“Knockings at My Heart” set for release

A collection of unpublished short poems written by Rabindranath Tagore while giving autographs is being published for the first time in a book form. 

Compiled and edited by curator and poet Nilanjan Banerjee, the poems had been in the archives of Rabindra Bhavan in Tagore's abode at Visva Bharati in Shantiniketan.

The book “Knockings at My Heart” has around 81 such autograph-poems which will soon be released by Roli Books.

These are very short poems or couplets. He was influenced by the precision, depth, power and intensity of Japanese haiku style of poetry,” PTI reported from Kolkata quoting Banerjee.

After receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for his anthology of poems, “Gitanjali”, Tagore became a worldwide celebrity and was often requested by fans to compose short poems while signing autographs.

The book says Tagore soon perfected the craft and took it seriously which is evident in the painstaking modification of many of these poems years after they had been written, Banerjee said.

He had composed numerous such short poems during his visits to China and Japan between 1916 and 1929.

At Rabindra Bhavan, part of the Visva Bharati university campus, multiple versions of Rabindranath's autograph-poems can be found either in the poet's own handwriting or in typed scripts or printed forms.