Meeting Poets -- Eunice deSouza

Guest poem submitted by Gauri Keshavan:

(Poem #1076) Meeting Poets Meeting poets I am disconcerted sometimes by the colour of their socks the suspicion of a wig the wasp in the voice and an air, sometimes, of dankness. Best to meet in poems: cool speckled shells in which one hears a sad but distant sea. -- Eunice deSouza

The third of "Five London Pieces".

This is my favourite Eunice de Souza poem. She always keeps it simple and
straight, without using too many words. The suggestion is that poetry is
distant from poets as sea shells are from the sea... as if the work of art
creates a distance between itself and the artist...

Gauri.

[Biography]

Eunice de Souza was born in Pune, India in 1940, and educated there. She
received an MA from Marquette University in Wisconsin and a PhD from Bombay
in 1988. She is now a lecturer in English in St Xavier's College, Bombay.
Apart from writing extensively on contemporary literature and culture, she
has written four books for children, and was the co-editor of Statements
(1976), an anthology of Indian prose in English. Her collections of verse
are Fix (1979), Women in Dutch Painting (1988), and Ways of Belonging: New
and Selected Poems (1990); the last of these was a Poetry Book Society
Recommendation.