Soon after the publication of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali in English with an introduction by W B Yeats in 1912, came a rude shock. In a letter to his friend William Rothenstein, Yeats wrote, “Tagore doesn’t know English, no Indian knows English. Nobody can write music and style in a language not learned in childhood and ever since the language of his thought.”

Even though Yeats did not write his own poems in a language he learnt in childhood (Gaelic), says Jeet Thayil, editor of 60 Indian Poets, the celebrated poet’s comment was a harbinger of a debate on poets writing in a language other than their mother tongue. The book, published by Penguin, was released at a poetry-reading session hosted at Blue Frog in association with the PEN All-India Centre on Tuesday. The compilation is an attempt to present the community of post-Independence Indian poets—based in the country and abroad—who are marginalised by the West.

Today, there are fewer instances of the authenticity a poet’s work being challenged for writing in his/her second language, English. “Still, there exist some hostile pockets whose perception remains unchanged,” says Sampurna Chattarji, whose poems are featured in the book. Even though she translates poems in her mother-tongue, Bengali, Chattarji prefers to pen her own verse in English. Her reason behind it is simple: “I think in English.”

The book, however, might help in changing this notion as well as expose the sub-continent’s poets’ to the western audience. Thayil chooses 1952 as “the starting point for look as modern Indian poetry. That’s the year Nissim Ezekiel published his first book, A Time to Change. “Until Ezekiel, Indian poetry in English was 19th-Century product that had survived well into the 20th,” writes Thayil in his essay, One Language, Separated by the Sea. 60 Indian Poets has two more essays — Bruce King’s 2004: Ezekiel, Moraes and Kolatkar and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s What is an Indian Poem?

The 60 poets—of them 23 are from Mumbai—for the anthology were selected from more than 100. They are “presented not chronologically, but with a view to verticality,” says Thayil. It features works of stalwarts like Ezekiel, Dom Moraes and Arun Kolatkar—all three passed away in 2004—as well as brings to the fore forgotten figures like Lawrence Bantleman, Gopal Honnalgere, Srinivas Rayaprol and G S Sharat Chandra. This anthology also introduces a range of contemporary poets. “Their works are diverse not only in terms of their cultural background, but also in the use of syntax,” says Chattarji.

Ranjit Hoskote, one of the 60 selected poets, feels India is experiencing a poetry boom. And that’s not restricted to those writing in English language alone. “Far more number of poetic works, which are finer in quality, are coming out,” he says. He attributes this to a large young generation of poets (between 15 and 50) as well as multiple avenues for making their work public.