it was an evening of flowing verses when ranjit hoskote the mumbai based poet art curator and cultural theorist came to hyderabad as chief guest to give away the prize to the winner of a poetry competition administered by the university of hyderabad having visited hyderabad a few times ranjit confesses being enchanted by the culture of the city and wants to explore its rich literary traditions in conversation with hyderabad times he talks about his newfound penchant for the city of pearls and the evolving crosscultural identities that have blended into what is seen as new forms of creations excerpts you seem to like hyderabad are you going to explore the rich culture that the city has it is a pity that i have not been spending much time in the city which inherits very strong metrics in terms of literary practices hyderabad is a confluence of urdu dakhni and anglo phobic cultures exploring hyderabad is certainly on my list i need to come to the city more often to experience the layers of its enriched culture there are accusations that poetry is dying do you agree it is a fallacy in any case every cultural practice has its own community for example somebody might say nuclear physics or anthropology is wide spread these practices have their own communities i dont know why poetry should be singled out it is not meaningful to quantify how many people are there in this field it is more important to focus on what is being done in its various forms do you subscribe to the notion that young poets in india are stuck in a time warp i dont think so on the contrary i am surprised when as a jury member of different contests i see that the works of young poets today in india are much better than the works of their predecessors might have been in their times where do you see poetry in todays chutnified world poetry in india is still exploring itself in different directions people are exploring the long form poetry they are approaching the epic form again they are working with different structures especially if you take a look at two recent anthologies by jeet thayil 2012 man booker nominee and sudeep sen they are working on ghazals nazms sonnets and even some dead forms tradition always evolves and is fluid in a very dynamic way it is effective and can never be static most poets and artists should improvise their genealogy of tradition it continuously shifts and is more vital to any creative practice ghalib the stalwart of urdu poetry appears a lot in your works i have always been attracted to mirza ghalib my mother is a great fan and it is she who introduced me to ghalib he was involved in a very crucial manner in indian history when we talk about the year 1857 i find ghalib very contemporary when we see how a poet becomes a political figure and