A contemporary of SK said: Shiv’s poetry is like the stringed musical toy, which is music to your ears while the seller plays it. He weaves words with pleasant lyrical sounds, which carry away the Punjabi reader without giving much thought to their actual meanings. tears, pain, separation, poison, malady and death. Morbid imagery is recurrent in almost all his poems e.g. It is a common view amongst Punjabi literary circles that SK’s poetry revolves around unfulfilled adolescent romance. I am not the only person to be in total agreement with Sekhon. Sekhon’s precise insight sums up the man and the poet. Luna, English version, MS, in my collection Shiv Kumar, with very modest education, seemed peculiarly to be such a poet.’ …Young poets who make a startling initial effect by talking like disappointed old people are found generally to have walked into a dead alley.
His favourite themes were the ache of desire, the melancholy of love and the fascination of death. ‘When he first shot into prominence, he was at once noted for the peculiar charm of his diction and imagery and for his tone of decadent passion and existential despair. Sant Singh Sekhon, who once called SK as the Keats of Punjabi poetry, defined SK’s creative limitations in his introduction to his English rendering of SK’s Luna (1985): He has the same sort of following as painter Sobha Singh has for his kitsch paintings like Sohni Mahival and Gurdas Mann for his hollow songs. Amarjit Chandan CollectionĪmong the post-1947 generation of Punjabi poets, Shiv Kumar (SK) is perhaps the most popular poet.
The Poet of Gloom and Doom was a Good Laugh
This thought-provoking appreciation of Shiv Kumar’s poetry and his contribution to Punjabi literature is rendered by another poet of note: Amarjit Chandan and, is presented here to commemorate Shiv Kumar’s birthday on the disputed date of July 23 ( ).
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