Publishing poetry is a movement. We want the poetry circle to grow. Today, poetry has a strong presence in India because poetry collections...
Publishing poetry is a movement. We want the poetry circle to grow. Today, poetry has a strong presence in India because poetry collections are coming out in larger numbers than ever before. As a result, good poets from across the country are writing more.
Earlier, if readers wanted to read good poetry they would have to go to bookshops in the metros and major cities and even there, very few stores stocked such books. But with online shopping, poetry is available to everyone, anywhere.
The Covid-19 crisis, however, has turned our world upside down. We didn’t sell a single book for three months. Thankfully, sales have now resumed and people are ordering books again, both from within India and overseas. At Paperwall, our publishing company, my wife Smruti and I do not draw salaries, and all proceeds from the sales of our books are ploughed back into the publishing house in order to fund the next book. Sometimes, money earmarked for household expenses goes towards postage for books and is never earned back.
But that’s getting ahead of the story.
The beginning
I was always fond of poems as a child, perhaps because of my school textbooks or because of the traditional poetry and stories read out to me...
