NEPALI literature can be considered preparing for a leap only after the task of the unification of Nepal and its reconstruction started 250 years ago. The poem titled “Prithvinarayan Shah”, believed to have been written during the lifetime of late king Prithvinarayan Shah, is considered the oldest of the poems available in the language so far. Its poet was Shubhananda Das. (Ghataraj Bhattarai, ibid; P. Kha). 

Evidence shows that poetry that emerged with the unification of Nepal was, in its initial stage, filled with an ethos of bravery basically directed at boosting the morale of the soldiers. This tradition broke, when British India entered an agreement with Nepal in 1814 to mark the end of Anglo-Nepal War. The agreement not only put a stop to the process of the expansion of Nepal, but also led to the loss of some territory that belonged to Nepal. This engendered a sense of utter frustration among the Nepali people. This frustration was amply reflected in the poems of that period. Following this, the trend of Nepali poetry abandoned the ethos of war and bravery, and entered the ethos of religiosity and devotion. 

It was during this time that Bhanubhakta translated Valmiki’s Ramayan from Sanskrit into Nepali. It was not merely a translation per se; it also had a lot of originality in it, and is considered to be the first epic in the Nepali language. This work played an extremely crucial role in fixing its language as the standard language of the time, and in popularizing the same in every home and every tongue.

Following this, Nepali poetry progressed with romantic ethos, until it arrived at its modern phase. It was at this time that Motiram Bhatta made his entry into the fray of Nepali poetry, and started the culture of ghazals, modeled after Persian and Urdu ghazal tradition. After 1934, Lekhanath Paudyal, Balkrishna Sama and Laxmi Prasad Devkota came to the scene, and from this point in time, Nepali poetry is believed to enter its modern phase. In 1951, the 104-year-old Rana regime collapsed, and the country was declared a democracy. This significant political change allowed freedom in speech and writing to Nepal’s academic community. Making good use of the freedom, poets like Gopal Prasad Rimal, Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Siddhicharan Shrestha, Balkrishna Sama, Kedarman Vyathit and others abandoned the traditional metrical poetry and picked up free verse. 

This not only gave Nepali poetry a stylistic expanse, but also allowed different issues like social, economic and political aspirations, dreams, disgusts and rebellions to enter Nepali poetry as its subject. In the initial few decades of modern Nepali poetry, the cult of romanticism continued to be the most significant cult. But in 1961, King Mahendra, through a political coup, suspended democracy and foisted panchayat rule—a rule by a few handpicked royal oligarchs—which once again put a ban on the freedom of speech and writing. 

When poets, writers, researchers and the academic community were barred from writing freely, modern Nepali poetry is found to be resorting to complex and intricate expressions, against the tradition of linguistically simple writing that predated it. When writers faced a situation where they were compelled to be complex in expressing their dissent so that the regime would not easily understand them, many poets abandoned the romantic tradition—which was quite popular as one aspect of modern poetry—and resorted to experimentation through complex writing that could seldom be explicated easily. 

Within this experimental cult, new initiatives that added extra momentum were launched, and this includes movements like Third Dimension Movement, Ralpha Movement, Aswikrit Jamat (Segregated Group), Amalekh (Freedom) etc. with their own specialties and styles, delivering poems that left lasting impact in Nepali literature. Madan Regmi, Mohan Koirala, Dwarika Shrestha, Krishna Bhakta Shrestha, Ratna Samsher Thapa, Bairagi Kainla, Ishwar Ballabh, Manjul and others are some exponents of this time. 

Bold progressive poets like Bhupi Sherchan gave continuity to their linguistically simple but thematically poignant and satirical verses even during this phase. But such poems were numerically very few at the time. 

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Contemporary Nepali Poetry

The contemporary trend in Nepali poetry emerged in reaction to the complex writing of the experimentalists, and its embraced linguistic simplicity. The onset of “contemporaneity” in Nepali poetry started with a movement by university students in 1979 that mingled with nationwide political fervor,  the  referendum to choose the system of governance, and the Sadak Kavita Kranti (Street Poetry Protest, 1979). These movements can be considered the foundation of this “contemporaneity”.  

The latest phase of Nepali poetry is characterized by simplicity as compared to the experimental phase that preceded it. The experimental poets, by dint of their complex diction and content, could not communicate directly with the readers. Mainly due to this difficulty in communication, there was a huge slash in the number of readers in Nepali poetry. This negatively affected the intimate connectivity between poetry and its readers.  

But, together with the advent of simplicity in poetry, the depiction of the latest structure of the social, economic and political life brought poetry to the access of the common people, breaking its limitation to closed rooms during the experimental phase that was limited to occasional poetic meets and discussions. As a result, women’s issues and voices, issues of indigenous and marginalized communities have emerged as a front line voices in Nepali poetry with the result that common people started finding their own joys and sorrows, feelings, experiences, dreams and frustration reflected in contemporary Nepali poetry. This established the belief that poetry is very much a genre pertaining to the concern of the common people. 

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Bhisma Upreti, based in Kathmandu, is a Nepali poet, essayist, translator and novelist, and literary organizer. He has authored nine books of poetry, 12 books of essays/travels, and one novel. His books and other literary pieces have been published in diverse foreign languages. A lifetime member of the Nepal Writers Society, Upreti is president of PEN Nepal.