Neelakshi Dutta

As an educated person what is your relation with poetry?

Since childhood I have a great love and passion for reading and writing poetry. Poetry is my best companion, my talisman, my guardian angel and my joy. I have a great attraction for perusing poetry as well as a great proclivity for expressing myself in the poetic form.

Why do you read poems if you read poems at all?

Poetry reading and writing is a holistic and cathartic experience for me. I must confess that poetry allows me to drive out the demons and dust out the cobwebs in my mind and heart. Poetry is the sane voice that mirrors our world with all its beauty and its warts. It puts on us our thinking caps, it makes us appreciate beauty for all that it is worth, and it inspires us to nurture the positive and ideal within our souls.

What type of poems do you like best?

Poetry is great fodder for people with soft, tender hearted, sensitive, gentle, emotional and romantic sensibilities. Poetry allows them to escape from the harsh vagaries of this cruel, mechanical, unemotional and materialistic world into the imaginary beautiful world brought alive by the skill and expertise of the wordsmiths—the poets.

What is your opinion on contemporary Assamese poetry?

Contemporary Assamese poetry is very much aware and knows the pulse of our world as it is at present. It gives us a bird’s eye view of the strengths and illnesses of our present world; as well as it soothes our senses by way of the beautiful, sensible and meaningful words and sentences that it offers the readers to feast upon to their hearts and minds content. It makes us proud of the quality of high thinking at display in our Assamese poetry and literature, thus in our literary community which is part of the larger intellectual Assamese community.

Do you have any suggestion for the poets today?

Poets and writers are creative people with sensitive faculties who can rightly dissect and discern things with the right intentions and objectives. This faculty’s optimum use is paramount in today’s times, not only by the poet or writer community but by all well meaning people who are rightly concerned for the well being and welfare of our society in the present and in the future.

Neelakshi Dutta is a poet, translator and reciter based in Guwahati. In 2021 she started a YouTube channel called Elvira Creative for which she created videos of poetry reading.