In spite of the heavy showers the city faced this eve, it was so very heartening to see intrepid poets brave the shower for the monthly poetry meeting. This month we started a new project called 30/30. A poem-a-day and viola! 30 poems at the end of the month and a nice chapbook!!!

Sivakami has been steadfastly putting up writing prompts everyday and quite useful for those poets who need an inspirational trigger.

The objective of this project is to ensure that as writers/poets we at least jot down a few lines each day. How much of those jottings actually turn out to be quality poems is of course subject to strenous personal critique but it gets one in the writing mode and thats a good thing indeed.

Sivakami, Ambika, KRamesh, Deepika and myself attended this month's meet. Sivakami and myself eagerly awaited turns to share our versions of the writing prompts. Ambika was in a somber mood with poems dealing with mindless bloodshed and its myriad mental afflictions. KRamesh read out his poems published in Kavya Bharati and one of his poems had a very interesting style of presentation. Deepika promised to showcase her poems on the sheer mindnumbing of number-crunching jobs in the next meet.

All in all a joyful reading and workshopping of poems.

But a postscript if I may. I was under the impression that the poetry meeting timings are from 7 - 9 pm but the caretaker, Naresh informs us that it is 7 - 8 and insisted we vacate the premises at 8. While cell phones swung into action - he kindly gave us 15 mins to get our act together to move.

This unfortunately is the second time in a row that this has happened. If I recall the same incident took place in May as well during the Kamala Das poetry meeting. I appreciate it if we could once again confirm the timings. It would help us poets organize ourselves better in time mgmt ensuring ALL poets are given their time slot to present their work.

Thanks fellow travellers!
Kalpana

Back