*Revising, Rewriting*

I am figuring out that I am that kind of poet who needs to figure out the political thrust and the sociological implications of the different elements of the craft and the content before moving a project forward. For years, I have been ashamed of this character of mine. As if I am a lesser poet because of it. Now, I don't think as much of the "lesser" part. Instead, what has become important is the element of getting the work done. So, now I have retrieved my Cinderella's step-sister poems again. In the first version, that was published in Pratilipi, I had reclaimed the figure of the step-sister, given her a voice, and I would even say, it was a feminist voice. Now, that I read it, I think, there are some good lines there. Some good images. I like the overall tone, which is a combination of passion, anger and lots of bitterness. And, I was also trying to problematize homogenous, easy notions of sisterhood. The step-sister clearly feels that Cinderella has been complicit with her own silencing. Cinderella, for me, became the symbol of a certain kind of neo-liberal feminism, which is trying to find its liberation within the consumer culture, commodified ethos. (Yes, I do think, Cinderella provides a wonderful conduit to rewrite neoliberalism.)

When I turned in a somewhat rough draft of a manuscript to KRA, I had modified these series of poems a lot. I had included Cinderella's voice within it, I have strengthened the step-sister's voice, and made it more specific. There was an implicit assumption running through the poems in this particular version --- the step-sis is a folklorist herself. She can break her deal with the Grimms Brothers, precisely because she is a folklorist herself, and does not need male folklorists who will tell her story. I have suggested this implicitly, but didn't really expand on it. Now that I am reading through these poems, I think, this figure of the folklorist needs to be developed and spelled out a lot more in these poems. The implicitness was a starting-point, but it won't work, until and unless the poems delve a little bit more into the politics of a woman becoming a folklorist. And how folklore as a discipline brings up all sorts of problems. I am hoping to finish giving the whole series a read within the next two or three days, and then I will have to think about the re-writing part. But at this point, I am excited just to have figured this out.