Through
the Eyes of a Traveller-poet: Goa Yesterday and Today
Dr. Brian Mendonça
Abstract
Travel-writing has usually been
confined to prose. In this inquiry, I place my poems on Goa written during my
sojourn so far as a traveller-poet.
Though identifying with the larger matrix of India, the Goa poems have
nimbly yielded a collection of a book of verse by itself. The last decade from
my debut volume Last Bus to Vasco: Poems from Goa (2006) to my blog
writings today have tried to mediate what it means to be a traveller in Goa. In
this pursuit I have shifted genres from poetry to prose, reviews to
reportage. Always the subject has been
the shifting signifier - Goa. The first
poem, ‘Requiem to a Sal,’ (1987) lamented the hacking down of a tree, a
horrific reality even today, thirty years on. Similarly there are poems which
are descriptions of the places I have spent time in like, ‘Good Friday in
Cuncolim,’(2003) or the march of the tides in ‘May Queen,’(2004). This is a
poetic documentation of a rapidly changing Goa, of a landscape under erasure.
The prose narratives are more based on incidents, like the killing of a man by
villagers in Pernem, or the vast untamed outback one sees when one travels in
Dharbandora taluka for example. Along the journey several social oddities of
each place are noted and merged in the creative work. These minute observations
give a sense of rootedness to the reader with that place. This paper will
explore the terrain of my published writings on Goa and attempt to theorize Goa
through its lens. It will also consider in its purview critical studies on my
work so far.
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Seminar
on ‘Goa Through the Traveller’s Lens,’ Department of English, Goa University, Taleigao, Goa, 30 March 2017
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