These days we often hear there is no market for poetry. Why people don’t want to read poetry? In this modern era of uncertainty, the shape, size and sweetness of the traditional poetry have been lost. Now, it is an amalgamation of some freakish phrases, totally irrelevant imagery and thoughts, and odd Googled words to make it distinctive.
It is an indication of our present state of mind, a result of modern life devoid of emotional depth and lack of insight into the loveliness of the human mind and nature and its impact on us. In the words of Wordsworth, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions recollected in tranquillity.” The order of poetical forms and traditions demands tranquillity.
The readers want to find some solace in poetry not to tangle their mind in solving the irrelevant word puzzle. The success of the poetry books by Sandeep Kumar Mishra, Rupi Kaur, RH Sin and PA Jeanty and many more show this. They have been the best sellers, even some are self-published. That means readers are not getting what they want. Now the poetry genre has become one of the fastest-growing categories in book publishing.
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Recently poetry was down in the back of the store next to the bathrooms but now it’s out front. The classics and other contemporary poets are selling. Read: Poetry is everywhere. Poetry has always been an art form, but it has rarely been a career even for the most legendary poets. The poets live a double life: making a living and making art. Mishra, A Lovelace, R Kaur, Waheed, Warsan Shire, Y D-Ward are examples of a new style that blends the truth, spontaneity and simplicity.
It wasn’t always like this for Sandeep Mishra. he started his career by teaching English Literature in a school. While teaching every day he was reading great poets and writing his thoughts and feelings in a poetic form. He also did paintings whenever he felt a zeal to come close with nature. His works are an artistic manifestation of his actual self and show the heart for nature and its beautiful creations including human especially woman.
Watercolour landscapes on the paper form the core subject of Sandeep Kumar Mishra’s paintings. With the simplicity of medium, he uses base colours with a classical technique; his paintings are broad vistas of colour and light that interpret the language of nature. The imagery is the quest of the artist for a spiritual place in the unsettling details of modern life. He relies on the logical expression through dreams, memory and self-expression. He shows the need to go back to nature.
In his debut poetry collection “One Heart- Many Breaks”, Sandeep has used his drawings and paintings which he drew in his adolescence. It is a perfect blend of two art forms-poetry and painting.
Why does Sandeep want to share personal things? Most of the poems are a true account of personal emotions and situations he was laid in. The poems cover a 20 years life events and are an expression of clear, true and purged feelings and the stark reality of his situation. Everyone has the hidden emotional side of the personality. They hesitate to share inner thoughts and feelings with others. But not sharing with others make them restless and sad. Thus they find some solace for their tortured soul.
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