Like any other form of art, poetry depends upon social networks for its creation, circulation, appreciation and preservation. In turn, social networks are defined by cultural and historical circumstances. The flourishing of anglophone poetry in postcolonial Bombay provides a good case to for studying the significance and impact of social networks on the naturalization of literary modernism in a particular period and place. In this context, the parallel lives of two of India's earliest and most accomplished postcolonial anglophone poets, Nissim Ezekiel and Dom Moraes, reveal the relevance of the network paradigm in understanding their work. This article is a preliminary attempt at highlighting the vast network of local, national and international contacts underlying the different yet overlapping careers of these two poets in a wider context defined by events and realities (the cultural cold war, the decolonization process, the rise of postcolonial literatures) that simultaneously transcended and impacted the local scene.
