Vagabond: a person who wanders from place to place without a fixed home; one leading a vagabond life; especially, vagrant, tramp.

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The above is what comes to mind when we look at the title of Vishal Prabhu’s latest collection of poetry. However, Vishal starts the book with the words: “when the mainstream is a void the whole world becomes the margin”. This sets the tone of the poems in this slim volume.

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From the very first poem, Dust, onwards, it is clear that the poet is someone who values content and is particular about form. Words are the most important tool for writers but here is one who values its placement on the page, the spaces, the cuts, the enjambments, and additionally, uses all of this to create the effect that he intends. Even the variations of font typeface into regular and italic, and the placement of the em-dashes contribute to the meanings that emerge from the verses.

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A sample from the poem Depressed:

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Painters, not of  

               portraits, of them-

 

selves, but of land-

                scapes—are the land

 

scape—the wind about

               it; the paint’s memory.

 

In less than 20 words, Vishal brings the void and the margins to our attention with his words and their careful placement. The reader can’t help but notice the hyphen between land and scape, and again, between them and selves. The cleaving of these words into two and then to place them in different lines, makes the power of the poem surge and we are forced to take note of the disjunction that causes the words to be severed and yet, to be yoked together into a whole. The overall experience of reading these words placed on the page as they are, aligns with the title theme of the poem, Depressed, by creating distances, challenging definitions where the poet leaves the final argument to the “wind about it” (it, the landscape) and to memory. It takes a lot of thought and care to format the words on a page to enhance a poem. (I have not been a great fan of it or perhaps, have been a conformist because I want the words to bear the load and not the visual placement of them. But reading The Vagabond gives me a fresh perspective on the importance of the coalescence and ‘apartness’ of words on a page.)  

 

In his conversation with Tuhin Bhowal (the brilliant interview is part of the book and not as an add-on, but instead throws light on the central constructs of Vishal’s writing), the poet states that “the poems have been 15 years in the making. Not the actual content of them, but their form.” It is interesting (perhaps, almost a foregone conclusion itself) that Vishal considers the form of the poems in the book as the best form for now. Therefore, it is important that we, the readers, carry that evolving form forward in our engagement with the poem.

 

The objects that Vishal’s poetry revolve around are varied, but the honesty and viscerality of the poems refuse to leave us for quite a while. We find people who are on the margins of society, experiences that are beyond mainstream definitions, and sometimes, everyday emotional experiences. But the unusual and hence, defining approach in his poetry is based on what he himself states elsewhere as being one of his concerns, “Isn’t being a poet the biggest margin of them all?” While he is clear that the objects and the poems are what are alluded to when he talks of “poems from the margin”, he is also concerned about the margins that are part of our being, those that we can’t wish away. 

 

From Solitude:

 

Is not a potted plant

               at a window, snatch-

 

ing its bits of light and

              air; it is a forest—

 

Or from Nostalgia:

 

Of a thing not yet

              seen, a permanent me-

 

morial erected,

…

 

The allusions and metaphors are wholly original, casting its way deep into us without prettiness nor ease. Sometimes they explode on the page and yet, at other times, they just creep in slowly into that place where thoughts and emotions meld, solidifying into jagged rock-bits that lodge long and deep enough to make us realise that we too are more void, more margin than we thought. The pace at which these nuggets hit us also mirrors the pace at which the words flow from Vishal. Again, this pace-setting is well-controlled by the word breaks, emdashes and enjambments that are in use; sometimes resulting in just a stream, and sometimes, the rapids.

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The cross-section of society that Vishal captures through his poems is wide. He treats all of them in a way that brings preconceived images and notions crashing. The words imbue a refreshing approach to the subjects. To give you a few examples:

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The Maid II (You were born of a dying house…), Fame (An invisible horse galloping between eye-lids …), Prostitute (Wherever you stand or walk, you are on a bridge…), Garbage Collector II (Heap, heap, sea-bed, standing at its edge …), Mother/Father (So it takes two to become what they were not …) The poems are centred on Vishal’s belief that “poetry cannot be written from a space of resentment, no matter how subtle”.

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Vishal, in his interview, shares his angst about the consumerist culture we live in and the mindless exploitation that society indulges in. However, the poems in this book do not carry a boiling rage, neither are they vituperative outbursts. Somewhere, we find the silence between the words, on the page, that leads into ourself, forcing us to look at our own beliefs and at those things that we may not acknowledge or define often enough.

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The Vagabond, is a slim volume but one that will require more than just a cursory reading on a balmy evening on the porch. It encourages us to read, engage, re-read, make meaning, and reflect on the words and their placements. Vishal’s economy of words is probably a result of fine chiselling and finer carving to ensure that words and thoughts that are redundant to the poet are banished from the page. The craftsmanship of the poet is evident in the book, but without being overbearingly in the forefront. The spotlight is on the objects and subjects of the poems themselves.

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From the last words of verse in this book:

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I take on many

faces

                            I am one and the

                            same

 

The periphery

of an indifferent

world

                             The centre of a

                             reconciled self

 

As Vishal Prabhu himself says, “Poetry is not a choice.”