A platform for poetry: The PEN All-India Centre and a Bombay poetry scene

Abstract

This article introduces a brief history of the PEN All-India Centre in Bombay, before examining the role it has played in supporting Indian poets working in English. This organization has long constituted a vital meeting place for established and emerging poets, and must be recognized as an integral location in the history of Indian poetry in English. From the late 1960s in particular, poetry began to feature more prominently in the Centre’s calendar of events and its magazine The Indian PEN – reflecting wider literary and cultural shifts taking place across the city, as well as the role of individuals in shaping the organization. This analysis of the PEN All-India Centre offers a new and historical perspective, not only of a single institution, but also of Bombay’s literary culture, which has been so often occluded by accounts of the city as what Rashmi Varma has called a “cacophonic, polyvocal space of difference”.

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