Hello poets!

Ready for today’s poetics? Let’s get started then…

As some of you might know there were protests in India in the months of June-July against entrance exam paper leaks and marking irregularities. The protesters were mostly Gen-Z. What caught my eye was that “irreverence” emerged as a core tactical tool and defining characteristic of this social media fuelled protest.

This movement was very unlike the usual protests. It bypassed solemn political sloganeering and was virtually a meme fest. They utilized humour, wit parody, and pop-culture references to mock the state pushback.They were very serious about the cause but never stopped having fun and were very creative with cheeky placards, memes and of course constant updates on Instagram.

Irreverence often sits at the intersection of humour, rebellion, freedom, power, and common sense. It can be a form of courage, a tool of the powerless, an expression of intelligence and sometimes, simply an excuse for bad manners.

We should neither celebrate it unconditionally nor condemn it outright.

Reverence asks us to treat certain things as sacred, beyond question, or deserving of deference. Irreverence asks: Why?

Why should age command respect regardless of wisdom? Why should authority be spared scrutiny? Why should traditions survive merely because they are old? Why should power be allowed to retain its dignity when it has forfeited its moral legitimacy?

Irreverence punctures the inflated. It reminds us that a king is still a man, a bureaucrat is still a mortal, and an institution is not necessarily wise simply because it has endured.

But there is a catch: not everything that deserves respect deserves unquestioning reverence, and not everything that can be mocked deserves contempt.

Artists, writers, poets, film makers have often used irreverence as an important tool to make a point. Think of Socrates, Aristotle , Plato, Oscar Wilde, The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin or the Indian cartoonist R.K. Laxman’s common man.

Irreverence is not automatically brave or subversive. Sometimes it challenges power. Sometimes it reinforces the power of a crowd over an individual.

Remember there is a difference between mocking a tyrant and humiliating a vulnerable person; between challenging a prejudice and ridiculing someone’s identity; between satire that exposes injustice and sarcasm that merely wounds.

If you want to step into the the parlour of poetic irreverence, you can never go wrong with Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, W.H. Auden’s The Unknown Citizen, Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, Ogden Nash’s verses, Kabir’s dohas, Kishwar Nahid’s I am not that Woman and Nissim Ezekiel’s The Patriot, to name just a few. I hope you enjoy going through them.

Irreverence in poetry need not announce itself with profanity and provocation. Sometimes it means placing two disparate things next to each other that convention demands should be separate, like god and a parking ticket, national anthem and a leaky tap or the end of the world and someone asking what’s for dinner! That collision becomes a poem!

For today’s poetics prompt, I would like you to write an irreverent verse. It could be about something that cannot bear to be laughed at like god, nation, leaders, family or traditions. Keep it irreverent but do not make it disrespectful. Or about an ordinary person’s accidental act of rebellion, like laughing during a solemn occasion or asking an inappropriate question at a large gathering. Take any direction you want to because looking at the world scenario now, “god” knows we need it very much!

May your  poems have sharp elbows, a mischievous eyebrow, and absolutely no unnecessary bows.

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Happy poeming!