Vimala Devi - London

London

For seven years, Devi lived in London and worked as an art critic for the BBC's Portuguese-language service. It was during this period that Hologramas and Telepoemas were written. Here, far from Goa and the far-reaching transformation of Goan society into the Indian Union, Devi turns from the Goan themes and memories that animated her earlier work to a deep engagement with Western European culture and contemporary Anglophone poetry. For Mauro Neves, the period from Hologramas onwards "reflects the marked influence of Fernando Pessoa". Certainly, Major influences in her work that can be felt in her work, and to which she refers directly include, Fernando Pessoa and his heteronyms, but also (above all The Waste Land and 4 Quartets), Matthew Mead (principally Identities), Kingsley Amis (such as A case of samples), Alan Bold, Günter Grass, Blaise Cendrars, Paul Valéry, Cesare Pavese, Robert Creeley and other poets from the New Writing movement in the United States.