Quest for identity in Kamala Das Poetry Kanchan

Abstract

Abstract

Women all over the world have been treated as the ‘other’ by the Patriarchal social order. The paper focuses on personal writing of Kamala Dass and hears her voice from within. It can be done through a selected poems authored by poetess herself. Kamala Das is one of the most significant voices of Indian English poetry. As a women poet her confessional self deals with her personal emotional experiences which are generally taboo. The poetess does not expect any redemption or retribution as there is no remorse. It is just, that she bare her soul to get a psychic relief. What a confessional poet gives us is the psychological equivalent for his or her mental state, and it is such ‘psychological equivalents’ that we always get in the poetry of Kamala Das , and in this respect she is to be compared to such confessional poets as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Roetke, Berry-man , Judith Wright and others. She won a number of awards like Asian Poetry Prize.1998, Sahitya Academy Award 2003, Vayalar Award 2001, Kerala Sahitya Academy etc etc. Her own predicament and her own suffering become symbolic of human predicament and human suffering. In a male dominated world, she tried to assert her individuality, to maintain her feminine identity, and from this revolt arose all her troubles, psychological traumas and frustrations. It is a kind of psychological striptease that she enacts in her poetry. Several questions need to be asked while reading her confessional mode. For example, what are the contexts in which women write their personal experiences? How are their writings different from men’s point of view? How do they negotiate their self