The first poetry I heard were lullabies in my mother tongue. I suppose my mother must have sung them to me, when I was in that state of infanthood before my tongue could speak and my brain comprehend language. Even though later science has show the beneficial influence of music or aural experience on the growth of an embryo or that of a baby, mothers seem to understand this instinctively, this provision of musical speech and its function in nurturing. However given the split, which I sometimes regret, I had with the language of my ancestors and this adoption of the “foreign” tongue, English, to speak, to think and write in, most of them are lost except snatches of those pieces which return in dream and memory.

The next encounter with poetry as well as language was as nursery rhyme: Jack and Jill, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Humpty Dumpty in pre school and Ol’ Mac Donald on a borrowed tape in primary school. The study of language however was and is considered a superficial (pre)occupation in India. Language’s utility was only in its function to do better office work or get a better paying job. This on further reflection is perhaps true in other places of the world as well.

However even at school, we had a whole section of poetry in our English textbooks, at the back, towards the end. I suppose it was something that was hard to teach and it’s banishment to the end and well as separation from the prosody was almost natural. And the consequence of this I don’t recall many of those poems, secondary stuff of school work, to be learnt only to answer inane questions on English exams.

I also recall reading a large dose of old English poets: Wordsworth’s “Daffodils”, Alfred Noyes’s almost musical piece “Highway Man”, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy Cat” with large doses of Keats, Browning and Tennyson.

I am also a sometime contributer to The Wondering Minstrels poetry list. These are the submissions, which were sent out on the list.

1046 4 May 2002 Henrik Nordbrandt Sailing

1114 21 Nov 2002 Lawrence Ferlinghetti Sandinista Avioncitos

1175 16 Feb 2003 Mark Doty Broadway

1193 9 Mar 2003 James Dickey Cherrylog Road

1195 12 Mar 2003 Richard Wilbur Advice to a Prophet

1212 1 Apr 2003 Barbara Kingsolver Deadline

1231 20 Apr 2003 Rabindranath Tagore The Gardener (LXXXV)

1236 25 Apr 2003 Tony Hoagland Self-Improvement

1245 4 May 2003 Li-Young Lee Persimmons

1267 2 Jun 2003 Wislawa Szymborska A Contribution to Statistics

1290 28 Jun 2003 Yusef Komunyakaa My Father's Love Letters

1305 21 Jul 2003 Thomas Lux Poem in Thanks

1334 26 Aug 2003 Jalaluddin Rumi Where Everything Is Music

This album flows more than anything I've done - yet it's the most diverse," says Nitin Sawhney. "It's also the most personal." Human is the sixth album by cultural pioneer and cutting edge musician Nitin Sawhney. Drawing on influences ranging from urban R&B to Indian classical music and the Velvet Underground, this record is his most autobiographical.

Daring and emotionally direct, each track encapsulates a certain space in time - from the joy and pain of birth in 'Eastern Eyes', to being the only Asian kid in a school dominated by the National Front ('Say Hello'), to the headlong teenage rush of the single, 'Falling', to the sense of integrating two cultures on the ecstatic song 'Fragile Wind'.

"I was thinking about William Blake's 'Songs of Innocence And Experience', and how as you grow up you become disillusioned with things you trusted when you were young - like parents, school, the media, politicians - but in so doing, you gain a sense of who you are," says Sawhney.

Human is charting new, more intimate territory. On previous albums such as Spirit Dance (1993), Migration (1995), and Displacing The Priest (1996), Sawhney has explored outward questions of religion, politics and racial identity. 1999's Beyond Skin looked beyond cultural boundaries, while his last album, the millenial epic Prophesy, involved a trip around the world and spanned the range of human experience - from aborigines in Australia, to a choir of Soweto schoolchildren, to a New York taxi driver alienated by technology.

Ms. Andrews, across the pond, today informed me of the release of "Human". I have listened to it and to put it simply it is brilliant. Go check it out right away at!

nitinsawhney.com