#132: Celebrating six years of The Alipore Post
Dear reader,
I've been under the weather and overly exhausted. But I'm here to celebrate the fact that it's been six whole years of sending out The Alipore Post as a newsletter. I still need to pinch myself to know that it's all real, that I've been reading and falling in love with poetry and art and creativity in such a special way since I was 23.
Unfrigginbelievable. Thank you to each and every one of you for being a part of this journey of mine. Especially the few of you who were part of the original 500!
I was going to make a @ro.doodles style mini comic about six lessons I've learnt since I started The Alipore Post. But my sniffles and fatigue is preventing me from doing any writing or doodling today.
Instead, I've picked a few stunning poems, wonderful links and beautiful music and podcast episodes that I carefully saved and put away for this edition. I hope you like what you read/see/hear :)
1. How To Taste A Poem by Marjorie Maddox
The table’s well set, but please
come as you are. No need for white gloves
or black tuxedos. Pass the appetizer plate
to your left and try a lightly fried haiku
or lemon-peppered limerick. Nibble away
as you would a jumbo shrimp stuffed with oxymorons.
For an entrée, may we suggest a well-done ode
or an Italian sonnet smothered with marinara sauce?
Now, sit back and savor the syllables
until your taste buds plump with flavor,
but leave room for dessert —
aged alliteration topped with assonance and consonance:
a sugary smorgasbord of simply scrumptious sounds.
2. After Midnight by Mohan Rana
Translation from Hindi: Lucy Rosenstein and Bernard O’Donoghue
I saw the stars far off,
as far as I was from them,
in this moment I saw them,
in a moment of the twinkling past.
In the boundless depths of darkness,
these hours hunt the morning through the night.
And I can’t make up my mind:
am I living this life for the first time?
Or repeating it, forgetting as I live,
that first breath – every time?
Does the fish too drink water?
Does the sun feel the heat?
Does light see the dark?
Does the rain also get wet?
Do dreams ask questions about sleep – as I do?
I walked a long, long way…
and when I saw, I saw the stars – close by.
Today it rained all day long
and words washed away from your face.
3. Move to the City by Nathaniel Bellows
live life as a stranger. Disappear
into frequent invention, depending
on the district, wherever you get off
the train. For a night, take the name
of the person who’d say yes to that
offer, that overture, the invitation to
kiss that mouth, sit on that lap. Assume
the name of whoever has the skill to
slip from the warm side of the sleeping
stranger, dress in the hallway of the
hotel. This is a city where people
know the price of everything, and
know that some of the best things
still come free. In one guise: shed
all that shame. In another: flaunt the
plumage you’ve never allowed
yourself to leverage. Danger will
always be outweighed by education,
even if conjured by a lie. Remember:
go home while it’s still dark. Don’t
invite anyone back. And, once inside,
take off the mask. These inventions
are the art of a kind of citizenship,
and they do not last. In the end, it
might mean nothing beyond further
fortifying the walls, crystallizing
the questioned, tested autonomy,
ratifying the fact that nothing will be
as secret, as satisfying, as the work
you do alone in your room.
4. How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson
It was like soul-kissing, the way the words
filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk.
All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,
but Mrs. Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne
by a breeze off Mount Parnassus. She must have seen
the darkest eyes in the room brim: The next day
she gave me a poem she’d chosen especially for me
to read to the all except for me white class.
She smiled when she told me to read it, smiled harder,
said oh yes I could. She smiled harder and harder
until I stood and opened my mouth to banjo playing
darkies, pickaninnies, disses and dats. When I finished
my classmates stared at the floor. We walked silent
to the buses, awed by the power of words.
5. Balance by Adam Zagajewski
I watched the arctic landscape from above
and thought of nothing, lovely nothing.
I observed white canopies of clouds, vast
expanses where no wolf tracks could be found.
I thought about you and about the emptiness
that can promise one thing only: plenitude—
and that a certain sort of snowy wasteland
bursts from a surfeit of happiness.
As we drew closer to our landing,
the vulnerable earth emerged among the clouds,
comic gardens forgotten by their owners,
pale grass plagued by winter and the wind.
I put my book down and for an instant felt
a perfect balance between waking and dreams.
But when the plane touched concrete, then
assiduously circled the airport's labyrinth,
I once again knew nothing. The darkness
of daily wanderings resumed, the day's sweet darkness,
the darkness of the voice that counts and measures,
remembers and forgets.
Recommended Listening:
1. Dearest Alfred (MyJoy) – Khruangbin / Knxwledge Remix
2. 230 audio clips in 24 countries: What life sounds like under lockdown
3. Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space - Spiritualized
4. Sunshine Radio - Tommy Guerrero
5. The Song of the Jellicles (read by T.S. Eliot himself)
6. Porz Goret - Yann Tiersen
7. Allah Tero Naam in the voice of TM Krishna
8. Annie Atkins on the joy and magic of designing film props for Wes Anderson
Links of the Week:
1. The Taco Bell Drawing Club
2. Interview: How The Alipore Post grew to 40k online community members with a newsletter
3. You can orbit the Moon in Real Time
4. The Talks interview with director and author Miranda July
5. Got a Pest Problem? Call the Quack Squad (They’re short, they waddle, and they’re coming to eat the snails.)
6. I'm dying to get my hands on Nina Cosford's Sketchbook + this Tortilla Towel
7. MURMURATION | projet 64 (v1) (Oh wow!)
8. Earthrise by Amanda Gorman
9. Time In This Time (So happy to see Livia Falcaru's work featured here! Read my Goodbye, 2020 interview with Livia here.)
10. Don't miss the Coffee Break Insta Live between Oliver Jeffers and Quentin Blake on Wednesday, 3rd February, 8.30pm IST.
This is my newsletter: Maneesh Madambath | The Bombay Daak
This week’s edition of This is my newsletter comes from Maneesh Madambath who runs the amazing newsletter The Bombay Daak.
His newsletter is all about his love for books, what he’s been reading, and the religious experience of walking around his 7 feet tall library. I invite you to read his lovely homage to books here.
“Poetry allows us to cherish what we’re given. Whether it be a heartbreak, a second chance, a soft morning mist, a moment or . . . an onion, poetry, with its impossible-seeming combination of soft lens and precision, brings to our awareness that which might otherwise go unseen, unrecognized, un-cherished. Poetry opens us to life, to surprise, to shadow, to beauty, to insight.”
-Naomi Shihab Nye
Thank you for all the love and kindness over all these years, my sweet reader.
Here’s to six more years of tenderness, wonder and curiosity.
Lots of love and gratitude,
Rohini
If you like what you read here, please do consider supporting this newsletter on Patreon / buying my 2021 wall calendar / contributing to thealiporepost@okhdfcbank via UPI. Thank you :)