New content every morning!

Your Submission to the Great Indian Kitty Party Club Anthology

Dear Poet,

Thank you for your submission to the Great Indian Kitty Party Club Anthology 2025.

While your poems did not make it to this year’s anthology, we appreciate your patience as we and our readers went through over 666 submissions to choose the final 69.

As you must know, we are big names in the Indian poetry ecosystem, and therefore, we have only few slots available each year for poets with no connections; the remaining are for our friends, reviewers, interviewers, and lackeys from the Great Indian Kitty Party Club.

Each year we rope in some of the biggest names in Indian writing as readers for the anthology. The entire reading and judging process is anonymous—for the poems we choose to send to the readers. Until last year, it was a common misconception that every submission we receive is forwarded to the readers for anonymous review. And in all seriousness we intended to keep it this way. That was until one of the poets we solicited work from spilled the beans on social media, expressing their profound delight and honor at having been solicited for this year’s anthology. Since the poet in question is too big to stifle, we had to post a clarification that all of our submissions—including solicited poems—undergo the same anonymous review process, that is, solicited poems too can be rejected. And we expect you to believe that!

The reason we do not send every submission to the readers is that in doing so there is a chance that the readers—who really are poets who mean business (we need some credibility, you know)—might end up rejecting members of the Great Indian Kitty Party Club. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?

You may have noticed from our social media announcements that we have included Dr. M.C. Mephistopheles, a poet and publisher with a long and dubious career (who, in fact, runs a publishing house solely to publish and peddle himself in the poetry scene—to hell with the other poets he publishes), in this year’s anthology. While we, along with many self-righteous stalwarts from the Indian writing scene, had launched a massive social media campaign against Dr. Mephistopheles last year over his blatant and continued harassment of a young poet from the historically oppressed Dalit community (Dr. M.C. has since lost the shamelessly ridiculous lawsuit he had filed against the talented young poet), we have now realized that a published book in hand is better than standards in the market. Therefore, shame and social justice aside, Dr. Mephistopheles finds himself in this year’s anthology, for he is one of the few publishers in India who wouldn’t mind publishing anyone in exchange for being interviewed, reviewed and cited as an eminent man of letters.

That said, we urge you not to lose hope for not having been included this year. While you may have established your writing credentials overseas, it means nothing to us; inclusion in our anthology alone can ensure your presence in the Indian poetry scene. That’s the bitter truth, but there are ways you too could join the Great Indian Kitty Party Club, or Club 69 as we fondly call it.

Show us you are in awe of our achievements. Show us you worship the air we breathe in, the air we fart out. We are brown sahibs; we need minions to survive. You could start by liking and commenting on our social media posts. Don’t worry about non-responses and no follow backs; we have to keep widening our steep followers–following gap to maintain our larger-than-life image. Also, make sure you buy our books (and our lackeys’) and write reviews. Since we are big names in Indian writing, we are doing you a favor by making you buy review copies by nagging you ceaselessly with texts, phone calls and bulk emails. You earn extra points if you can interview us. And if you happen to be in the same city as we are, we’d be super impressed if you could walk our dogs, or play fetch with us when the pups are feeling low. These are just some of the ways you can get in our good books. Be creative.

Most importantly, we expect you to address us as ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’. This is post-British India. The Brits may have come to their senses; we still roll in colonial muck. ‘Dear <First Name>‘ or ‘Dear Editor’ won’t work here. Stick to ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’ only, especially on social media. And don’t bother about gender choice and all that utopian shit. We aren’t there yet.

Lastly, breathe a word of this to any living, dead or undead soul and you’ll be canceled and obliterated from the Indian writing scene altogether. We have ways to ensure that—canceled contracts, no reviewers for your books, editors ghosting you, all out of the blue. You get the idea.

Thank you, again, for trusting us with your work and precarious writing career.

With Hot Caution,
Your Esteemed Editors
The Great Indian Kitty Party Club Anthology
sendusyourworstbutlickusgentlywhereitmatters.com

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Pushpa T.S., not to be confused with the titular protagonist of the Telugu blockbuster films, is an old woman known in her social circle for her good spirit. Decades ago as a young woman in Bombay, she garnered much praise and flattery on the eve of her famous emigration to the US. She has since returned to India and lives in her native house in Surat where her father was a renowned advocate.

Image generated on Magic Studio