Daljit Nagra: Poetry

Daljit Nagra is British poet, teacher and broadcaster. Explore interesting quotes on poetry.

Daljit Nagra: 14 quotes0 likes

“Poetry was a meeting of mind and heart, I felt at one with poetry itself. I like the concentrated language, the play with form, and the way you can muck around with words in a way that you can’t in a novel. Poetry allows you to be intense, because to some degree people expect it.”

Daljit Nagra

On how he views poetry in “Daljit Nagra” https://www.aestheticamagazine.com/daljit-nagra/ in Aesthetica

“I chose to rewrite it in poetry because the original Ramayana was in poetry- the fact is, it’s sort of been corrupted into prose. In its original form it was an epic poem rather like the Iliad or works of that sort. Rather than traditional poetry, it was a verse novel, without a traditional structure. What I most wanted to do was to preserve the essential musicality of the lines. Especially as the Ramayana like so many stories, was based on a fundamentally oral tradition.”

Daljit Nagra

On reworking the Ramayana in “An Interview With Daljit Nagra” https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/literature/an-interview-with-daljit-nagra/ in The Bubble (2014 Sept 17)

“Poetry…is an espresso shot of thought and public poetry is as necessary as it ever was.”

Daljit Nagra

On how he views the art of poetry in “Daljit Nagra: ‘Poetry is an espresso shot of thought’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/14/daljit-nagra-poetry-espresso-shot-of-thought-interview in The Guardian (2017 Jul 14)