Ankur Betageri

Ankur Betageri (born 18 November 1983 in Bangalore, Karnataka) is an Indian poet, fiction writer and photographer and arts activist. He currently teaches English at Bharati College, University of Delhi. In 2012, he was named as one of the ten best writers in the country by the English daily Indian Express.^[1] He holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology from Christ University, Bangalore.^[2] Betageri is also known for founding the public arts and activist platform, Hulchul, whose artistic interventions in reclaiming Public Spaces like public washrooms and roadside walls, and the use of art to transform the everyday urban life have been widely appreciated.^[3] As a poet he has represented India at The III International Delphic Games (2009) at Jeju, South Korea,^[4] and Lit Up Writers Festival (2010) at Singapore.^[5][6]

Poetry and fiction

Ankur Betageri is generally seen as one of the more innovative and versatile poets writing in English and Kannada. His poetry collections in Kannada Hidida Usiru (2004) and Idara Hesaru (2006) are acclaimed for their hallucinatory imagery and enigmatic quality. Haladi Pustaka, the collection of haiku by ten Japanese haiku masters compiled and translated by him is seen as an attempt at reviving the genre of haiku to convey the turmoil and angst of contemporary times.

Betageri's poetry collection The Bliss and Madness of Being Human (2013) has been praised for evoking "strange resonances." H.S. Shiva Prakash in his Preface to the book writes, "Ankur’s poetry is important because it opens up worlds of wonders within this world divested of wonders... reassuring us, the readers, that the poetry of the earth is not yet dead."^[7] The poet K.Satchidanandan observes, "Ankur’s range is wide, sweep all-embracing and his treatment of his encounter with himself, profoundly lyrical." The reviewers have noted an "astonishing linguistic and emotional precision"^[8] and hailed it as a "brave collection; it defies your expectation at every stage."^[9][10]

Speaking to The Indian Express in 2012 the renowned thinker and novelist U.R. Ananthamurthy said of him: "Betageri writes his poetry and short fiction in Kannada as well as English, influenced both by the local and the global. Much of our Indian English writing is highly westernized but his is different. He writes in two voices both very significant... He reminds me of the great A.K. Ramanujan who wrote in both tongues with perfect ease."^[11]

Basant Badal Deta Hai Muhavre (2011) is the Hindi translation of his selected English poems by the Hindi poet Rahul Rajesh. His poems have also been translated into Bengali and Korean.

Betageri’s short fiction collection Bhog and Other Stories (2010) has been praised for introducing characters who “have been largely invisible in Indian fiction in English.” ^[12] In a review the Nigerian poet Tade Ipadeola writes, “Betageri’s greatest achievement in this collection may very well be his unveiling of the world within India as well as the India to be found in the rest of the world.” ^[13] While some stories depict “a world in which all values are suspect and all attempts to achieve identity are subject to frustration” ^[14] others “take strange, allegorical forms”^[15][16][17] Reviewing the book the poet Anamika observes, "Defamiliarization of everyday reality by breaking it into micro-moments of non-happenings seems to be his patent technique especially in stories where he delicately handles post-modern techniques of deconstructing diary-entries (…Aftermath of a Broken Love Affair), confessions and mood-swings (Malavika), dialogues and reflections (A Conversation: Story Written in the Manner of a Movie Script)."^[18] Betageri's stories have been translated into Hindi and Italian.^[19][20]

Betageri is also a well-known translator^[21] He has translated Indian writers like P.Lankesh into English,^[22][23][24] and the works of writers like Poe, Whitman, Pessoa, Sorescu, Rimbaud, Neruda and Pasolini into Kannada.

Art and photography

Ankur Betageri has exhibited his photographs at various places including ICCR, Delhi (2012),^[25][26] St. Stephens College (2012) and Delhi University (2011). His photographic work is unique in the way it often juxtaposes text and image creating the experience of what he calls "existential pause" and "bare silence". Betageri's radical artistic practices involve interventions in advertising billboards^[27] and the use of stencils, reproductions of paintings and photographic images in unconventional places like public toilets, public walls, parks and marketplaces.^[28][29]

Betageri is the founder of the public arts platform Hulchul, known for its novel public art practices like public art exhibits, washroom art projects, poetry reading in public places and creating social sculptures with trees in the city of Delhi. Hulchul’s washroom art project has been recognized as a first and listed in the Limca Book of Records.^[30]

Bibliography

Kannada

• Hidida Usiru (Abhinava Prakashana, 2004)
• Idara Hesaru (Abhinava Prakashana, 2006)
• Haladi Pustaka (Kanva Prakashana, 2009)
• Malavika mattu Itara Kathegalu (Sahitya Bhandara, 2011)

English

• Bhog and Other Stories (Pilli Books, 2010)
• The Bliss and Madness of Being Human (Poetrywala, 2013)

Translation into other languages

• Basant Badal Deta Hai Muhavre (Hindi, Yash Prakashan, 2011)

References

External links

• Essays and poems - New English Review
• Poems - Softblow
• Poems - Maple Tree Literary Supplement
• Poems - Mascara Literary Review
• My Life too Pro-per: a play
• Art - Saatchi