Souren Mondal Biography

Born on November 10,1991 in Chandannagar, a small town in West Bengal, India, I had very little idea about turning up into a 'poet' ever in my life. I wrote a few poems when I was about 6, but never pursued it. I didn't write a line of poetry until I turned 16 or so, when I wrote things that I thought were 'poems'. By the time I turned 18, I was all guns out praising the beauty of Spring and talking about immortal love, while munching upon chocolates and listening to Taylor Swift songs..

This kind of casual poetry writing continued as I entered college, where I wrote many a poems for 'the girl with the glasses'.. These poems, too were stupid..

Cut down to 2015, and long story short, with a ragging depression and anxiety, filled with anti-depressants, anti-anxiety pills, insomnia, and a prevalent, almost ever-existing desire to kill myself I started writing more poems - this time more seriously - and put them up here at poemhunter. Since then I had written a lot of poems and published them here..

I no longer sing praises of Spring or talk about immortal love in my poems, but Taylor Swift and chocolates are still here!

The themes I mostly try to deal with include sexual violence, philosophical questions, human relationship, and social issues, particularly those of gender inequality....

MY FAVOURITE POETS: Rabindranath Tagore, T. S. Eliot, Charles Baudelaire, William Shakespeare, Charles Bukowski, Jibdanada Das..

I had been inspired a great deal by Bukowski perhaps. To a lot of people, including myself, he is a very cynical poet. But what I like about him is that he does not hide his cynicism. He has a 'bold' soul, one that Baudelaire might have talked about in his ”Au Lecteur”...

I had been a huge fan of Fellini, Kurasawa, Kubrick, Vishal Bharadwaj, and Satyajit Ray. Their movies, particularly Fellini's ”8 1/2” has been something that I have often looked up to. Kubrick's adaptation of ”A Clockwork Orange” too has meant a lot.

But it has to be Paolo Sorrentino's ”La Grande Belleza” with Tony Servillo playing Jep Gambardella that nearly changed everything for me. That one movie made me see artists and beauty in a manner that I had never knew of before.

Beauty, some say, is in the eye of the beholder.. But I feel beauty is in the manner in which an artist presents whatever he is writing about. We can talk about filth, the most abhorrent things that exist, the cruel and the disgusting, the sick and the decaying - all of it - none of which will be beautiful to the naked eye, but it can become beautiful from the representation of the artist.

A few words, I must devote, to the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, and the many more philosophers that I have read in excerpts or fully too..

The comparitive reading of Nietzsche's ”The Birth of Tragedy” and Aristotle's ”Poetics” was an eye opener for me, that encouraged me to pursue critical thinking without any shame..

At present,24 and healthy, sober for more than ten months, still a chainsmoker, less borderline than before, less depressed than before, almost free of anxiety, I get about at least five hours of sleep every night and have been in good shape.

I need to thank my fellow member poets. It is because of you all, my fellow artists, and friends that I have been able to write poems, and had moved on from ”A Beautiful Life” to ”To the Little Angels”.. My life, today, is on a second innings, so to speak, and it is due to all of you.

Thank You.