The Bengaluru Poetry Festival presented by Atta Galatta will be held online this year. Due to prevailing pandemic conditions, Atta Galatta will release all content including readings, videos, performances, talks and interviews on the Bengaluru Poetry Festival site and social media on August 9.
This annual poetry festival was conceptualised by Subodh Sankar and Lakshmi Subodh, who co-founded Atta Galatta. This year, the festival revolves around poets whose work reflect an Indian ethos.
Lakshmi Subodh and Subodh Sankar
One of the highlights of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival will be a reading of the works of Telugu poet Varavara Rao, who was arrested in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case. Kannada poet Pratibha Nandakumar has curated a selection of his poems that have been translated into other languages and these will be presented at BPF. “Pratibha and other poets will be reading Varavara Rao’s poems at the festival,” says Subodh.
As always, the poets presenting their work this year were chosen by invitation based on their body of work. While the lockdown has played spoilsport for many an event this year, the organisers of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival have used it as an opportunity to represent poets from around the world who may have been unable to attend under normal circumstances.
“The works of a number of people from abroad who represent Indian voices have been curated for this year’s selection of poetry. There are so many Indian voices who physically don’t live in India right now, but culturally they are Indian voices or Indian by nature,” he says, citing the example of Meera Dasgupta, a 16-year-old girl born and raised in America, who is the 2020 Youth Poet Laureate of the United States.
Rajiv Mohabir, a powerful voice in among America’s LGBTQ community, will also be doing a reading of his work this year. “Of Guyanese Indian descent, Mahabir’s poetry is essentially trilingual. Though he writes in English, his mother tongue is Bhojpuri and having grown up as a Guyanese Indian, he speaks Guyanese Creole and his poetry reflects an Indian ethos,” says Subodh.
Bengaluru Poetry Festival 2019
Annie Finch, a senior poet who compiled an anthology on women’s voices focussing entirely on the topic of abortion as well as four Indian poets who contributed to that anthology, will also be presenting their work at the festival.
“We reached out to Paris-based Karthika Nair — a well-respected name in poetry, performance art and dance. She not only agreed to participate, but will also be presenting a performance poetry piece with Marilyn Hacker, a legend in world poetry,” says Subodh, obviously thrilled with the panellists.
Hussain Haidry, the firebrand poet whose works in Hindi and Urdu galvanised crowds in Delhi protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act, novelist Tabish Khair whose first book of poetry is out, Asiya Zahoor from Kahmir and Rudrakshi Bhattacharjee are some others who will be featured at this year’s festival.
The Bengaluru Poetry Festival will be held on August 9 and can be viewed at www.bengalurupoetryfestival.org
