The Stifling of the Creative Voice

Poetry is a genre which has something to do with the Muse and its inspiration. Poetry is the only discipline which cannot be taught in an academy.

- DR. JERNAIL SINGH ANAND

Unlike a novel, drama can damage your cerebral apparatus in just one hour, and a good poem needs only a few minutes to jeopardize your emotional stability.

Whenever we are lost in the maze of modernity, we turn to the classics for guidance. No doubt, this is the world which has given precedence to prose and fiction over poetry and drama. In the beginning, the Universities would teach only three subjects: Poetry, Philosophy, and Oratory, subjects which encompassed all the segments of human life. But, as civilization progressed, the middle classes came into prominence, and with the invention of the printing press and multiple increase in the reading public in the 19th century, a huge body of readers came into existence. These people were not interested in the lives of Kings and Queens. Common man, and his problems, came to dominate the literary creation when great authors like Charles Dickens became the literary square meal of the reading public.

My focus here is on the idea of Poetry, including dramatic poetry, which has been pushed into the margins. Major awards today are meant only for fiction. Even the Nobel awards novelists and rarely goes for poets. I wonder why Poetry and Drama have been pushed into the periphery and why fiction has usurped the centre stage, so that, today it is ruling the world of creation and celebration.