Doggerel?

A lot of what I write, what is allegedly poetry, what has gone into three books -- a substantial number of the copies of which have been bought and (even liked) by various people who have become readers and then friends (or the other way round) -- is personal.

It was never meant to be so, I am not someone who is milking an udder here, nor am I flogging a dead horse. In the way that it transpires, my life has been such, I have faced various vicissitudes and I have dealt with them, the way I could best.

Writing poetry has helped and in all probability my books (and the poems in them) are some kind of not-so-ordered-or-chronological chronicle of the life and times of Anand Vishwanadha.

A personal chronicle, mind.

The degree of "personal" doesn't make me any less a poet and doesn't mean I don't slog at writing what I do; a lot goes into my poetry and most of the time I write it the way I want to. So I am happy with it, the way any artist would be with the end result, most of the time at-least.   

So imagine my shock and sense of hurt and anger when (on sharing a poem from Stray Birds) the moderator of a Facebook Group called Indian Poetry replies to my post in more or less the following vein

"The cold is real
 the real is cold...

...I gather in power
whenever I shower.."

I must say two things here itself.

One -- I never joined this group, I was just added to it, one fine day (and yes, as I am rarely active on any of the Facebook Groups, being the recluse that I am, this was incidentally my first post there).

Two -- It would seem this group is moderated by a gent called Philip Nikolayev and is backed by "The internationally renowned Journal of Poetry -- Fulcrum" and has a strict "No doggerel allowed" rule. You post doggerel and you are removed.

Who likes which poem and who dislikes which is subjective; and I for one have never believed in judging anyone's poetry. In all probability if Philip Nikolayev had deleted my post (thinking / considering it to be doggerel), I would have been fine with it, after all it is YOUR group you can run it the way you want to.

But posting the way he did, posting in doggerel was a bit insulting, uncouth and uncalled for, was it not?

So, naturally I asked if he wanted to ban himself.

And as naturally, he removed me from the group.

That wasn't anything earth-shattering either. But what happened thereafter was. Enlightening that is. Because I told Facebook about this incident.

And what happens? Nothing.

Yes, nothing. Which is particularly surprising considering that almost half the people on my Facebook are Indian Poets and these are all pretty active on my Facebook too. Yes, no one (apart from one reader / friend / occasional poet) had anything comforting to say to me; far from showing solidarity with me (I know the very idea is laughable considering how badly I am networked and how artless my poetry is).

What a defeat this is no, this inability to make an ingress into the cliques of Indian Poets?

On the other hand, seriously speaking, this shows how utterly un-Indian Indian Poets of today are; allowing themselves to be "moderated" by a downright rude and borderline boorish Russian who bosses them around on behalf of a prestigious American Journal of Poetry.

Good riddance for me, that I don't belong in any of those cliques, is all I can say.

And yes, up yours Philip Nikolayev, whoever the eff you are!