Bengaluru: “Poetry is a language at its most distilled and most powerful form,” said Rita Dove, an American poet. Celebrating this power, poetry lovers in the city can look forward to a two-day long treat of poetry readings, workshops and other even this weekend at Atta Galatta.
This first of a kind festival in the city, to be held on August 6 and 7, will have big names such as Javed Akhtar, Manohar Shetty, Piyush Mishra and many others taking part.
Spread over 34 sessions, a total of 67 artistes, including poets, musicians and performers are expected to take part. It will provide a platform for poets in English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Maithili and many other languages. Artistes from city-based groups like Airplane Poetry Movement, Let Poetry Be and Poetry At The Park, which encourage local community of poets, are also expected to showcase their talent.
According to Subodh Shankar, co-founder of Atta Galatta, after witnessing a lot of artistic performances across the city, he felt that poetry was not being represented exclusively as much. That is when the idea of having a poetry festival calling all poets, big and small, aspiring and published, came to him.
“Poetry here has a large, rabid following, that cuts across all demographic barriers, but the amount of representation, is less. The objective of this festival is breaking the divide between the performer and the audience,” he said. The event venue will also feature “Life in Troubled Waters”, a photo exhibition.
Elaborating about the events at the poetry festival, the founder of Open Sky Slam, Shruti Acharya, gave an interview to this newspaper. Here are the excerpts.
‘A good opportunity to introduce classics to young people’
What is the objective of the BPF, other than being a celebration of everything poetry?
Poetry is the best and the most recorded form of expression. It remains with you forever on paper. Four lines, eight lines, it can speak volumes about how you feel. Poetry in general looks sort of offbeat compared to other forms of art like dancing or singing. This is a big opportunity to build a community and introduce classic age old poetry to young people. This is a great exposure for them, also a platform. It is like challenging mainstream entertainment.
What are your expectations from the BPF?
I have high hopes for the BPF. It’s a free entry event; the same team that organized the Lit fest in December is working on this. We have legends coming in and performing alongside the poets, which will definitely help inspire young minds. I’m very excited and really looking forward to the weekend. We are expecting a headcount of about five thousand.
