Saturday, August 24, 2013

Bhuwan Thapaliya


From Kathmandu, Nepal, Bhuwan Thapaliya is a world acclaimed poet. He summons thoughts and words from deep caverns, gently carving them into verses of emotion and reflection. He is the author of four poetry collections, including the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected; and Our Nepal, Our Pride - Narrative verses of love, peace, and human understanding.


Poetry by Bhuwan has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry, and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, Strong Verse, poetseers.orgtheasiamag.comasianamericanpoetry.com, and more.

Bhuwan has read his poetry and attended seminars in venues around the world, including South Korea, the United States, Thailand, Cambodia, and Nepal.

Recently, I ordered several signed copies of Bhuwan’s poetry collection Verses from the Himalayas; one for myself and several for a poetry group. The books are in the mail as of this writing. If you’d like to receive a signed copy of Bhuwan’s poetry, send him a message.
  
I’m sick of not seeing you
by Bhuwan Thapaliya

He poured himself
a glass of his thoughts

two years after she won
a scholarship to heaven

to pursue her PhD
in life after death

and sat down beside
her antique gramophone

with his senses
straining in the dark.

“I’m sick
of not seeing you,

I’m seeing only
the back of an African Wild Elephant
and the wide open jaws of the vultures.

Helpless days of confinement,
a stultifying inertia
and no knowledge of what comes next.

Where are your
eyes in the sky, Grandma?” he sighed.

Where are the bald eagles?
Where are the rhododendrons?
Where? Where? Where?

He stammered and cried.


Do you remember your first poem? What was it about?  

The first poem I wrote was Darkness above light in the year 2002.  I was 24-25 years old then. It was a metaphysical poem. It was about the deteriorating condition of the humanity.  It was my passionate protest in the face of fast changing world. I am still protesting, though studies show that we, as a race, have become less violent over the centuries though citizens of developed countries tend to hold a belief to the contrary due to increased media coverage and exposure of violence. Needless to say, we're doing something right, but what is it? Cultural or emotional evolution? Increased life span, leading to an increased value of life?  However, on contemplation I think humanity will prevail one way or the other and you can’t have animosity with the humanity forever.

Name a few favorite poets and poems… 

I adore poems of John Donne, John Milton, Robert Frost, Mahmud Darwish, Pablo Neruda, Laxmi Prasad Devkota and Yuyutsu RD Sharma.

Mules by Yuyutsu RD Sharma; If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda; Crazy by Laxmi Prasad Devkota; and To a Young Poet by Mahmud Darwish, are some of my favorite poems.

Do you write poetry for yourself, or for others, or for both?

We don’t “decide” to be a poet; we just “become” one. And isn't writing poetry a continuous course of experimenting and evolving, of absolving our heart of certain issues about which we feel very sturdily? I write poetry not just for the sake of writing but rather to understand the basic questions that all human beings ask in their struggle for the existence: What is humanity? What is peace? Why so much corruption, poverty and suffering in many parts of the world? Where is democracy? What is love? What is the ultimate destination of the human life? These questions soon alter themselves into my poems.  My poems are an examination of the world around me, and my poems evoke characters, events, and landscape with rich use of visual details.

Sometimes I write for myself but most of the time I write for others and anyone who reads my work may notice that there is an urge toward social progress, toward peace and solidarity, toward global love and understanding.  I am an advocate for the globalization of love and thorough my poems I am advocating love, peace and universal solidarity.



Is it important to you if your poems get published or not?

I had a dream in which a voice told me, ‘What we have is less important. What we owe to each other matters most.’ I didn't argue with the voice – and I was emancipated. Today after all these years I am realizing that as a poet we owe a lot to society and the society owes us a lot too, and our correlation can never be redeemed.  Publication isn’t the most important thing but as a poet, I would love to see my poems published because poets aren’t poets for nothing and poems aren’t just poems. After all, no poet would make a river flow without the river being there in his mind for nothing.

Do you think poetry is important in the global scale of things?

God gave us a mind but not thought. Life is our opportunity to cultivate thoughts. Yet in the field of thought, mind is only the ploughman; the seed is the heart. And what sprouts straight from the heart is poetry. Yes, poetry is very important in the contemporary world because I think poetry is the medium of the emotional cooperation from one heart to another, from one soul to another, from one truth to another, from one dream to another, from one race to another, from one religion to another, from one generation to another, from one language to another and from one nation to another.



Do you write a specific genre of poetry, or do you delve into all genres?

It is a wise poet who understands the delicate balance between realism and dreams and it is this that makes a poem sing. Considering so, I delve into all genre of poetry.

What is your favorite type of poem?  

Anybody can write a poem but only a few poets can make it speak, and it is in the shelter of this hope I live. I don’t belong to the brood of poets who write regularly while sitting in a drawing room in a specific form. I write in different places and locations. I believe in reaching out for something larger rather than waiting for it to come to me, and considering so I get off my comfy couch, get out of my room, and go out into the real world. I love my freedom and I adore free verse because I don’t want to be caged by the constraints of meters and pentameters and all. When I am writing a poem I forget the meter, forget the metaphors, forget the rhymes, and forget style and all. I think poetry is not about meter and rhymes only, it is more about people and their life, and it is more about their tears and smiles.

What are you currently writing?  

I am currently working on my debut Novel, Nepal Dreams, based on the positive power of thought and its practical implementation in the contemporary world. The book will hit the market in December, 2013. In the book, I aim to strengthen some of the economic responsibilities of the individual as an important service to mankind in a nation trodden by massive unemployment and psychological poverty.

Bhuwan (center) on holiday in the USA has dedicated
his new release Tranquility of Life to his friends Rajesh (left) and Ashim (right).

I am also working on my new poetry collection, Tranquility of Life.
This book is scheduled to be released somewhere around November, 2013. The kindle edition will be released in the month of October. In this book I am seeing the world through the eyes of my best friends Ashim Pokharel and Rajesh Sharma. This book is intended as recognition of the gifts of friendship and the vitality friends impart to in our life. It’s a tribute book to our friendship and this amazing thing called life.

What does poetry mean to you?

Poetry isn't a ladder to my success. To me, it’s a holy bridge. And that sums up everything.


Follow Bhuwan…
Book: Our Nepal, Our Pride

Book: Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected



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