In an exclusive interview with mid-day.com, Arunachal Pradesh poet Mamang Dai opens up about winning the Poet Laureate award at the Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest 2023. She also dwells on the importance being given to poetry in India, and that coming out of the northeastern state
Mamang Dai won the Poet Laureate award at the Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest 2023. Photo Courtesy: Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest 2023
How did it feel to be in Mumbai for the Tata Lit Fest and receive the Poet Laureate award? When was the last time you were here?
It is a great honour. My first reaction was surprise, and I was feeling quite overwhelmed to be receiving this award. There are fellow poets I have to thank for this honour, my friends who always gave me their time and support through the years. The Tata Literature Live! Poet Laureate as an acknowledgement and celebration of poets and poetry is something I prize most highly.
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The festival has a wonderful ambience. I was in Mumbai in 2022, and I found everything quite laid back, running smoothly. Just to be by the sea is happiness enough for me. It is a great venue and the festival committee does a great job of keeping things on track -- in a timely fashion, considering the great mingling of writers from diverse fields and different countries all engaged in interesting and active sessions with literature- books, and exchange of ideas. To my mind, it is an elegant and very well-curated event.
Ever since you started writing poetry and authoring books, how have you seen the growth of more voices coming out of Arunachal Pradesh and northeast India?
Oh, yes. In the early 90s, when I returned to Arunachal there were very few bookshops and literary activity was more in the line of research and academic documentation. Now the scenario has completely changed. The last few decades have seen the growth of reading clubs and literary societies with a generation of young writers with published works in all genres, writing in Hindi, English and Assamese.
The Arunachal Pradesh Literary Society (APLS), established in the 90s to promote literature has also grown, as an umbrella organisation, to cover all the districts of the state, and Arunachal hosts an annual Literature festival, now running into its fifth edition.
Do you think there is enough importance being given to voices from northeast India in writing? Do you believe more importance needs to be given?
I think due importance is given. In the first place, we have to recognise our writer colleagues in the different states of the country and in the northeast region too, because northeast India writing is a vast and diverse universe in itself. In academic fields, in literature and the arts, people do cross borders, the limitations of language and geography, and reach out to learn about each other. This goes for publishers, research scholars, national and state organisations, book lovers and readers.
At the same time, do you believe Indian poetry is celebrated like the way it deserves beyond literary circles? Should they be included in the school and college syllabus?
Today, I think Indian poetry is being celebrated, with more interest from readers and with new poets on the scene. Once, for poetry in English, there were few takers except for the iconic, much-loved Writers Workshop, Kolkata. My first book of poems was published by late Prof. P.Lal. Some publishing houses now concede to at least two poetry publications/or so, while some publish only poetry.
I think the ‘online’ (medium) has also increased poetry writing and reading activity. In recent years there have also been some great translations of poets and mystics of Indian classical poetry that will always lure us back to the depth and loveliness of poetry.
After all these years of being a poet, author and journalist, are there any challenges you face while writing poetry or your literary works centred around Arunachal Pradesh?
Haha, the challenge is with myself. I am always thinking: Okay, time for a break, time to look at the garden, time to see what the doggies are up to.
Some work is challenging in that I have to be patient. If I want to verify something or find the different interpretations of a mythical story or some political or historical fact, I have to travel and spend time with people in remoter parts of the state. Sometimes one is held up by weather and bad roads- I love travel, but sometimes a journey has to be planned with great strategy.
Even then I might not get the definitive thing. But in a way, this is also the joy of writing. The good thing is knowing there is more. There’s always more.
Are you currently working on anything? What can we expect from you in the near future?
I’m trying to write a short story and I am finding it very difficult.
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