Bengaluru Poetry Festival 2016: bringing poetry to the world!

They say that poetry is the essence of life and that without poetry life cannot be explained. There was once this time when poetry used to be the soul of every being but then books took over and poetry somewhere fizzed out. I feel glad to be in this industry during a time when poetry is coming back in form and that too in a way, never to go back again.

Media Coverage

The Bengaluru PoetryFestival 2016 was a celebration on poetry, for poets, of poets. Held in one of the finest places of the city, Leela Palace over the first weekend of August (6^th and 7^th August), Bengaluru saw the best of what the world of poetry had to offer. With the likes of Javed Akhtar and Piyush Mishra gracing the event on Day 1 and Day 2 respectively, there couldn’t have been a better place for all the poetry to be together as one.

The Bengaluru poetry festival 2016 was about all forms of art and not just limited to poetry. The festival had Poornima Kaushik who is an exponent of the Vazhuvoor styles of Bharatnatyam perform for the audience who was enchanted with the performance.

The audience also got to see Padma Bhushan Teejan Bai performing what she does best-Pandawani, which is basically a traditional form of performing art. With musical accompaniments by her side, age is not a matter for her because it is art that she lives for.

Since the festival was essentially a poetic affair, RainDrops Company (the publishing partner for the festival) launched its anthology titled Po’try. The best part about this particular collection of poems is that this collection was commissioned specially for the festival by the makers and the published poems a part of a competition held by the association and the publishing house across different social media channels. A total of 157 poets carefully chosen from different parts of the world and from different professions were introduced with this particular collection. A well critiqued actress and poetess, Kamalinee Mukherjee graced the occasion and launched the book.

The release of the poetry collection- Po'try

Kamalinee Mukherjee launching the book

Apart from so many activities happening in and around the festival, there were many workshops that were taking place for both the kids and the adults. These were specially conducted by various well known poets from the industry. Since the release of the collection of short poems by Bengaluru Poetry Festival 2016 and RainDrops Company happened at the venue, there has been a huge rise in the sales of the book, making the venture a huge success. After the festival wrapped up, the collaborators are looking forward to a new year full of new poetry to fill the soul.