Miya poetry: Poetics, politics and polemics

Globalisation has reconfigured the interplay of social and spatial relations on an unprecedented scale. Resultantly, it has problematised the issues related to citizenship as well. Rightlessness and statelessness have become an inseparable part of such an emerging milieu. It is further complicated as state-mandated markers of belonging, allegiance and place-making is thrust on it to redefine the nation. This chapter highlights such a process of a state-mediated attempt of redefining citizenry and its simultaneous poetic response in Assam by a community that has more than often been vilified and violated in the name of being doubtful citizens. The chapter traces the circumstances under which a slur that has been historically used to identify a community, Miya, was adorned and poetically used to negotiate the threats and onslaught of state-mandated citizenship practices. Through poetics, the community in desperation has been sought to be rechristened by a few poets. Miya poetry therefore became the harbinger of hope for a community that has persistently suffered from citizenship blues. The poetics, the politics and the polemics associated with such a historical process have been analysed here. The chapter deployed an innovative methodological approach by combining retrospective auto-ethnographies of the authors, in-depth life history interviews with six Miya poets and a pool of selected Miya poems