Novelists and playwrights occupy more media byte then poets. Novels and plays sell; poetry does not. This is a universal trend and India is no exception. Indian poets are aware of this and refuse to be affected by the negligence of both the media and the market. Most write for a select audience, often people who speak their languages.
Indian poets who write in English have fewer readers and. What’s more, the number of readers in the last two or three decades is dwindling. Most English dailies save for a few published in eastern or southern India, do not publish English publish English poetry. We do not also have periodicals such as The Illustrated Weekly any more that used to offer readers a section of poetry.
In spite of all these odds, English poetry in India has not only flourished but has also created a niche for itself in the global literacy scene. This has been possible due to a handful of poets who wrote in English. The names that usually come to mind are Sarojini Naidu, Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes, A.K Ramanujan, Kamala Das, Jayanta Mahapatra and Kekki Daruwalla. Except for Sarojini Naidu, all of them wrote in the post- independence period. In different ways, each one has imbibed a modern spirit and tension of an ongoing conflict between tradition and modernity (consider Ezekiel’s The Night Of The Scorpion as an example) is reflected in their poetry. What is great about these poets is that they resisted the temptation to craft poems but delved deep within themselves and their surroundings to write on. They wrote in English but with an Indian ethos; they used a canvas they called their own. The genre that emerged had a few distinctive ingredients- pathos, love, spirituality, skepticism, human struggles and hope.