Joshi was speaking in a panel discussion ‘The verse case scenario- Should songwriters be considered poets?’ at the seventh edition of ‘Tata Literature Live’ festival, here. When asked, what is the difference between a poem and a song, Prasoon said, “We can’t so narrowly define that in India. By: PTI | Mumbai |

Published:November 17, 2016 8:48 pm

Prasoon Joshi, who has songs like “Taare zameen par” and “Chand sifarish” in his kitty believes that today, besides the lyrics being “cheap”, even the music is so. It has a support system which poetry doesn’t. “We live in a country where several kinds of poetries have happened, at various level, some poetry movements have happened. Last month, the Swedish Academy, which awards the literature Nobel, announced that the songwriter Bob Dylan would be the 2016 laureate “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” While many fans were excited over the news, some believed that the prize should go only to people who practise literature as literature, in the form of books or poems or plays. “Entertainment was definitely part of it, that is the way it was kept alive, but there was a huge purpose to it… poetry had a very different purpose. Somehow it is assumed that music is a crutch in a song. Also read | Prasoon Joshi shames the patriarchal society, honours girl child in his hard-hitting verse 
Joshi says many prolific poets like Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi wrote songs in films, making the distinction between
poetry and song writing impossible. Screenwriter and lyricist Prasoon Joshi feels songs in Bollywood have been reduced solely for entertainment purpose. But if you look at Mirza Ghalib’s work, all the ghazals he wrote, he didn’t write it for any musical purpose.” Joshi says India has seen several poetry movements in various languages, all of which contributed a lot to the poetry culture. I tell a lot of my song writer friends, if you talk about Bollywood today the songs have almost reduced to entertainment,” he said. It was like a capsule where you kept a lot of wisdom alive,” he added.