How the Internet is Transforming the Bombay Poetry Scene

Abstract

This article explores the context of Bombay/Mumbai in an attempt to show how the city’s poetry scene was transformed once it went online. As the postcolonial city of Bombay turned into Mumbai – i.e. a modern-day megacity –, notable literary changes followed, from the dissolution of its traditional poetic scene – as poets dispersed to distant suburbs, neighbouring cities, or even abroad – to the disappearance of an already fragile ecosystem of publishing collectives. Yet as they gradually went online, little magazines also invented, or adapted, practices that would then noticeably alter the nature and future of the poetry collection. Online poetry magazines are intrinsically more diverse owing to their continuous streams of multilingual publications from (and aimed to reach) many different regions. The city’s literary tradition of poetry circles and collaborative writing smoothly moved online, further mixing genres as well as disciplines. One interesting example is Poetrywala, a poetry publishing company based in Mumbai that recently opened an online bookshop for its growing catalogue. All in all, the contemporary Indian poetry scene has immensely benefited from the new proximity the Internet allowed, which remapped the notion of “local” within those of “national” and “global,” subsequently making it possible for new forms of poetry to emerge.

Keywords

• contemporary Indian poetry
• online literary magazines
• print-on-demand publishing
• new digital poetic practices