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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Pick of the week: A treat for poetry lovers
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Pick of the week: A treat for poetry lovers

The two-day Bengaluru Poetry Festival festival will include an interesting mix of poetry performances, discussions about the connections between poetry and art, workshops and interactive sessions

The Bengaluru Poetry Festival will have more than 60 poets and performers.Premium
The Bengaluru Poetry Festival will have more than 60 poets and performers.

OTHERS :

It was during the many poetry sessions at Atta Galatta that the founders of the book store-cum-performance space in Bengaluru realized how powerful a poem can be when it comes to self-expression. “What was amazing was the sheer diversity in the people that were writing poetry, reading poetry and watching poetry performances—from teenagers to college students to young professionals, all the way to the retired," says Subodh Sankar, who started Atta Galatta in 2012 with his wife Lakshmi.

They soon realized, however, that while Indian poets and poetry are gaining recognition the world over, poetry plays a small role on the country’s literary platforms.

“With support from a number of poets and poetry enthusiasts, we decided to create the Bengaluru Poetry Festival as a platform exclusively for poetry, which allows poetry to be performed, read and explored in multiple forms and languages," says Sankar.

Starting 6 August, the two-day Bengaluru Poetry Festival festival will include an interesting mix of poetry performances, discussions about the connections between poetry and art, workshops and interactive sessions. Some of the poets who will be conducting these sessions are Javed Akhtar, Akhil Katyal, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Neal Hall and Rukmini Bhaya Nair.

More than 60 poets and performers are coming together for this festival, says Lakshmi, who admits to being the “poetry person" among the two. “And there is going to be an integration of poetry with various art forms, including dance and music," she says.

One of the key aspects of the festival is the focus on breaking the performer-audience divide. “We decided that rather than having performers on a stage and an audience, we would work with a number of city-based poetry groups and communities, and offer their members the chance to perform on the main stage with the invited poets," says Sankar.

Some of the groups that will participate are Let Poetry Be, Anjuman, Open Sky Slam, Airplane Poetry Movement, Ink Weaver and Poetry Couture. They will perform poetry in Bengali, English, Tamil and Bundelkhandi.

Delhi-based Katyal admits to being excited at having access to multilingual poetry. “I am really looking forward to poets from different languages coming together," he says, adding: “English poetry regales only a certain kind of audience. Once you have different languages coming in, your audience expands."

The five workshops scheduled will cover a range of topics, including one on how to publish poetry (conducted by Karthika V.K. and Swati Chopra) and another on how to integrate poetry with music (conducted by Simon
Napier-Bell).

A poetry contest has also been introduced. Three hundred entries of original poems were submitted, and 155 of them have been selected for publication in a book, Po’try—Bengaluru Poetry Festival 2016 Anthology, that will be launched on Saturday. The contest was conceptualized by Raindrops Company, a city-based publishing house and the festival’s publishing partner.

The director of the festival is Shinie Antony, co-founder of the Bangalore Literature Festival; the other members of the organizing committee are published poets and poetry lovers.

Shikha Saklani Malaviya, author of Geography Of Tongues and co-founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a literary press, is one of them. “This festival is truly one of a kind," she says, adding that because the organizing committee comprises mostly poets, it has “infused the festival with a deep level of respect and care for the genre".

Subramaniam, who will be part of a panel discussion titled “In Pursuit Of A Private Language", agrees. “There are plenty of literary festivals happening in India of course, but there aren’t enough for poetry."

The Bengaluru Poetry Festival will be held on 6-7 August, 9.30am-7pm, at The Leela Palace, Bengaluru. For details, visit www.bengalurupoetryfestival.org

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Preeti Zachariah
"Preeti Zachariah is a National Writer with Lounge and edits its health section. She holds a degree in journalism from Columbia University, New York. When she isn't reading fiction or worrying about her own writing, you will find her lifting weights, cuddling a cat, meandering through a park, obsessing over Leonard Cohen or catching up with friends over coffee (or ice cream, if feeling particularly decadent). "
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Published: 04 Aug 2016, 09:46 PM IST
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