Anna Dasgupta - End Term Assignment and Self Reflective Essay

Response to Prompt No. 7 - Visual narratives based on four poems

1. Sweet Sixteen by Eunice de Souza
Well, you can't say
they didn't try.
Mamas never mentioned menses.
A nun screamed: You vulgar girl
don't say brassieres
say bracelets.
She pinned paper sleeves
onto our sleeveless dresses.
The preacher thundered:
Never go with a man alone
Never alone
 and even if you're engaged
only passionless kisses.

At sixteen, Phoebe asked me:
Can't it happen when you're in a dance hall
I mean, you know what,
getting preggers and all that, when
you're dancing?
I, sixteen, assured her

you could. 

2. You Fit Into Me by Margaret Atwood

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye 

3. Metaphors by Sylvia Plath

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

4. The Orange by Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—

The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.


The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist. 

Self- Reflective Process Essay

My impulse to join this course was founded on the basis that there was a creative writing course being offered that allowed one to draw comics and study the form as one of its modules. This was so, because, to put it simply, I enjoy drawing comics. However, by the end of the semester I gradually became more invested in poetry. In all my previous attempts to write poetry all I tried to do was make sentences rhyme. 

That should have been considered a crime. 

In class we learnt about the technique called abyme.

Apologies for this wasting of time. 

One of the many takeaways from this course has been that while rhyming is not a crime, it must not always be very obvious in its repetition of sound. The course, also, equipped us with the tools to appreciate poetry better. While I am still skeptical about writing poetry myself, there have been several observations on writing (although not just applicable to poetry) that I found very interesting. One was to not shy away from being specific about things and to steer clear from leaving things in the realm of the vague. Similarly, also to not deal with abstractions as a theme that is out of reach but to anchor it to the particular. Interestingly, I had attended one session of this reading group on Alternate Humanities and the discussion there also drifted into how things that are considered relatively abstract like the universe and the stars can be anchored to the political also, the case in point that had been taken was of  the last letter that Rohith Vemula wrote. 

I never read much poetry before but this course did introduce me to poets that I enjoyed reading immensely and some of them being my classmates as well and that has been a catalyst for looking for more poets. One of the anxieties about the end-term assessment prompts was that the prompt that I chose said pick four “favourite” poems and I was worried that I did not have enough favourite poems and that the ones that I did like were rather long to illustrate within the given time. So I set parameters for finding these “favourite” poems that would be doable for me for this assignment. Initially I thought I did not have much choice but as I read more and more I came across so many poems that I was genuinely spoilt for choice and have now a selection of poems I can honestly call my favourite.. The poems that I did not illustrate include Kedarnath Singh’s ‘Mother Tongue’, Wendy Cope’s ‘Difference of Opinions’, Dorothy Parker’s ‘Resume’ and Ray Bradbury’s ‘If Only We Had Taller Been’. Though I could not illustrate these poems I leave with so many ideas for translating them into the graphic format. 

In these set of poems I picked the Eunice de Souza poem because I have known girls who have been sheltered from sex education all their lives. The Margaret Atwood poem seemed delightfully dark which was in contrast to the Wendy Cope poem which is very optimistic. The Sylvia Plath poem was interesting because I was also reading a poem by Philip Larkin called ‘This Be the Verse’ which ends with the line “and don't have any kids yourself”. Plath’s poem was about what happens when it is too late to realize you are not ready for kids and the gravity of the situation that child rearing is which seems to a subject that is taken for granted most of the times.

The poems that I have illustrated for the end term assignment, is a work in progress. There is a lot more colour that I want to add to it. However, this course did help me learn many things and pay attention to the things that have always been there but I never thought about. For instance, I always sit in the metro and I do pick up interesting things that happen on the metro that find its way into conversations with friends but giving it space on paper for the mid-term assessment was rather fun.

I had done creative work for assignments before but there was not a conscious awareness of the technicalities of the form involved on my part. That said, it is curious how it is easier to spot techniques when one is analysing any form of art, however, when it comes to the act of creating per se, even though one might be conscious of the techniques there is always an intuitive aspect to it. 

Another thing that has changed my perspective about things and choices as somebody who dabbles in making art  is that there is always a politics involved in every form. In all the four forms we took up in class, the discussion would almost always find itself in politics. We talked about the politics of talking about war in poetry; of the forms of representation that graphic narratives take; the politics of representation and giving a voice to those considered voiceless in The God of Small Things; and looking at the politics of art in general also. 

That which we learned in this course was, for me, not just restricted to being applied to this course only. We read John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and the third chapter of the book really stayed with me. It helped me defamiliarise the familiar as I looked at old family photographs for a course on photography that I had opted for.

I am glad that I could find connections of things learned in this one course, to other courses and to, well, life in general.