I remember, late on a July night in 1991, in the Mysuru Youth Hostel, in pouring rain and over roaring winds, Anvar Ali, a young student and poet, and I a middle-aged student and poet, coming across a young poet of slender build and big wide eyes, his hair dishevelled flying about like the Dancing Shiva’s, shouting to the heavens his mesmerising verse: “O Praanashakthi Devi.” That was HS Shivaprakash at the age of 37, admired by great poets like Gopala Krishna Adiga and many other senior poets of his time.

Within these 33 and a half years, HS Shivaprakash has become one of the greatest Kannada poets, and a major voice in Indian poetry, to borrow the words of Kamalakar Bhat.

The oeuvre of HS Shivaprakash

In the Light of Shiva: Selected Poems, a collection of Shivaprakash’s poetry in English translation by himself and Kamalakar Bhat and Manu V Devadevan, also carries his own original poems in English, making him a bilingual poet.

Here I would like to lay claim to at least two aspects of his poetic creativity I was privileged to be privy to: one, in his early experiments of writing poetry in English, he would compare notes with me about each one of them; two, he would read to me many of his poems in Kannada straight from the oven, either directly or over telephone, offering simultaneous verse translations in a way only he could accomplish. This has happened since 1997 November when, adding to our by then six-years-old robust friendship, he and I became colleagues at Indian Literature in Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, till I left for Libya in 2008. Coming back in 2011 and staying in Delhi till January 2012 during the Libyan Revolution and returning, then again, from 2014 to 2020 until I moved permanently to Kerala and he had moved to Bangalore, this practice went on.

When Rajendra Chenni in his introduction mentions that the specially chosen poems presented in translation in this volume are from 700 pages of poetry in his recently collected Kannada poems, one can surmise the immensity of the body of his poetic work in Kannada. His English poems are over and above this.

I must record here my deep appreciation for the excellent selection, editing and translation executed by Kamalakar Bhat and the preeminent academic and translator Manu V Devadevan.

Bhat deserves special praise for the perceptive questions he posed to the poet in an interview carried out on an earlier occasion which is reproduced in the book, with narrations in italics, by way of linking the themes and also providing context and enhancing or supplementing the reaches of the dialogues.

In the Acknowledgements he explains his emotional and intellectual connections and affinities with the poet, beginning from his college days. In his subsequent piece titled “Editor's Words: The Cosmopoetics of Shivaprakash”, Bhat rightly states that, “HS Shivaprakash’s stature as a poet of universal relevance is unquestionably marked by the sheer diversity of subjects, genres and prosody that populate his poetic landscape. His poems serve as veritable vessels, embarking upon journeys through time and space and navigating across a tapestry of cultures and climates.” These two sentences sum up Shivaprakash’s poetic world.

The “Introduction” by Rajendra Chenni is in two parts and it touches upon Shivaprakash’s poetic and dramatic oeuvre and how he evolved a third way other than and away from the lingering remnants of the Navya and Navodaya traditions in Kannada poetry, and steered clear of the lure of the direct action of the Bandaya movement. He traces all the major Kannada traditions Shivaprakash drew his strengths from, like the Vachanakaras beginning from the 12th century, and the various traditions from the rest of India and the world, picking out the major themes and metaphors he dwelt on.

Chenni makes a very interesting observation about the peculiarity of Shivaprakash’s poetry. “Shivaprakash’s restless search leads him to ancient, buried cities, forgotten civilisations, and the mysterious remnants of rituals of the long-disappeared tribes. Interestingly, Shivaprakash is among the few poets in Kannada who are poets of the cities. There are no villages in his poetic cosmos, whereas the village is an obsessive image even in modern poems in Kannada. The cities, both ancient and modern, are a testimony to the failure of human civilisations.”

Chenni also makes a special mention of the magical love poems that Shivaprakash has created.

Shivaprakash’s poetry in a global context

He has also noted the poet’s rejection of the idea of overarching globalisation and the proliferation of a market economy. His coinage, “golikarana” for globalisation has gained currency in Kannada, Chenni observes

The “Foreword” by Dominican-American Professor Rei Berroa of George Mason University, places Shivaprakash’s poetry in an international context. The “Foreword” ends with this memorable paragraph: “In the Light of Shiva (Pay attention here, dear reader, to the double entendre of the name ‘Shiva’ and the noun ‘light’ for both carry much more than what they mean) is an anthology of selected poems by HS Shivaprakash that was written to lift your day by day, above the farcical worlds we live in: politics, lies, dishonesty, and religious fanaticism. This is a book for the ages. It will assist you when you need to climb the mountains of your dreams and desires and will open your heart and mind to understand the world around you but, more importantly, the world within you.”

There is an “Afterword” by the leading critic and academic Prof Siraj Ahmed which takes an incisive look at Shivaprakash's poetry and makes some striking observations.

Most of the poems are selected from his following collections in his own translation: In Other Words, Like Mist, Through Valleys, Like Earth to Stars and What Seas? What Shores? And also translations of unpublished poems such as “Who had Drawn Those Faces?”, “Cities I have Seen with Unending Roads,” “An Old City Poem,” “Cuba Poems,” “Poesie Italiane,” “Open the Door,” “O Jnandev,” and “Peacock in the City.” Nineteen poems are translated by Manu V Devadevan and Kamalakar Bhat.

This volume brings out the brilliant poet that Shivaprakash is, through poems selected from his oeuvre spanning half a century from the mid-1970s.

To conclude these words of mine, let me read out to you the ghazal that Shivaprakash wrote titled:

The poet is a stubborn pilgrim ill-fated
Whose ambitious journeys are always defeated

Whatever be his destination, he cannot reach there
To reach somewhere else he is fated.

Though he invoked gods, saints and angels
But only in direst hells he is appreciated

Yeats wanted to grasp his passion, Maud Gonne,
Cold statues were to him allotted

The poem is a river never reaching ocean
To be a stream or river always it was created

The poet is the brother of all revolutions
Whose burning hopes are pick-pocketed

Lovers who vowed to be always together
Are mysteriously ever parted.

The poet challenged destiny: “I will get you.”
A true yogi of unsuccess, he was routed

To wait forever Shiva Prakash’s heart was fated
Now that he is statue, he feels sated.

— “In Lieu of a Poet’s Preface: The Poet’s Self-Introduction”

In The Light of Shiva: Selected Poems, HS Shivaprakash, translated by Kamalakar Bhat, Manu V Devadevan and the poet, edited by Kamlakar Bhat, Red River.