P@S?

Priya Sarukkai Chabria: As Flaubert wrote there are “flowers still untasted.” There’s much wonderful poetry and translation already out there, more being done, and more to come. We’d have loved to have more issues and larger ones. We’re immensely grateful for what we’ve been able to showcase. And again our heartfelt thanks to every contributor and every reader – to each and every one of you – for being with us on this decade long journey with us.

Suhit Bombaywala is an independent journalist. He lives in Mumbai.