Chandramohan S is an Indian English Dalit poet based in Trivandrum, Kerala. His poems were shortlisted for Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2016. His second collection of poems titled “Letters to Namdeo Dhasal” was a runner up at M.HARISH GOVIND memorial prize instituted by POETRY CHAIN. He was instrumental in organizing literary meets of English poets of Kerala for the Ayyappa Panicker Foundation in addition to being a fellow at the International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa.
(Inspired by a famous poem on black lynching)
Jim Crow segregated hostel rooms
Ceiling fans bear a strange fruit,
Blood on books and blood on papers,
A black body swinging in mute silence,
Strange fruit hanging from tridents.
This poem draws is inspiration from the poem STRANGE FRUIT(1937) by ABEL MEEROPOL and is on suicides of Dalit-Bahujan students in institutions of higher education in India. Rohith Vemula is one of the victims (Jan 17, 2016)
Namdeo Dhasal’s
Letter to a Young Poet
In your poems
Do not set your rhyme and meter
To the drum beats of populism.
You may build mansions in their shade
Where synthetic grass is cut to level
And flowers bloom in time for the next election season
With petals the teal of the incumbent flags.
Before your mansions crumble,
I want to send you
To the smithy of the blacksmith.
[Post Script: Do not charge fees to read poems on hunger.]
The Immigrant Word
The immigrant experience for
A word in a poem
Is like being subjected to numerous enunciations
At poetry slams
To rhyme with rest of the poem.
The immigrant experience for
A word in a poem
Is to sound like “Prufrock”,
To be conspicuous
Like fly in the buttermilk.
The immigrant experience for
A word in a poem
Is to be accompanied with a footnote
Like the entire poem has a GPS tag
On one of its ankles.
The immigrant experience for
A word in a poem
Is to be a paper boat on the
High tide of strife—
Washed ashore like the corpse of a toddler.
The immigrant experience for
A word in a poem
Is solitary confinement
In the prison of syntax.
The immigrant experience for
A word in a poem
Is an undecipherable tombstone
in the war memorial.
Plus-sized poem
This poem refuses to be
The world’s wife.
This poem is not pimple-free,
Is printed on rough paper.
This poem has cellulite in its rear end,
Its rump outsizes itself off the market.
This poem walks the ramp with a self-edited gait
Without introduction or foreword from veterans.
This poem does not opt for offshore liposuction
To make oneself eligible for international prizes.
This poem eludes the trap
In the hourglass of time.
License To Kill
Not a morsel of food down her throat
An act of protest against licenses to kill
Her periodic crimson stopped
To stop the crimson rivers flowing down the streets
Of her seven sisters.
CHANDRAMOHAN S