Wild Word: Four Tamil Poets

In 2003, a group of men and women, setting themselves up as guardians of Tamil culture, objected publicly to the language of a new generation of women poets -- particularly in the work of Malathi Maithri, Salma, Kutti Revathi and Sukirtharani -- charging the women with obscenity and immodesty. More than a decade later, a deep divide still persists in the way readers and critics perceive women poets. Tamil women poets have been categorized as 'bad girls' and 'good girls'. The traditional val...