Madhu Raghavendra has spent the last two months in Stirling as the University’s Charles Wallace Fellow. With a few weeks to go before he leaves, Brig caught up with the poet about his time in Scotland.
A bit about Madhu
Born in Bengal but hailing from “six different Indian cultures”, Madhu now lives in Assam.
In India, he leads cultural initiatives and curates the multidisciplinary Ajanta Ellora Arts Residency. Around the world, he is interested in experiencing and teaching international cultures, and incorporating them into his work.
However, his cultural collaborations don’t end on the page – Madhu is especially interested in cross-disciplinary performances and his poetry has been set to classical music and contemporary dance.
He has authored four poetry books: Make Me Some Love to Eat, Stick No Bills, Being Non-essential, and Going Home.
He said: “I always wonder what poetry is. And if that question is intact, you’re constantly trying to redefine what poetry can do beyond the page.”
“I come from a culture where the fishermen have poetry, the forest dwellers have poetry, and they have nothing to do with universities.”
“So I kind of think that it’s about the simplicity of our everyday life celebrating the joy of “everyday-ness”, and, and I think that poetry was meant for social action. It was meant to be a part of movement.”
The Charles Wallace Fellowship
Since 1994, the University of Stirling and the Charles Wallace India Trust have provided Indian writers with a three-month fellowship in Stirling.
The aim for this is “devoting themselves to their own writing and contributing to the life of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the Centre of Postcolonial Studies.”
Charles Wallace was a British businessman born in Calcutta in 1855. His estate was left to his family and then was divided between the British Treasury and the Treasury of British India.
As a result, “Trusts were established in the UK for each of the four countries of former British India – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Burma/Myanmar”
Image credit:The Charles Wallace Trusts
“It’s like a good old-fashioned fellowship”, Madhu said, “it just buys you in. I have to look it up but somebody said the best thing you can buy an artist is leisure. So it does buy you leisure.”
“I like to see what the history of the fellowship is as well. I can relate to my contemporary poets who are still in India, and I read what they said about being here. They said it’s a very meditative exercise – I couldn’t agree more.”
Gemma Robinson, senior lecturer at the University of Stirling and administrator of the Charles Wallace Fellowship, said: “For me, the work of the Charles Wallace fellows focuses attention on the creative and critical use of language and the unfinished work of decolonising universities.
“The fellows set their own creative projects while they are here, and the effects of their work spin off in amazing and unexpected directions.”
“As you walk around the Pathfoot Building you might notice work from previous fellows inscribed on the windows of the courtyards. We have work by Namita Gokhale, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Simar Preet Kaur, Snehal Vadher, Mihir Vatsa, Scherezade Siobhan, Nikita Parik to name a few.”
Zeitgeist and Stirling’s ‘Blue Boy’
On June 4, 2024, Madhu joined Stirling’s Gavin Wallace Fellow, Rachelle Atalla for their Zeitgeist event. Madhu led with a performance at Iain McColl’s ‘Blue Boy’ (the Pursuit of Knowledge Memorial).
He made a design with ice that was inspired by the Indian practice of rangoli, “which is usually a nature-inspired design on the floor made at the threshold of a house, temple, or a place of worship as an auspicious sign of welcome and good omen.”
Madhu said: “It stems from my core memory of my amma making rangoli at the threshold of our home every day, first thing in the morning. At a personal level, for me, it signifies the starting of the day with art.”
He was inspired to use ice, not only because it is environmentally friendly, but “in response to the ‘crystal of knowledge’ that the blue boy looks into intently.
“Ice also signifies the transient cycle of life and art, which make everything beautiful. It is dedicated to the millions of women in India who begin their day by making a rangoli outside their homes as an auspicious sign of welcome and good omen.”
Robinson said that “Madhu’s work in Zeitgeist is a great example the complex web of connections that creative writers can provoke us to see.
“When he performed it in front of Stirling’s Blue Boy statue – with words from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and the everyday action of creating rangoli – the space was challenged and transformed.”
Madhu’s Time in Scotland
“I’ve used my time to understand the kind of culture that Scotland brings”, Madhu told me, “I love it and I think there’s more warmth to it in the sense of how we connect to Indian cultures.
“I could just walk up Wallace monument, and on some days I would have chat with some random people and that would be fine […] I feel that is something that connects me to the local culture.”
As well as performing at the Stirling campus, Madhu performed at an open-mic night at the Book Nook, organised by Stirling’s Makar Laura Fyfe. He also performed his work at The Canons’ Gait in Edinburgh.
He was inspired to write poems for two Scottish artists: sculptor Kenny Hunter and Scottish smallpipe musician Brìghde Chaimbeul.
When Madhu shared Foraging with the Edinburgh-based sculptor and lecturer at the Edinburgh College of Art, he “had very kind words to say about the poem,” which opens with:
The magma migrates, forms
childhood memories to fossil bends,
where does an art work begin or end?
Reflections on Jute
Madhu also visited the Verdant Works in Dundee: “They charged me £10 to visit the Dundee Jute museum and I ended up writing a poem about it because I found it interesting.”
“I saw that Jute was produced in Bengal and talked about the struggles of the working class in Dundee and Glasgow.”
In the 1800s Jute production dominated industry in Dundee, which was known as ‘Juteopolis’ around the world.
The Courier reported that at the peak of the trade, “around 40,000 families were dependent on the jute industry for their livelihoods.”
However, the industry declined into the 1900s and mill closures resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs.
Image Credit: The Courier
“But what happened actually to the people who are making it?” Madhu reflects, “that is a huge question, because the museum is not addressing that.”
“It addresses the struggle in the limited way a museum can, I’m not complaining about that, but when you have 73 years of independence at what point are you going to look at the holistic picture?”
“At that time, jute made more money than rice so people stopped growing rice. But then the war broke out and lots of business was being carried out in debt – ‘I’ll give you money if you give me rice’ – but the money was not there.”
Academic Anil Rai argued that the replacement of rice cultivation with jute cultivation “made the dependence of jute peasants on the village moneylender unavoidable for their food supply”.
Madhu was inspired to write a poem about the Verdant Works: “The poem talks about how jute actually supported making sandbags and things like that during the war. All the trenches were lined with sandbags.
“I mean, you had military armour to be camouflaged and the ropes being made for the anchor for the Empire.”
The final stanza of Tickets reads:
"A white shadow of the famine lingers
in debt the machinery of dark dreams
still takes from an Indian poet 10£ to see
the Verdant jute factory museum in Dundee."
“Art is non-essential/Until it is not”
At the start of our conversation, Madhu showed me a clip of a choir in The Hague singing his poem Artist just a week before. “like ‘okay, this is beyond me now,” he said, “They’re not singing the poem for Madhu, but they are the words I put together.”
The Artist was Madhu’s response to the British Government’s appeal for those in the arts to “retrain” during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is featured in Being Non-Essential, whose epigram is “for artists, the non-essential workers”.
Reflecting that “it’s like you’re dead while you’re alive,” Madhu is inspired by interpretations of his work: “That is what inspires me to speak to more young artists and show them that you never know what is going to come out of your work.
“But that’s not why you do it. You just keep doing it, one after the other, not expecting and suddenly, maybe someday somebody will use it.”
Artist will be installed soon in the Crush Hall on campus. Here is an excerpt below:
I don't mind
being the non-essential
knowing you will come looking
when things are broken
and nothing else works.
Art is non-essential
until it is not.
What is next for Madhu Raghavendra?
After his time in Stirling, Madhu will be heading back to India. “I look forward to being back in India and getting back into my schedule”, he tells me.
I asked him if he usually goes back home for a while after being abroad. “Absolutely”, he replied, “it is like a messy home table of ‘here is what I learned in this place and that place’ and it’s about taking back learnings.”
“Going back to India is really about getting back to work. “The work I do back in India is prominently cultural. I am currently working in indigenous health and education.
“Gemma and I were having a conversation about how disconnected and non-inclusive curriculums are in India because it is very ethno-centric, even there.”
Something in particular that he loved about Scottish culture is that we have Makars – “I’d like to take that idea back to India.”
After a “very meditative time in Stirling” Madhu leaves on July 15. He told me that he is interested in returning to Scotland in the future. He spent some time in St Andrews and can see that as his next Scottish destination.
You can explore some of his work and find out what Madhu does next on Instagram @poetmadhu.
Featured image credit: Madhu Raghavendra
Fourth-year English and Journalism student.
News Editor 2024/25.
Get in touch at news@brignews.com.
