For the love of poetry

For the lovers of the poetic tradition, the week promises to be an experience of a lifetime as over 38 poets from 20 Indian languages come together for a unique festival to celebrate Indian poetry.

Presented by Delhi Government’s Department of Art, Culture & Languages and Hindi Academy, the ‘Bhartiya Kavita Bimb’ will be inaugurated by Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit on 6 September, in the presence of Prof Kiran Walia, Minister for Education, Social Welfare, Women & Child Department, Languages and Prof Ashok Chakradhar, eminent Hindi poet and Vice President, Hindi Academy.

The ‘Festival of Indian poetry’ is an attempt to celebrate the richness of Indian languages and the compositions they are producing in an era of globalization and exchange when the West has had a major impact on the culture of the world.

Eminent Hindi poets like Shri Arun Kamal, Shri Mohan Singh, Shri Rajkumar ‘Krishak’, Dr Prabha Pant, will share the festival stage with poets of all Indian languages including the likes of Dr Madan Gopal Ladha (Rajasthani), R Meenakshi (Tamil), Shri Shoaib Eaza (Urdu), Dr Kamini Kamayani (Maithili) and Sadhna Sanyal (Assamese), among several others.

The festival will be held over two days and four sessions during which the poets will come together and recite some of their best works.

The festival is a twin celebration of poetry and the emotions it evokes as well as the poetic evolution of various Indian languages and how they complement each other.

'Be it in Hindi, English, Urdu or Tamil, poetry evokes a sea of emotions. With greater interactions and exchanges between different languages, poetic traditions also evolve over time and grow richer and more beautiful. It has been a tradition of our composite culture that every segment of it has imbibed values from parallel traditions. 

Put in a nutshell, the different languages and cultures in India are so different, yet in a way they are also reflections of each other. This is what we are celebrating,' says Dr Harisuman Bisht, renowned author and Secretary of Hindi Academy.

In a way, the festival is also an attempt to present Indian poetry as a collective unit, rather than classify it into categories of Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Manipuri or Bhojpuri languages. In the opening session of the festival, noted critic Dr. Devendra Chaubey will also present his reading and vision of what Indian poetry as a collective will evolve into over the coming years.

So, if you love the poetic traditions of India, do not miss the festival. It is a rare confluence of diversity and richness.