Interview: Yuyutsu Sharma, editor, Pratik - “Every poet has a devil as a pet”
The editor of Pratik, Yuyutsu Sharma, talks of how his personal and professional pursuits nourish the magazine’s vision and reveals plans for digitisation
You were born in Punjab, India, moved to Nepal at an early age, and now also spend time frequently in the United States of America, Ireland and Western Europe. You describe yourself, movingly, as a Himalayan poet. For you, does this term have layers apart from geography? In what ways does the term also translate into your vision for Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing?
My life has taken strange turns and has been shaped by various dramatic events in the past four decades and the Himalayan poet epithet that came upon me seems equally intriguing. I was born in Punjab and spent most of my early youth there and went to Nepal to teach at Tribhuvan University. I taught there for more than 15 years, married, raised a family and around 1990, quit my teaching position to lead a formidable life as a full-time poet.
As I had time on my hands then, I started travelling to the Annapurna ranges to seek inspiration. But I soon realized I had to make a living and support a young family, so I started writing and publishing newer poetry collections and translating Nepali, Hindi and Punjabi poetry into English. It was then that I thought of bringing out a poetry journal. I had to make a living as a freelance poet, which is next to impossible, especially in our part of the world. But there was a dire need for a magazine that would publish translations of vernacular literature in the Indian subcontinent. So, in the first few years, my focus remained Nepal and South Asia.
Pratik, founded by senior Nepali poet and journalist Hary Adhikary, has a long history of publishing literature in the Nepali language and was guest edited by several prominent Nepali writers including Mohan Koirala. I revamped the magazine and started publishing it as a quarterly in English. With the dawn of democracy in Nepal in 1990, there was a sudden interest in Nepali writing and the first few issues about Nepali literature and South Asia featuring writers like Gopal Prasad Rimal, BP Koirala, Dwarika Shrestha Bhupi Sherchan, Krishna Bhakta Shrestha, Bhisham Sahni, Rajendra Yadav, Pankaj Bista, Kamaleshwar, Pash, Nagarjun, Uday Prakash, Jayanta Mahapatra and others and received applause and support.
Pratik, at that point, was printed in a small one-room letterpress near the main Durbar Square in Kathmandu, now a UNESCO world heritage site and a major tourist hub. I remember the thrill of walking to the press to check the proofs and watch the letters of our poems and short stories being arranged with soot-smeared hands and the proofs being produced on Nepalese handmade paper. We would sit in the tea shop in the opposite lane and mark the crumpled pages.
However, the publishing of Pratik was interrupted when my mother passed away in 2003. I was working on a special Himalayan poetry issue when I received the news of her illness in Punjab and rushed home. But I couldn’t save her as it was too late. I was shattered. Suddenly, the word Pratik took an ominous ring. My struggle associated with the magazine, and my freelance life became a thing to dread. I let the proof stay in a dark corner of my desk in Kathmandu for years. I just abandoned the project and didn’t have a heart to look at it for a very long time.
However, with my mother’s passing away, I also felt liberated. I didn’t have to worry about her well-being and stay in the subcontinent. I could travel as far as I desired. I went back to the Annapurna region where I spent time with bards and shamans who move from village to village in the remote mountain regions, singing devotional songs, healing people with music and spreading awareness about the soul, society and the world’s ecological issues.
During my childhood, I grew up in the company of such wandering ascetics. I watched them move in and out of a hillside town, Nangal, in the Indian Himalayas where my father worked in an irrigation factory. Often, they performed a small segment of a recital and received a gift – a fistful of rice or a small plate of flour with a penny placed atop it – and moved on.
My father regularly visited a Naga sadhu’s shrine by the mighty Satluj river. He adored these holy men so much that one day he decided to donate me to them. Luckily, the head Naga declined the offer and I was sent to school.
As I grew up, received a Western education and started teaching, I learnt how these roving figures had an enduring impact on me. I wondered if it was possible to make a living by being a writer, especially a wandering poet.
Some time after my mother’s death, I resumed Pratik’s publication with a Special British issue that included the work of 26 leading British poets and had Pascale Petit as guest editor. This was followed by a Dutch special issue guest edited by Harry Zevenbergen. Over two decades, Pratik has been a mini companion to support my travels and give me a reason to continue to write and publish.
Pratik’s ambitions figure in its international lineups of contributors: for instance, its Fall 2020 issue had poets from Vermont (USA), four poets from Nicaragua, some from Ottawa (Canada), and 11 from Italy. An upcoming issue is an ‘Australia special’. What does it say when a magazine published in Bhaktapur, Nepal (near Kathmandu) has an international outlook?
Over the years, with my travels and my introduction to larger literary circles worldwide, I haven’t had much difficulty in getting the best writers from all continents. It’s because of my personal encounters with them. I have been able to bring the flavour of world literature to our continent. Yes, the magazine that took birth in my beloved peasant town of Bhaktapur has travelled far and wide. It reflects the process by which the world has expanded with the internet and social media making it convenient for writers and readers from far-flung nations to connect. That’s the marvel of modern technology. The magazine, which began on a letterpress is able to feature world literature. Of course, we should not forget the role of our subscribers and the support the magazine gets from all over the world.
We recently had a Special Los Angeles issue where we featured 88 poets from LA. The issue was co-edited by celebrated American poet, Tony Barnstone. The last issue focused on South Asia and featured Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Ghalib, Nagarjun, Parijaat, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Ravi Shankar, Gulzar, Taslima Nasrin, Namita Gokhale, Felicity Volk, Kunwar Narain, Moniza Alvi, Shadab Zeest Hashmi and 70 others from the subcontinent. We have three upcoming issues ready: the Noir issue, the Australian Issue in collaboration with Asian Pacific Writers and Translators (APWT) and the City Writing issue. We are also planning a special India issue, a Double Chinese Poetry issue and issues on the Memoir and on New York.
Your curation tends away from poems of despair or melancholic helplessness and towards poems assessing life, lyricism, or the power of language as witness or redemption — personal and political. Would you agree?
Yes, this reflects the potent world view of writing and editing that I have witnessed globally during my travels. It began with an encounter with an American poet David Ray, an Indo-US visiting fellow, who mentored me when I was a student at Rajasthan University in 1982.
Bringing out a literary magazine is a complete movement in itself. Little magazines published in India and the world over have been instrumental in keeping the creative currents of contemporary literature flowing, and it’s also true that great literature is being written in little known languages in our subcontinent.
Another feature of Pratik is its editorials in poetry. I avoid writing long editorials for Pratik as South Asian academia is obsessed with pedantic literary theories and pays little attention to creative writing. I have made it a point to stick to a poem or a creative piece as editorial, instead of bombarding my readers with obscure, profound-sounding theoretical Western discourses with a million footnotes.
Pratik, being a “magazine of contemporary literature” has poems that are sharply political, particularly about current-day India. What, for you, makes a good poem which alludes to contemporary politics?
Any poem that’s not overtly political is also political in its devious essence. However, I know you mean poems that deal with social and topical issues. Becoming a poet is a formidable job, just because poets have to speak the truth and there’s nothing more political than speaking the truth in the world at the moment. Bhakti poet Kabir says, “Kabir stands on the crossroads, holding a flaming torch, /put your house on fire first and come with me”. In Nepal and India, poets in the local languages have been very political in bringing out the idea of social justice and democracy. India is passing through a turbulent phase, and, during the pandemic, the reality of the rhetoric of the politicians became evident.
The literary magazine is 250 pages in print. What led you to keep it in printed form?
Yes, there is mushrooming of online magazines and over them looms the peril of the delete key. I am old fashioned and can’t have a magazine just online. Also, as it’s easier to print a magazine in South Asia and ship it overseas to our subscribers. I have insisted on a print magazine as we have outlets the world over that will sell it. However, recently due to the pandemic and the Ukraine war, shipping costs have skyrocketed, making it impossible to send the magazine at a reasonable price.
How do your personal sensibilities as a writer work with your editorial activity?
Each poet, I believe, needs a little magazine to spread his word and share his camaraderie with his fellow poets. This helps a poet expand his vision and share his world view with fellow poets and readers at large. Unlike fiction writers, poets’ presence at reading events gives them a chance to document what’s happening in their medium in wider circles. Publishing other poets you approve of also shapes your writing. During my years of publishing Pratik, I have evolved and successfully mingled in the formidable vision of the world that poetry encompasses.
The lit mag being not-for-profit, how are its funds raised?
Of course, publishing a literary magazine is a lifetime’s mission. As a young man, I knew the thrill of getting my poem published in Jayanta Mahapatra’s Chandrabhaga. It meant so much for me as a beginner. I think Jayanta knew well what publishing fresher voices in his little magazine meant. In Nepal, you will see scores of little magazines published every month. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that almost everyone in Nepal is a poet or a poetry lover. When I am in Nepal, every week, I receive a poetry collection and an issue of a literary magazine in Nepali as a free gift. It’s an astonishing phenomenon – a poet would sell his land, take a loan or use his wife’s earrings to bring out a book of poems or publish a literary magazine and then give it out free to whoever he meets in town.
In the same spirit, Pratik wasn’t conceived to make money but to spread the word about Nepalese literature in general and South Asian writing at large. But over the years, with the internet and my travels and friendships and collaborations built worldwide, it has been easy to get the best writing from all over for this little magazine. It’s due to the kindness of poets and writers locally and internationally that we have been able to run the magazine for so long. In no way could we afford to pay the famous writers published in our issues, especially the British issue, the Los Angeles Issue or the recent South Asian Issue. Thanks to our kind-hearted subscribers in Nepal, India, Europe, UK and North America along with distributors, privately owned bookstores and online platforms, we have been able to get the magazine to every corner of the world. Without online services, 20 years ago, it wouldn’t have been possible. Like higher education, such literary ventures were monopolized by the snooty upper-class elites in our subcontinent.
The magazine, founded by Hari Adhikary, was brought out for two decades before ceasing operations. You re-launched it in 2018 in the new form. Do you have the previously published issues? How do you plan to archive and preserve them?
Yes, we have past issues available in our archives and we are planning to launch their digital copies. We are also planning to bring out The Best of Pratik Magazine in several volumes to showcase what we have featured so far.
Are there plans to have an online version of the magazine?
Yes, but as in the Indian subcontinent, it’s reasonably less expensive to produce a magazine, we are fortunate to continue its print version. Only shipping the printed issues after the pandemic due to ever rising courier costs has become a daunting task. But we want to make Kindle versions of the past issues available soon and hopefully, make it live online as well soon.
Literary magazines, which are invaluable in discovering upcoming writers and in archiving innovative writing, are mainly volunteer-staffed and funded by the editors. These conditions leave them in a precarious situation. What do you feel about institutional support for lit mags in the subcontinent? Who, if anyone, should offer such assistance? What forms do you feel it can best take?
It’s interesting you ask this question. Instead of support, there’s hostility from government institutes and academies run by mediocre party cadres and bureaucratic pawns to creative ventures like Pratik. Personally speaking, whether it is in Nepal or India, the existence of little magazines is a protest against organizations funded in vain by government agencies to run a motley show of creative writing. The editors, chancellors or secretaries are placed in these high places just to justify respective party lines. The primary charm of publishing an independent little magazine stems from the freedom to publish whatever comes to you without a reservation, bias or state control. I would rather stick to my regular readers, subscriptions and kind-hearted individuals for support than turn the magazine into a begging bowl at the threshold of these organizations and corporations. Largely, it has been my effort to keep it as a humble venture; I’ve never dreamt of making it a commercially successful enterprise. As they say in Celtic lore, every poet has a devil as a pet. The magazine has been my devil to stay clear of the temptation to surrender to hostile forces during my journey as a poet. It has kept me alive through my turbulent years and fed the hearth of my writing with its fiery energy.
Suhit Bombaywala’s factual and fictive writing appears in India and abroad. He tweets @suhitbombaywala
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