Artist Laxman Aelay: Drawing poetry

Very few can bring poetry to life through art, and artist Laxman Aelay is one of them. The artist, translated poetry from the book of poet Narayanaswamy, Vaanostada? (Will it rain?) into art. And it’s no easy feat, says Laxman Aelay. For Aelay, however, the images just started flowing as he read the poems. “Not all the artworks are exact translations of the poems. I have drawn the works based on what I felt after reading the poetry,” explains Aelay who started working on the project six months ago, when he visited his friend in the US.

The book has 42 poems, but Aelay has created 30 drawings, out of which 27 were on display at a gallery. Talking about the challenges he says, “The challenge was in getting the emotion right. In one of the poems, Swamy talks about the relationship with his father and how he brought him up after the death of his mother. That was one of the most emotional poems to translate into art.”

Guests at the exhibition, were very thrilled with the artwork. Narayanaswamy, the poet says, “When I partnered with Laxman Aelay for this book, I had a few expectations but he seems to have surpassed them all. Most of the poems are not literal translations, but are rather his take on the poetry. Aelay has also combined a few poems and drawn art that fits the general emotion,” he says.

The poetry book spans topics like the Telangana movement, Dalit identity, women issues, Telangana identity, loneliness in the age of Internet, and the disconnect between one’s native land and being a NRI. Aelay says, “These poems were written over a span of a decade. The most important thing is the poet has stuck to his roots and has not deviated from his nativity and language. That was one of the factors that connected us and made this process very easy.”