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The Poetic and the Political: Multiverses of Kamal Chowdhury

1.
One of the first few things I do when start thinking about writing a literary criticism on a
collection of poetry or on the works of a poet is, I try to find out if the collection, the Body
of Work in question can give me an insight or understanding about the universal human
condition or on any threads of that said/ claimed condition.
Then, I move on to explore if the body of work I were to focus on give us any
understanding or unique insights on the specific historical context it was
created/imagined /produced.
Does the body of work, question, challenge, disrupt the specific historical context, ---or
at least gives an authentic, albeit, alternative commentary of the historical as well as
literary context--- than the ones presented , sanctioned and hailed by the status quo?
What are the multiple threads of power that construct, endorse and fight for dominance
to become hegemonic in a certain historical / cultural/literary context that inform and
influence the body of works being the subject of the critical analysis? What are the
dominant and alternative forms of aesthetics and politics that limit as well as open up
the context in which the poems are allowed and can be written?
What are the limits this collection of poetry exposes and what are the poetic, political,
emancipatory and imaginative possibilities, opportunities it may open up or at least
attempts to do so?
There are numerous ways to approach these questions. My preferred option is,
however, the one that deals with the body of work in isolation. Contrary to the
postmodern/post structural and everything “post” approaches to literary criticisms, all of
which employ an “inter-textual” approach, I prefer to remain consciously and cautiously
modernist in my approach.
While doing a literary criticism, which in itself, is a modernist project, I read certain texts,
say a collection of poetry, or body of literary work of a particular writer/poet/ author or
time/ place/ genre/ collective/ movement, in isolation as far as possible in this inter-
textual universe, that is, I deliberately choose not to employ inter-textual perspective/s
or reading/s. Though I must admit, that it’s an impossible task to do so, but what I would
claim, is it is possible to “limit” the inter-textual universes, both physical and poetic to a
large extent while doing a literary criticism by consciously choosing certain perspectives
and critical positions over others for a given work of literary criticism.
This I believe, opens up the possibilities to explore the range and dimensions of the
work of a particular author/ poet.

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No literary criticism is apolitical/ politically neutral. I felt the obligation to put forward this
explanation to reveal as much as possible the politics and power/ dis empowered
position/s from which I am attempting to do the literary criticism of Kamal Chowdhury’s
poems, a “selected” body of his work as collected in one of his poetry collections, Kamal
Chowdhury: Selected Poems, published in 2017 by BLB.
I would like to put forward this disclaimer, on the outset, that, I claim limited knowledge
over his other works other than those presented in this collection not in original but in
translations. Though, I have read a few of his poems in Bangla, my reading of Kamal
Chowdhury’s work in original Bangla, is at best, sketchy.
I must also make it clear that I would not be immune to the influences, both due and
undue, of the specific historical context on me while writing this criticism. The specific
relations and modes of power in which I find myself situated in this very historical
moment, has informed and shaped my perspectives while reading Kamal Chowdhury in
certain ways, and not in other alternative ways. The historically specific relations of
power between the author and the critic has always been the one that is vital and
unavoidable in any criticism in any literary work.
This revelation, exposure of the context and the politically chosen position from which I
would like to write this criticism, would have an impact on both limiting and opening up
the aesthetics and political possibilities and limitations of Kamal Chowdhury’s poetic
universe in particular ways that may or may not be shared by others, even by the poet
himself.
But I believe, in exploring a body of work by an important poet like Kamal Chowdhury
would go some way in understanding and empathizing with a time we have lived in
since early seventies till late 2010s in Bangladesh. It would also give us glimpses in his
unique insights and contribution in both our political / socio cultural history and into an
aesthetic poetic journey of a poet.
Once one reads the collection of poems by Kamal Chowdhury’s it would left the readers
with little, if any, difficulties to understand the time and space, the historical context of
Bangladesh in which the poetic universe of Kamal Chowdhury was being expanded in
post-independence Bangladesh,
2.
There are three major universes that Kamal Chowdhury creates, explores and gets
engaged with.
1. An auto-fictional, inner, introspective, highly sensitive personal one, responding in a
varieties of way to the historical and aesthetic/poetic context this personal universe finds
itself.
2. A historically specific time-space, -- the post-independence Bangladesh—that limits
the possibilities of exploring Kamal Chowdhury’s poetic universe, while at the same

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time, the ways in which that historical limits are being challenged by the power of Kamal
Chowdhury’s poems. And third,
3. A unique alternate universe that is created through the verses of Kamal Chowdhury
that builds itself on the aura of the Father of the Nation, the inspiration that is
Bangabandhu, in both his presence and absence, in body and in spirit.
The power of Kamal Chowdhury’s poems is not limited in creating these multiverses,
but in their ability to engage the readers in conversations with both their own personal
journeys and also with the journey embarked upon by the poet himself for more than
four decades.
The result of these conversations are the poems that take the readers in places where
no reader had gone before!
Kamal Chowdhury: Selected Poems is a bold adventure of not only the poet but also his
readers as well, into the realm of unknown through the corridors of known. Kamal
Chowdhury: Selected Poems is our answer to “Enterprise” the starship that takes us to
worlds/ universes that are not our own , not to interfere or be meddle with, but to
understand our own, the one in which we were born and are living in.

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