Many literary historians and scholars have agreed that Indian creative writing in English had begun long before Macaulay's Minute Indian Education (1835). In fact, Indian English poetry began its journey from the days of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-31) who is considered as the first Indian Anglican poet. Some noteworthy names are Kashiprasad Ghosh, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Sashi Chander Dutt, Aurobindo Ghosh, Sarojini Naidu, Rabindranath Tagore and others.
The Indian English poetry during the independence is remarkable for productivity, experimentation and vivid presentation of contemporary reality and situation. The traumatic political situation, partition of the country, disintegration of the village community, problems of cultural identity and the noticeable change in societal, cultural, economical and political values attracted the attention of writers and poets during this period.
The post independence poets have changed from an exclusive to an extensive range of creative experience. They have risen from a conservative to a cosmopolitan culture. Modern English poets preferred originality and experimented in word craft. It also showed that there was no escape from traditions. This influenced the poet's consciousness and his observations of living present. Modern Indian English poets deal with the concrete experiences of men living in the modern world.
The 1960s and 1970s saw the birth and development of new poetry in India. It has obtained its own substance from life around. It is no more an echo but a voice worth listening. It has emerged as a distinct reality and has acquired an identity of its own. It has given a new direction to the writing of poetry in English. Indian English poetry has a distinct character and a voice of its own. Some contemporary poets of Arun Kolatkar are, Nissim Ezekiel, A K Ramanujan, A K Mehrotra, R Parthasarathy, Shiv K Kumar, Keki N Daruwala, ieve Patel, Dilip Chitre and Jayanta Mahapatra.
These modern Indian English poets have made use of multifaceted themes in their poetry such as Indian situations, folk-beliefs, rituals, faiths, superstition, corruption in socio-cultural and socio-political life, eternal themes of love and death and more. Recent Indian poetry tries and succeeds in setting the roots and developing its artistic creeds. In Indian English poetry, the new poets present new things in a manner different than their predecessors. These poets brought innovations in form, imagery, style, structure and diction. The diction is akin to colloquial languages and rhythm.
The new poetry by Indian poets adhere to their own principles. There is much experimentation in an effort to achieve modernity. This experimental approach is the quest for originality and newness. According to Amalendu Bose, in their poetry, the modern poets are free to use English that is not mechanical but organic, out of a natural inwardness which gives a poem its immediacy of experience. They have been raised from the conservative to the cosmopolitan culture to confront the new shape of things and to get a new view of human destiny.
The modern poets have revealed tension in respective poems. Their poetry has inborn Indian essence. Modern poetry is full of ironic remarks. The new poets have used irony as a weapon in their poetry. They have evolved a distinct idiom to express their voice. They have succeeded to nativize or Indianize English in order to reveal typical Indian situations.
Modern Indian English poetry ranges from personal emotions and lyricism to complex linguistic experiments, dry intellectual tone, pungent satire and nursery rhyme. It has a new note and an urgency of utterance. But even then it is not possible to escape from tradition completely. This penetrates deeper into the poet's consciousness and influences their observations of the living present and the past, thereby shaping the future.
These poets deal with concrete experiences of men living in the modern world but the concreteness of experience is influenced by the aroma of the private life of the experiencing self. Modern Indian English Poets are mostly concerned with themselves and surroundings allied to them. Their poetry records the artist's own life history and inner struggles. They retrospect in an attempt to discover their roots. Their poetry thus reveals a tension resulting from their acute self-awareness and the restraint imposed upon them by the hostile environment and becomes a personal quest for values and an effort to peek into the dark abysmal content's of the poet's own mind.