Robin S Ngangom
Conversation with Robin Ngangom
In a conversation with the Editorial, Robin Ngangom offers his heartfelt opinion on various issues that matter to human lives today – from the dangers of climate change to the decadence of poetry and poetic audience. The following is a moderated version of the conversation:
Q. There is a strong presence of a poetic persona in your poems, a persona that floats through lyrics, violent happenings, and autobiographical elements. The persona sometimes takes the form of an adult remembering his childhood days and at other times a man that is consciously talking about his homeland from a faraway (at least metaphorically) place. If you had lived in Manipur, would this persona have been different? How would have your musings on violence appeared in that case?
Forgetting
When we became forgetful
We cannot remember what gives us pause
On days which seem to never end.
To forget is to die once more
Through Moses’s Egypt to the Wuhan spectacle.
January
A derelict train of pain and memory offloads us at January.
Something freezes birdsong at dawn and
We see only ashen arms of woodless trees. And
Even if you hum at it, January is not going to leave.