Akhil Katyal’s Poetry

I got hold of The Penguin Book of Indian Poets put together by Jeet Thayyil and it has opened up a world of poets to me—some familiar, but most unfamiliar. In the spirit of sharing all the interesting stuff I come across, consider this a forewarning: more posts on poetry are coming your way from now on.

Akhil Katyal, who is not just a poet but also a translator, queer activist and academician had a few of his poems featured in the volume This one on the landscape of Delhi blew me away:

He was as arrogant as a
Chattarpur farmhouse but
in the end, I figured he was
just cluttered, like Adhchini.
Which I liked. Our beginnings
were rocky, we held hands,
infrequently, and uneasily,
like Def Col and Kotla,
but then, in some years,
often and more breezily,
like Jangpura & Jangpura
Extension. All those years,
of romance and apprehension,
he’d held me in his Najafgarh
arms and kissed me like
Shalimar Bagh. Not that we
didn’t fight like Rajouri,
crossing each other’s Civil
Lines, not that he wasn’t at
times distant like Greater
Noida, or quiet like Asola,
but always, when the worst
had passed, we returned at
last, to where we’d been, some
where near Dilshad Garden,
by the blessings of Nizamuddin.

His poetry on queer themes was also featured by Scroll and can be accessed here. This one stood out too:

i want to 377 you so bad
till even the sheets hurt i want to
ache your knees singe your skin
line you brown breathe you in i want to
mouth you in words neck you in red
i want to beg your body insane into sepals
i want to 377 you like a star falling off the brown
i want to feel you till my nails turn water
i want to suck you seven different skies
i want to be a squatter in your head when
it sleeps when it’s dark i want to break laws
with you in bed and in streets and in parks

Katyal was also featured in the Delhiwallah’s blog almost a decade back.

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