HarperCollins Publishers India and Literati Bookshop & Cafe
invite you to the launch of the dreaming house Selected Poems by Tanya Mendonsa on Thursday, 17 December 2009, 7.15 p.m. at Literati E/1-282 Gaura Vaddo, Calangute Goa 403516 [opp. Tarkar Ice Factory and next to ABC Farms and La Fenice] Venita Coelho and Siddharth Dube will be in conversation with Tanya Please join us for aperitifs after the launch RSVP Literati Bookshop & Cafe (0832) 2277740 bo...@literati-goa.com About "The Dreaming House" (Harper Collins) by Tanya Mendonsa "The Dreaming House" was conceived of as a journey, as much spiritual as geographical. The first part is called "The Voyage Out", and the second , "The Country Beyond". "The Voyage Out "contains poems that are mostly about the journey from childhood to maturity, and my 19 years in Paris; the subjects are mostly people- whether real or imaginary, and wars whether historical or internal. The majority of the poems are unsettling, as I suppose that part of ones life always is. The second part of the book, "The Country Beyond" focuses on the redeeming qualities of the natural world, and the way it can transform human beings. Nearly all the poems are set in the lush and watery landscape of Goa and, more specifically, the poets village of Moira . Many of the poems refer to actual people in the village, whether alive or dead, as in "Miss Havisham of Moira", "The Farmer Next Door", "The Chatelaine of Moira". Many more are about the beauties of this village set between two rivers, with its fields and hills, forests and mussel beds, and the changing seasons reflected by them. The natives of Moira, tradition has it, are a little crazy. If so, its a lovely place to be crazy in. The whitewashed church, built in 1636, stands high on a plateau that looks down on a view that has remained unchanged for centuries. Unchanged, that is, until now. This is a world that is, literally, hanging by a thread; on the cusp of being destroyed by the combined and greedy efforts of the building lobby in tandem with local officials and politicians. All of the "nature" poems in "The Dreaming House" are suffused with the poignancy of intense pleasure on the edge of loss : of archetypal village life and all it contains and means- not only to its inhabitants, but to people who encounter it briefly, as well. Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poet who won the Nobel prize in 1945, claimed that lyric poetry springs from "the wound of love inflicted on us by things". The writer Sudep Chakravarti , speaking of my work to my publisher, said, "even if she writes about a rose, the rose will be bleeding". When I came to live in Moira three years ago, I felt, for the first time in my life, that I had come home. I also discovered that my grandmothers sister had owned much of the land around my own house which overlooks the river which came to be a living presence to me. I had written poetry all my life, in fits and starts. But from the first night in my old-new house, like a water source being unblocked, the words flowed onto paper as effortlessly as the sweet air I breathed. A burning need to preserve the beauty around me, which was the source of my wellbeing, was a natural corollary. With a fellow writer in the village, Venita Coelho, and a handful of concerned villagers who had been fighting the same fight for years already, we started a campaign to preserve the village under the aegis of the new Regional Plan for 2021. Our activist group mapped every "heritage" tree, walk, house, church, temple or monument. We traced the water sources and rivers, defined every green area and gradient, and asked for planned development, no gated communities or apartment buildings, and roads no wider than 5 metres. Venita was the spearhead and did the bulk of the work; I handled communications; not more than half a dozen people worked with us. In the end, we managed to persuade the village panchayat ( which had no knowledge whatsoever of what the Regional Plan meant ) to cooperate with us. However, the rot has set in far too deep Goa is now the most corrupt state in India, and the TCP dept. is in the process of tampering with the plans each village has submitted so that they, and their political bosses, dont miss a slice of the cake that will be snatched away from under their eyes, if these plans are allowed to be ratified. And, of course, they want to suppress any dissenting voices. I want to use any publicity I might get for my book to make as many people as possible aware of our battle to preserve the village. I am not alone in this, but we need as much exposure as we can get, and the media is the best possible tool. If one village in Goa, and what threatens it today, gets enough exposure, this will help all the villages in Goa. As the poet Hopkins said, "What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness ? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet." The language throughout "The Dreaming House" is straightforwardly lyrical, but completely contemporary, with unexpected twists and bites. My work is solidly rooted in the classical tradition of W.B. Yeats, Robert Graves, W.H. Auden, and Wystawa Szymborska, but my affinities lie more with the nature poets : D.H. Lawrence, Gerald Manley Hopkins and Mary Oliver. I am currently working on a second book of poetry, titled, "None of This is Mine". The conclusing stanza of a poem in it, called "Ravisher", talks about the effect poetry has on me, which is what makes poetry so vital to the human spirit : "I want this wind To rip up my sober stanzas, To jumble up the words So that they strike upside-down melodies And helter-skelter rhymes. I want this wind to hit my inner ear a powerful blow, That shows me whos in charge. I want this wind to skew my vision so well That it will never recover." I hope that my voice will be a new, strong and, ultimately, joyous one, in praise of what we have, even if it is to be snatched away tomorrow. The writer Amitav Ghosh, who has a house in the neighbouring village of Aldona, and who has come to feel much the way I do about his village, has kindly written a blurb for the front cover of my book : Tanya Mendonsa's work is cosmopolitan in reference, yet deeply rooted in the red earth of Goa: her Moira poems are a fitting elegy to a magical corner of a storied land. Amitav Ghosh All that I hope is that my poems become a renascence - and not an elegy, as Mr. Ghosh fears - for the village I love so much. "The Dreaming House" will also be available on Amazon.com Goanet A&E www.goanet.org