Honouring 25 years of poetry

A poetry festival in the city is all set to enthrall poetry lovers over the weekend.  The Mumbai Poetry Festival celebrates 25 years of a poetry movement that started as Abhidha — a literary magazine in 1992, brought out by poet and editor, Hemant Divate.  

Smruti Divate, the festival director sheds light, “Poets from across the city and elsewhere will be participating for the festival. Award-winning poets such as Adil Jussawalla, Jayanta Mahapatra, Keki Daruwalla, K. Satchidanandan and Eunice de Souza will read alongside many established and upcoming poets. Prominent Gujarati poets Prabodh Parikh and Kamal Vora, as well as Marathi poets Sanjeev Khandekar and Sachin Ketkar will also be among those presenting their work.”

One of the themes of the festival is “Readings for Peace”. The keynote address will be delivered by Salil Tripathi, eminent human rights journalist and Chair of PEN International's Writers in Prison Committee.

In a scenario where popular publishing houses have stopped publishing poetry, the festival will see the release of seven books, “This is definitely something to celebrate.  Seven poetry books, published by Paperwall, namely, Adil Jussawalla’s Gulestan, Rati Saxena’s Scripted in the Streams, Ashraf Aboul-Yazid’s The Memory of Silence, Anand Thakore’s Seven Deaths and Four Scrolls, Medha Singh’s Ecdysis, Arjun Rajendran’s The Cosmonaut in Hergé’s Rocket and Ashwani Kumar’s Banaras and The Other, will also be released at the festival,” Smruti shares.

On April 22 and 23, 10 am to 5.20 pm
At New Conference Hall, Main Campus,Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Chembur