“Calcutta weighs upon my chest, a cruel stone”: The individual and the public in Bengali urban poetry of the 1960s–1980s

This article examines the representation of postcolonial Calcutta in 1960s–1980s Bengali poetry, emphasizing the evolving relationship between the individual and the urban public. It identifies a shared postcolonial poetics of urbanity among several Calcutta-based poets, primarily associated with the poetry magazine Krttibās, writing during three decades of refugee crisis, mass movements, and political disenchantment. The article shows how 1960s Bengali poetry explores frictions of urban migration through the city’s intervention in poetic interiority. Producing entanglements between poetic form and political reality, the poetry of the 1970s absorbs the spirit of political collectivism and employs a realist mode to engage directly with the urban poor. In the poetry of the 1980s, this trajectory from poetic internalism to rebellious assimilation culminates in disillusionment, disorientation, and detachment. Retracing this trajectory, this article argues that postcolonial Bengali poetry captures Calcutta’s history of spatial–ideological contestations through engagement and negotiation with the public.