Identity, Estrangement and the Quest for Belonging in the Poems of Chandrika Narayan- Mohan

Dr. Mahi S Thavarathu, Speaker

Assist Prof., VIT-AP University, Andhra Pradesh.

Dr. Mahi S Thavarathu has recently completed her PhD from Centre for English Studies, JNU. Her PhD thesis on the Asian and African Immigrant Literature in Contemporary Ireland was funded by the ICSSR Full Time Doctoral Fellowship. She is working as an Assistant Professor at VIT-AP University, Andhra Pradesh.

Dr. Mousumi G Banerjee, Moderator

Associate Professor, EFL University, Shillong, India

Dr. Mousumi G Banerjee is Associate Professor & Head, Department of English Literature, The EFL University, Regional Campus, Shillong, Meghalaya, India. Her research interests include literary theories, postmodern criticisms, Western philosophy, text, language, and hermeneutics, poetic language, women’s writing and writings about women and film criticism.

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Abstract:

“I made Ireland permanent on paper, because I couldn’t make her permanent in my passport”. Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan

This lecture aims to elucidate the poetry and representational politics of Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan, an Indian-Irish poet and a performer, who identifies herself among the “Queer artists of colour of Ireland”. It is interesting to note that despite being ‘categorised’ as a ‘Queer artist’, her works seldom display her homosexual identity. On the other hand, her poetry engages in a deep conversation with her cultural anxiety, her displacement and her identity crisis as a South-Asian immigrant in Ireland. In her own words, she was fortunate enough “to have grown up without anxiety about my sexuality”, and as the granddaughter of late K. R Narayanan, the former President of India, Chandrika had a privileged and progressive upbringing in India. My talk will analyse her select poems such as Brexit Blues, Plane/Train, You City, You Boyfriend and would decipher the poet’s idea of home, her discourses on the sense of belonging and displacement, the spirit of cosmopolitanism embedded in her poetics etc. It is immensely engaging to note the poet’s sensuous blending of the imageries of loss and longing to epitomise her sense of displacement from the Irish society.