Sarojini Naidu
Quick answer: Sarojini Naidu poetry techniques: singing metres, bazaars rendered in catalogue and English lyric with Indian roots. A craft guide for modern poets.
They called her the Nightingale of India, and the nickname is accurate about craft: Sarojini Naidu's poems sing. Born in Hyderabad in 1879, educated in London and Cambridge, she published three collections, The Golden Threshold in 1905, The Bird of Time in 1912 and The Broken Wing in 1917, before politics claimed her. She became the first Indian woman to preside over the Indian National Congress in 1925 and, after independence, the first woman to govern an Indian state.
Her formation contains a usable lesson. As a student she wrote skilful imitations of English poetry about English things, and the critic Edmund Gosse advised her to throw them over and write about the India she actually knew. The poems that made her name, bazaars, palanquins, fisher folk, bangle sellers, followed from that correction.
The poem
What do you sell, O ye merchants?
Richly your wares are displayed.
Turbans of crimson and silver,
Tunics of purple brocade,
Sarojini Naidu, 'In the Bazaars of Hyderabad' (1912)
Who she was
Naidu wrote in English at the height of empire, and made the coloniser's language carry Indian streets, trades and festivals on their own terms. Her lyrics were admired in London drawing rooms and Indian classrooms alike, a double audience few poets manage.
After 1917 she wrote little poetry, giving her voice to the freedom movement alongside Gandhi, and she died in office as governor in 1949. The small body of work she left is disproportionately durable; several poems remain school-anthology fixtures a century on.
The signature moves
Her best-known poems run on a handful of precise, repeatable techniques.
What you can learn
Take Gosse's advice as if given to you: list five subjects from your own street that you have never seen in a poem, and write toward those instead of toward what poetry is supposed to sound like. Judges reward it; Writory's monthly winners are very often the poems most rooted in their own soil.
Then practise her structures. Build one poem as question and answer with a chorus of voices, each answer a catalogue of concrete, sellable things. And try a metre that physically matches your subject, rocking, marching, rowing, checking each line by reading aloud in motion.
Where to start reading
In the Bazaars of Hyderabad, Palanquin Bearers and Coromandel Fishers are the essential three, all short and easy to find since her collections are in the public domain. The Golden Threshold makes a fine single-book introduction. Her speeches and letters show the later, political voice, and reading the poems aloud, ideally with others taking the vendor voices, restores their original charm.
What poets can take from this
- Write about the street you live on, not the landscape your reading taught you.
- Match metre to motion: let the rhythm sway, row or march with the subject.
- Structure a poem as market question and answer, with catalogues for replies.
- Give the poem a worker's voice and let their trade choose the images.
- Load stanzas with internal rhyme and refrain, then read aloud to trim excess.
Try it yourself
Write a question-and-answer poem set in a market you know, one voice asking what is sold, other voices answering in catalogues of real local goods. Keep a quick, swaying metre and end with a purchase that reveals something about the buyer.
Questions
Why is Sarojini Naidu called the Nightingale of India?
The title honours the songlike quality of her English lyrics, with their quick metres, refrains and rich sound patterning. It also nods to her celebrated speaking voice in public life.
What are Sarojini Naidu's most famous poems?
In the Bazaars of Hyderabad, Palanquin Bearers and Coromandel Fishers are the most anthologised, all drawn from her three collections published between 1905 and 1917.
Why did Sarojini Naidu stop writing poetry?
From around 1917 she devoted herself to the Indian freedom movement, becoming Congress president in 1925 and later the first woman governor of an Indian state. Public life essentially replaced poetry for her final three decades.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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