GUWAHATI, April 24 ? Poetry is the voice of humanity. Since time immemorial poetry has been reverberating with its sound in the deep recesses of mortal humans. Wherever there is man there is poetry. Whenever one tries to listen, each person can hear in the quietness of his own mind the flowing cadence of dawn and dusk, of truth and beauty. Noted poet Padmashree Nilamani Phookan said this after he was conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship ? the highest honour of the Akademi ? here this evening.
Conferring the Fellowship on the poet, Sahitya Akademi president Ramakanta Rath said Sri Phookan was instrumental in giving Assamese poetry a distinctly modern form and voice together with two other poets ? Navakanta Baruah and Ajit Baruah. Although the poet deals with a wide range of themes, he succeeds in integrating the self with the power and events of nature and thereby attentuate the former?s loneliness, Rath said. The Fellowship is a recognition of the exceptionally valuable contribution made by Sri Phookan to Indian literature, he added.
Accepting the Fellowship, Sri Phookan said since his childhood days spent in some unknown village, he struck a perceptive relationship with nature, life and reality, and slowly it blossomed into an awakening of life, thought and sorrow. ?Even after 50 long years in the city, it is the village itself that is my memory, dream, grief, happiness and countless other things ? melody, smell colour and glimpses of day and night. All this has constantly stirred my mind, heart and imagination,? he said.
Emphasising that the languages and literatures of the Indian writers draw their nectar of life from the village, Sri Phookan said if the village disappears from creative imagination, the beautiful and glorious rainbow of Indian art and culture would also fade away. Others who spoke in the function included Navakanta Baruah, Harekrishna Deka, Gopi Chand Narang, vice president of the Akademi, K Satchindanandan, secretary of the Akademi and Ramkumar Mukhopadhyaya, regional secretary of the Akademi.