We begin the week here on My Poetic
Side with a look at the personal diaries of a poet that are to be published
shortly. We also have an article about a Broadway play based on the life of
Maya Angelou that is currently in the planning stage.
Personal Diaries of A.K. Ramanujan
Published
The personal diaries and journals of
the late poet A.K. Ramanujan, which have never been published before, are to be
made into a book. They will be edited by the poet’s son, Krishna Ramanujan, and
are due to be published next week under the title “Journeys: A Poet’s
Diary”. The poet wrote in both English and Kannada.
The book will include accounts of the
poet’s travels, his insights on writing and also many of his earlier drafts of
his poems as well as some improvised ones as well.
The introduction to the book has been
written by Guillermo Rodriguez who is an active promoter of cultural relations
of an Indo-Spanish nature. He writes that this is the first time such a book,
containing unpublished diaries and journals of the poet’s journey, has been
brought together. It shows how he matured on his intellectual journey.
The journey
begins in the 1940s when the poet was taking his first tentative steps with
poetry, takes him to his years in India as a professor of English Literature in
the 1950’s and to America as a Fulbright scholar in 1959. It then follows his
successful career in the 1960s when he published his first book of poetry.
The journey
follows the poet all the way to the 1980s and into the 1990s which was a dark
period in his poetry when he was struggling with personal issues. His despair
can often be seen in the entries and the poetry he wrote at this point.
Ramanujan died in 1993.
The Legacy of Maya Angelou Coming to Broadway
The life and writings of the late Maya Angelou are to be made
into a stage performance for Broadway thanks to the support of Guy Johnson, her
son.
Maya Angelou had a wide and varied career that spanned a staggering six decades,
she was awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal
of Arts – she was indeed a force of nature, and now this incredible existence
is to be given the chance to shine on the stage.
Phenomenal Woman: An Evening with Maya Angelou will be a one-woman play
that will not only include much of the work for which she is so well known but
also some of her “private musings” and even the promise of a revelation for the
audience.
Her son is pleased to have been asked to work on the project and is
hoping to show not only the side of his mother that is well know to the
audience but also let them get a glimpse of the woman she was to him.
This week would have marked the poets 91st birthday. She died
in 2014 aged 86.
It is expected that the play will be ready to premiere on Broadway at
some point during 2021.
