The image of the North East region of the country is that it is a mosaic of tribal culture. That it is very remote. That it is full of trees and mountains and that it is a troubled place with lots of insurgency and army, and counter insurgency operations. All of this is true. Many people also associate the region with a beautiful landscape, a naturalist’s paradise, a land of big rivers and colourful festivals in worship of benevolent gods and goddesses. All this is also equally true. So what have we got here then? There is conflict and there is tranquillity. This must be like everywhere else in the world. And like anywhere else, moving through this landscape, there is a band of people struggling with pen and paper and, let’s say, lyrics of songs and verse, to express their feelings.

There are many discussions today of what North East poetry is about, and even about what it should be. Is it about guns and bullets, is it satirical; should it be the poetry of nature or the poetry of blood and violence to distinguish it as the writing coming out of the region. The answer is: it is about all these things. And in whichever language, whether in English or translated, the poetry of the North east is alive, vivid and heart wrenching. A poet writing in Assamese asks: In which language do we dream? Fellow poets of other states respond with their different symbols and, through their poems and using their images here, we wade through gutted entrails slippery with blood, and we run through the green bamboo crushing earthworms and frogs, living amidst death and resurrection all at the same time. Ultimately, to put an encompassing meaning to this writing it may be appropriate to say that the poetry of the North East is about transformation. Here, legends may be portrayed with the intensity of reality and reality is portrayed with the intensity of longing for a vanished past. It is quite simply about the desire to find words that are a reaffirmation of belief, and expressions of hope and metamorphosis...

This, for me, is succinctly summed up in the words of the Shillong poet, Kynpham Sing Nongkhynrih:

Maybe after all someone has to save
your streams and pine groves. Despite the cold
wind, there are times when I feel determined
to liberate your hills.