Poetry with Prakriti is a two-week long festival of poetry held annually in Chennai to coincide with the famed Chennai music season. The festival brings together eminent and emerging poets, featuring readings to small, intimate audiences. These readings take place at several venues in the city, including colleges and cafeteria, IT parks and green public parks and spaces, and select shops and commercial establishments. The idea is to bring poetry closer to the public of Chennai. This year's festival was the fourth edition.

FEEDBACK FOR THIS YEAR'S FESTIVAL

Thank you and your team of volunteers for making PoetrywithPrakriti happen. I wish you 
the very best of luck in keeping this wonderful fest alive! 
 
Cheers, 
Dominic Alapat  

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I am writing to thank you for the rewarding and memorablemoments I had at the Poetry 
with Prakriti festival 2010. This was the first time I read in public and am elated to have 
received a positive response. 
The following is a poem I wrote about the experience:

Thank You
for every word
evening of rain
streets of scaled rhythm
falling into halls
loud with your voices.
Over the gardens
the tables
there is the beat 
of languages ascending
descending.
Into everyone
the birds have dived
from vacant corners of air.
 
In everyone there is song. 
 
Best Wishes,
Dominic Alapat
 

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I thank you and the Prakriti team for your dedication, your vision and your perseverance. 
I really enjoyed being part of Prakriti this year, and each reading - whether at the WCC 
with the curious and bright students and teachers, the MGR Janaki where the girls want to 
break out of their shyness and know more, ask more or even the Alliance Française where 
everyone seemed sleepy :) - has been a learning experience. I think it is amazing what 
you achieve on a tight budget and with a very small team.
 
Warm regards and all good wishes,
Karthika
 

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thanks a lot for all your efforts to realize the Prakriti Festival and our readings and screenings. It
was such an interesting experience for me.

And when we continue, may be next year or later, we do know each other better and know what
we can do better. Than we can prepare all events more precisely. For example when we show
the films in colleges, the students could work about one of the poems before in their classes etc. -
there are a lot of things possible.
  

All best
Christiane

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Dear Everyone at Prakriti, 
Especially Meera, despite her illness kept constant tabs on me and making sure I was 
confortable, Santosh for picking my up from the train station to his gentle shock at my 
speaking tamizh and Bharath for being generally effervescent and chirpy despite the 
calamity of being surrounded by poets. Thank you - Santosh and Bharath - for the hand-
holding through Chennai. 

Thank you, Ranvir, for this initiative, it made a slightly more sure and less nervous poet/
performer out of me. And I know, it has done so to previous participants as well.. To 
imagine, there are even three people in the world besides oneself interested in poetry is 
a desire, but to see these people gathered despite the distance and the rain makes one 
extremely happy and all this because an organisation provides a space - Thank you, 
again. 

I would love to part of any other poetry-related initiatives, you organise. Keep me in the 
loop.
 
Love,
Joshua Muyiwa. 

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Just had to write to you and let you know what a great trip I had. It was quite short 
(unfortunate) but the memories they have left in me are far more than just ephemeral. 
Every aspect of my trip was taken care of - food, travel and the event logistics most 
definitely so, but a special mention to the sparkling attitude of the volunteers at Prakriti. 
They were always ready to help, and they did that with a smile. Kudos on that. I am sure 
that the other poets would have the same to say on this!
  
I would also like to mention that the trip worked even better for me because of the 
interaction between me and the other poets. I had a great time talking to the few poets I 
could meet - Jawits Rajendran, Hemant, Priti, Abha, Suneetha, Hoshang and of course, 
Claus. 

The only regret I have is that I couldn't stay back longer and hear the other poets read. I'll 
correct that the next year, when I come just to be a part of the audience to the poets.
  
Looking forward to more from the Foundation! 
  
Best wishes,
Rohith

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Poetry with Prakriti at Chennai has been a great experience. From the time of my arrival 
to that of departure, the care and consideration shown has been heartwarming. I have 
seen Ranvir flitting from venue to venue, listening to and interacting with the invited 
poets with unflinching enthusiasm, enriching the space with his quiet presence. Meera 
and her gang of volunteers had the logistics in place and the machinery ran smooth, the 
voices soft and firm. The venues, chosen with care, were diverse in both the audience 
and its response. Each was enriching in its own way. Members of The Titan Showroom 
staff said that they had never had the time for poetry and this was a new experience for 
them and made them happy. A young dancer at Kalakshetra touched my heart by asking 
me for a particular poem with which he wants to create a padam! Through this time, I 
also interacted with poets and friends, old and new, and Amethyst became not only a 
place to dine at but a haunt of a kind for me. The Poetry Slam, where I was honoured as a 
Featured Poet, bubbled with noise, music and the voices of young and emerging poets in 
English and Tamil. 

I am grateful to Prakriti for providing a much needed platform to poets, letting us know 
that we are not alone and struggling and that our voice will be heard.

Thank you, everyone at Prakriti. 

~Abha

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Thank you so much for hosting Haikucraze — it was
thank you for giving me an opportunity to try it out.
I think Poetry with Prakriti has great scope and wishing you all the very best in your 
endeavour
  
warmly, 
_kala

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EVENTS AT POETRY WITH PRAKRITI 2010

We will also be hosting “Haikucraze”. Noted Haiku poet Kala Ramesh will lead ‘Ginko‘, Haiku Walks, through and around a chosen area, responding to the event itself. The resulting works will be displayed on a large 18 feet x 6 feet board featuring images, haiku and the haiku-like poems that are written by the participants and people coming to the festival. During the haiku walk, the rules will be explained in a general and easy fashion, and also guide the people as to what to pick up during the walk, so that each participant has something to work on after the walk is over, and the poem which they attempt will be pinned on the haiku wall. . . thus creating Haikucraze! This takes place on 15th December 2010 at Loyola College and on 19th December 2010 at the Semmozhi Poonga .

Bio:
Kala Ramesh comes from an artistic and culturally rich South Indian Tamil family and believes, as her father is fond of saying that "the soil needs to be fertile for the plant to bloom". Kala feels she owes this poetic streak to her mother.
 
Kala has had extensive training in Hindustani classical music, under vidushi Smt. Shubhada Chirmule, focusing on Pandit Kumar Gandharva’s compositions and nirguni bhajans. During these fifteen years, Kala has made a concerted effort to understand the ‘spirit’ behind Kumarji’s style – known for the vigor and the effective throw of his voice. This and the extempore quality of Indian music have taught Kala to think both within and without the box — to be creative, daring and innovative and still adhere to the demands of an art form. 
 
Having been exposed from early childhood to music, dance, painting and poetry, Kala strongly believes each genre feeds into the other, enriching the root source of one's creativity.  This led to her evolving interest in Haiku, the 400 year old art form of Japan. Kala is also keen to see children and adults in India begin to appreciate haiku, and is dedicating her efforts in that direction.

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Sarpa Sutra, based on Arun Kolatkar’s long poem Sarpa Satra, directed, scripted and scored by Gowri Ramnarayan, produced by JustUs Repertory, featuring Sheejith Krishna and Nisha Rajagopalan, weaves together poetry, storytelling, music and dance, to unfold a story from the Mahabharata.

Sarpa Sutra is a tale of revenge and counter revenge, flaming into a cycle of violence that threatens to destroy planet earth.

Two versions of the same story run on parallel tracks: the magisterial intonation of Vyasa in the great epic (Sanskrit), and the sardonic voice of contemporary poet Arun Kolatkar (English). Nannaiya, the classic poet of Telugu, adds his powerful vision.

The Story:

 Urged by fire god Agni, superhero Arjuna and arch trickster Krishna destroy the Khandava forest, the land of the Nagas.

Losing his wife, tribe and forest kingdom in the blaze, serpent king Takshaka takes revenge by assassinating Arjuna’s grandson Parikshit.

Janamejaya, son of Parikshit, performs a colossal ritual sacrifice, to destroy the entire race of snakes.

Serpent woman Jaratkaru, begs her son Astika to stop the genocide.

Can Astika save the planet?

The production raises questions about:

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

Environmental depredation

Extinction of tribes, races, forms of life

Human greed and corruption

Oppression of the weaker segments of life

Need for vigilance against negative forces

Personal responsibility, individual duty

Preservation of values and survival

ARUN KOLATKAR (1932-2004):

A graphic designer and advertising genius turned poet, Arun Kolatkar won the Commonwealth Prize with hisJejuri cycle of poems, declared a world classic by the New York Review of Books.

This bilingual poet’s works in Marathi (Bhijki Vahi, Droan) and English (Kala Ghoda Poems, The Boatride) are stark, spare and hard-hitting, moving from irony to compassion. Kolatkar’s poetry testifies to his unsentimental empathy for the weak, oppressed and exploited sections of humanity, as also his reverence for all forms of life.  

The events is on 26th December at the Chandra Mandala, Spaces, No.1.Elliots Beach Road, Besant Nagar. Chennai at 7 pm.

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The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival

Film and poetry are like the white and black stripes of a zebra: they fit together beautifully. Every two years since 2002 the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is organized by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin and shows the current state of a dynamic, young short film genre which lies somewhere between poetry, film and new media. It has developed into the biggest platform for short films that are based on a poem.

Entries come from all over the World: 2010 more than 900 short films have been sent in from 71 countries. The programme committee has selected 26 of them for the competition. The winners are being selected by an international jury. Apart from the competition, the festival offers various focus topics: Programmes on different themes, a programme for children, retrospectives, colloquia, talks and this year for the first time a German-Israeli Filmworkshop.

The festival offers both makers of poetry films and poets themselves from around the world a forum for fixing positions as well as exchanging ideas and experience – an ever growing group of fans of a genre which has won over even the most suspicious and sceptical in the audience.

The programme presented in Chennai in the Poetry with Prakriti Festival in
collaboration with the Goethe Institut Max Mueller Bhavan shows a best of the last five ZEBRA Poetry Film Festivals, award winning movies and a selection of some of the most interesting poetry films of the last years. The programme will be hosted by Christiane Lange, Vice-director of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin.

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All night music, poetry and dance tribute to the tsunami victims on the 25th of December 2010 at the Spaces, No.1, Elliots Beach Road from 9pm to 5am

(A dance performance ‘ Parivahitam’ by Sapphire Creations, Music Performances by Yodhaka, Ghatam Kharthik and team, Western Classical Guitar Performance.)

Parivahitam: Global perspectives in Motion

Sapphire’s newest production ‘Parivahitam’ is conceived as a cross-journey between an ordered, disciplined and beautiful past and a chaotic, atomized and unhinged present. It is a contemporary take on the discomfort that individuals feel at this present time and the nostalgia that brings solace but not a solution. 

Taking the name from an ancient Indian shiroveda that describes the movement of the head in the form of a ripple, in circular motion from side to side facilitating complete vision of the surrounds from all perspectives. Parivahitam: Global perspectives in Motion conveys a wide-eyed and open-ended vision of an ensemble of youth which is kinetic, dynamic, motivated, energetic and focused and which wants to embark on a journey which can bind and unite the world, break silences and voice a new revolution. 

Inspired by interactions with Roger Sinha from Canada, and Christopher Lechner from Germany, the members of Sapphire engaged in a performance activity that would combine elements of dance which were both Indian and South Asian in spirit and stylistic but with a edge of contemporary improvisatory Western technique which would give it wiry, vivid, expressive, impromptu and agile dimension. Simply, this is a contemporary dance vocabulary that would convey multiple and modern meanings of unison, energy and motion to the audience.

Disbalance is explored with a keen medium of movement that inhabits the watershed between tradition and contemporaneity and evolves into a vision of life through dance that can encourage us to move through these troubled times and hope for a constructive, positive and meaningful time not so far away.

It was performed as the World Premiere in World Dance Alliance's Global Dance Meet '2010 in Bessie Schonberg Theatre at Dance Theatre Workshop in New York in July and now it tours India in 8 cities.

Cast & Credits

Dibyendu Nath(Principal Dancer)

Paramita Saha(Lead female)

Nikita Bhattacharya ( Senior repertory member)

Koushik Das (Senior repertory member)

Ankita Duttagupta( Senior repertory member) and

Sudarshan Chakravorty (Artistic Director)

Concept: Sudarshan Chakravorty & Paramita Saha

Choreography & Artistic Direction: Sudarshan Chakravorty

Costumes: Paramita Saha

Light design: Chandan Sen

Original Live Music: Marc Rossier ( Switzerland )

Choreography collaborators: Roger Sinha ( Canada ), Chiristopher Lechner( Germany )  Michel Casanovas ( Switzerland )

Yodhakaa

Yodhakaa is a contemporary indian music band that evolved around the idea of finding a bridge between the traditional and contemporary. Our music is a collage of all the inspirations and influences we have encountered in our journey as artists.

This, having been the beginning of our expression as Yodhakaa, we hope to evolve, embrace more cultures, languages and people, because we don't want to remain a bunch of  musicians forever. we want to make noise, we want our voices heard... because we have so many things to say, so many messages to send.   

Yodhakaa was founded by ‘Darbuka’ Siva in 2005 with a pretty simple idea of covering songsby various world music artists from different corners of the world and arranging it with an indian twist. pradeep and susha joined a couple of years later, bringing a strong indian classical influence into the band, and took Yodhakaa in quite a different direction. The band was performing often, with a constantly changing line-up of musicians, but managed to carve a niche for their left- of- centre approach.

Though we were doing shows and travelling, we were still on a constant search for a sound that meant more than doing covers, or randomly putting together ideas and hoping it will work. Luckily for us the search ended in january 2009, when we found something, not surprisingly far from our own heritage to carry forward our ideas, through ancient Sanskrit ‘slokams’, dug out from manuscripts and texts, each one towering in significance and value. This made Yodhakaa’s sound what it is today.

People:

'Darbuka' Siva lives his life as music. every thought, every action leads to the next, just as any progression would. still unsure about his origins, he travels around the world everyday on his drum stool, thinking latin, speaking african, playing arabic and joking indian. music is shapes. everything is sound. and once the complicated things break down into shapes and sounds, there is no limit to his imagination. having no formal training in any discipline, he has cracked some secret code that makes everything accessible... that turns everything into a form of art.

Pradeep has always been one to take in a lot... and when you least expect it, bring it out in something beautiful... something he knows best- his music. classically trained, his guns in his pocket, he brought yodhakaa a face of cool logic and clear thought. a person of musical intellect and a vehicle of the knowledge of emotions, he may sound like a single clear bell ringing far away, or he may shatter silence with an ensemble of bells, chimes and gongs.

As all artists like to say, there is no sense in staying in one place forever, for we are in constant search for new stimuli. a true carrier of the 'Yodhakaa' spirit, all Susha needs are a couple of arrows, and on the pathway she leaves behind, you will find wild flowers, strewn bits of drapery, fruits left rolling, half dressed girls, swirls, single eyes, open hands with designs of unknown origins... for everything can be expressed with a couple of charcoal sticks, a voice and a pair of hands.

Our album

For our first album, we experimented with Sanskrit- a grand old language that tells the tale of our country. We have given our expression and our sound to the Sanskrit ‘slokams’, by layering them with broad vistas of musical influences, not just from india, but from all around the world, to create more than a sound. together, we've created a whole plethora of emotions, imagination, sounds, thoughts and soul with some of the most interesting and phonetically valued verses in Sanskrit.

Yodhakaa will also feature some special guest acts in this show.

Dr."Ghatam" S.KARTHICK

Dr. Karthick is one of the shining star artistes on Ghatam-the captivating clay pot percussion instrument. His creative originality, distinct stage-presence, vibrant virtuosity, nimble fingers and a nimbler mind have earned him a special place in various genres of music. A most sought after percussionist in Indian Classical Carnatic Music, Dr.Karthick has travelled all over the world with his wonder pot has shared the stage with almost all top artists of the day and has been featured in many respected festivals in various prestigious venues like the 'United Nations'. Leading the popular Heartbeat Ensemble, Dr.Karthick also frequently collaborates with international artistes and features regularly as one of the most in-demand percussionists in the Indian film industry. Dr.Karthick has given articulate lecture-demonstrations and workshops at various institutions in India & abroad. Dr. Karthick has been a recipient of many Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards. Academically Karthick holds a Doctorate in Sanskrit and a Masters in Indian Music from the University of Madras. 

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Here are the winning entries from this year's contest.

Happenings

So often, this sort of thing will happen.
A man will meet a woman and find his voice
is deeper than a well in the sort of village the
Central Ground Water Board has notified ‘dark’, where
you aren’t allowed to dig tube-wells any more, and you need
to be registered with the district authorities
to get a new hand-pump outside the kitchen, and where
you itch all over, after a bath.

Or, a woman will meet a man and will find that her eyes
are flood-prone: low-lying swamps, the sort into which
the rubbish of decades of suburban non-planning has been tossed,
making them look hard when actually, you could just sink
into them. Especially when it rains.

Often, a man will meet a woman and find that his gut
is a sort of womb: a space in which something grows
from seed to obsession, where his roots curl into the certainty of failure.
An instinctive sort of space that swells and contracts and
even bursts. Like a second, misplaced heart.

Or, a woman will meet a man and will find
her arms are collapsible, like a set of folding chairs
creaking in the sort of balcony that gets swept once
a week by a servant who has turned into a domestic cry
for help: a servant with fifty layers of lard dimpling
her elbows and a lumpy belly, who stares off into space
leaving the chairs out in the rain, rusting.

Often, a man will meet a woman and find

a mountain on his back: a dusty hump at the base of his neck,

floating low like brown fog, and things are uphill

or downhill from here on. But there is no stopping

from here on.

Or, a woman will meet a man and find the distance from
highway to home triples overnight, and that some nights
are three times as long as others: when bad news
has crawled back all the way from the city center, riding
between sheets of the morning paper, which arrived two hours after
he left the house, six rotis wrapped in the torn aanchal of her oldest saree.
The sort of night that cannot bear to end.

So often, this sort of thing happens, that a man and a woman find

a word buried behind the balls of their eyes, and they dig all around.
They will speak of fish, the price of things, the temperature outside.
They will bite into the word held as a cube of ice in their throats.
They have seen mountains fold up in despair, but they swear
they will beat another year out of this one: hauling home a cutting wind
or boiling river, or a flower. They will kidnap oasis noons to string a sagging cot.
They will not say it, but they will sit, dumb. Defiant of what may come.

(C) Annie Zaidi

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Proserpine

Air confuses her. She catches herself
falling into the sky and apologizes:
I thought that was a step up or, I can’t
help myself. You offer her an arm, she
leaves it hanging. She finds mirrors
make her look fat, her hair
marcescent. A trick of the light,
you say to her, you are beautiful. You call
her neck an ‘ivory tower’. The mirror
names it an urn. When she sings,
her voice flits like ashes.

You take long walks where the park exhales
like an open tomb. You lead her to grass
and a shared cigarette. You talk through
smoke. Your hand, a sparrow she bats away.
A wall of creepers crowds in on her shoulder.
Your dry lips crack. The silence pins
you down. She grabs at wildflowers the grass
gifts her. A moment pauses; you see
her tense into marble. There, from some
necrotic hole in the grass, a pilgrim
slug pores over her ankle
like a tongue.

Thanks & Regards,

Krishnakumar Sankaran

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Love Poem

-What King Shantanu said through the messenger swan to Ganga

Ganga,

You’ve always been a bit of an updraft. With the emotional willingness of a talipot, you sat in your intellectual high towers, too uncomfortable for feelings, and an absolute reluctance to break the brick wall.

You’ve agonized life out of me, you’ve riled my eyes like glass dust and your voice is a maddening clang of metal cups in my ear drums. You’ve never been much of a conversational pleasure either. You are like one of those prayers not worth making.

One by one you killed our seven children and for that, in my head, I’ve cooked up the cruellest punishments for you. Like a wilderness cabin, your calculated silence intimidated me. I’m beginning to think it was all deliberated intrigue, to keep me interested? Because clearly, you could issue waves of happiness when you felt like it. There wasn’t a day without something unsaid and left to the imagination. Your hair is an undercurrent of darkness. I like the way you looked down upon me, like an apparition. You weren’t shy to mix blue and lemon or other unsubtlities. You could be soft or coarse - What could I make of your mood swings? You could conjure a symphony in red or tease the nape of my neck with a measure of rope.

The pepper corns are lush now; they climb the sandalwood with practised flair. The crop is ready for harvest and all this reminds me of our maximum intimacy- I looked into your eyes hoping for a glimmer of approval, or in bolder times, love, but you simply stared back like a buck that had choked on something. Then you did your hair and walked away like I was a completed chore.

Listen, you’ve always been a bit of a drama queen. You rebelled in silence, punished me with indifference and behaved with the insolence of an elephant in musth. What you did hold inside, was full of innuendos. Like a deft mongoose you knew the value of negative space. You could launder your nonchalance for clever negotiations and I settled for your red chequered saree. You could walk out to the sea and call it a drab show, your head lowered in gentle contemplation and a real sense of tyranny. You could wrestle me down with a childlike joy and I’ve seen you speak to ghosts at night, with a slight tilt of head, not to harm the general composition.

You’ve said the ghastliest things, like a night time hag, but also given me a moment’s peace with your softly angled eyes and perceptible smile.

I can tell you were afraid. A filicidal murderess insecure. I know you atone. Your guilt is a tangible source of pleasure to me. But tell me one thing Ganga - Why did you leave? Was it guilt or did you fear morality?

That your skin would shrivel and limbs turn bony and that you would become that white wall out framed by a mirror. That you would lose enigma with age ? Or did you as you have always feared, fall in love too?

©Abirami A.Velliangiri

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Abha Iyengar is an internationally published poet and writer. Her publication credits include an essay on Population in ‘Science, Technology and Development’ (Wiley Eastern), prize winning haiku in Life Positive, and she is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology Contest winner. Her poems were displayed at Roanoke, Virginia, U.S.A. She has recited poetry at the International Writers Festival-India. She has inaugurated poetry readings at the Assam Sahitya Sabha and participated in ‘spoken word’ performances at Delhi. Her video reading, “Side by Side, Not to Collide” is online at The Poetry Channel (U.K.). Her story, 'The High Stool ' was nominated for the Story South Million Writers Award. She has been published in Dead Drunk Dublin, Arabesques Review, Gowanus Books, Bewildering Stories, Mannequin Envy, Kritya, Danse Macabre and others. Readings from her micro fiction have been broadcast overseas by A.I.R. Her themes are women, spirituality, travel, urban angst, myth and fantasy. Her poem-film, "Parwaaz", has won a Special Jury prize in Patras, Greece. Her book of poems, "Yearnings" has been published in 2010 (Serene Woods, India).  She is recipient of the Lavanya Sankaran Writing Fellowship for 2009-2010. Her website: www.abhaiyengar.com. She blogs at: http://www.abhaiyengar.blogspot.com

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Alok Bhalla obtained his Master’s in English from Delhi University and Ph D from Kent State University, USA. Elected to the Executive Council of the Sahitya Akademi, he is the Convener of its English and North Indian Languages Board. He was a Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Fellow at the Rockefeller Centre, Bellagio, Italy and Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Amongst his recent publications are Stories about the Partition of India (3 volumes), Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home and The Place of Translation in a Literary Habitat, Life and Times of Saadat Hasan Manto (edited). He is the author of TheCartographers of Hell: Essays on the Gothic Novel and the Social History of England and The Politics of Atrocity and Lust: The Vampire Tale and a Nightmare History of England in the 19th Century. He has translated Dharamvir Bharati’s, Andha Yug into English verse, as well as the fiction of Nirmal Verma Raat Ka Reporter (Dark Dispatches),  Intizar Husain’s Chronicle of the Peacocks, Ram Kumar’s TheSea and Other Stories, Manto, and others, and the poems of Udayan Vajpai, Kedarnath Singh, Kunwar Narain etc. He used to edit Yatra:Writings from the Indian Subcontinent (6 volumes). 

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Anju Makhija is a poet, playwright, translator and free-lance writer. She has a M.A in Communications from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and has worked in the fields of education, training and television. Her plays include If Wishes Were Horses, The Last Train (shortlisted for the BBC World Playwrighting Award ‘99), Encounter with Lord Yama, Now She says She is God, Cold Gold and Total Slammer Masala with European Director, Michael Laub. Her other works include, All Together a multi-media production that won an award at The National Film Festival, California (’85) and a book poems View From The Web. She has also co-edited an anthology of partition poetry entitled Freedom and Fissures and translated the verse of the 16th century sufi mystic, Shah Abdul Latif Seeking the Beloved.

She is the recipient of the commendation prize (’93) and first prize (’94) in The All India Poetry Competition organized by the British Council and the Poetry Society of India. She also won the second prize in The BBC World Poetry Competition (’02) Makhija has co-edited a 3-volume series of plays by Indo-English Playwrights and an anthology of women’s poetry, We Speak in Changing Languages. Her new book of poems, Pickling Season will be out shortly.

She is actively involved in the literary milieu and was on the English Advisory Board of Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. (’03 to ’08) Currently, she co-organizes the activities of Culture Beat, Press Club, Mumbai and writes a column for Confluence, UK.

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Danish writer, artist and intergalactic traveller, working situationistically with spokenwords and live-literature, poetry, fiction, installation, video- and soundscapes, painting and various cross-over forms. Originally educated in Cultural Anthropology and Communications at Universities in Aarhus (AAU), Copenhagen (KU) and Santa Barbara (UCSB), Claus Ankersen constantly examines and questions the human condition. Claus Ankersen has been instrumental in the development of Danish
spoken word, and is a legendary figure in Danish Slam Poetry, although he only competes with him self and his artistic strive towards deeper understanding of man.

Recently Claus Ankersen has focused on his international career, and in 2008-10 he worked, exhibited, performed and created in New York, Istanbul, Oslo, Helsinki, Berlin, Chennai and Copenhagen Claus usually works on many simultaneous projects.

HOMEPAGES:
www.clausankersen.dk / www.myspace.com/clausankersen / www.youtube.com/clausankersen
www.facebook.com/clausankersen / www.reverbnation.com/clausankersen

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Danish Husain aka Dan Husain is a poet, actor, and a storyteller. His work has published in literary journals and anthologies in India, South Africa, and Canada. With his friend Mahmood Farooqui he has been trying to revive the lost art form of storytelling "Dastangoi" since 2006. And as an actor he'd be seen in the next two Aamir Khan Productions' films. He lives in Delhi, Mumbai, Detroit, and wherever the next performance is.

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Dominic Alapat’s poems have appeared in nth position, decomP, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, Inclement Poetry Magazine and The Poet’s Haven. He lives in Mumbai and blogs at www.woodsmoke.wordpress.com.

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Hemant Mohapatra’s work has appeared in various international literary magazines. Recipient to the Harper Collins (India) Poetry Prize – 2008, he was also honor-rolled at TFA Award for Creative Writing – 2010 and shortlisted for 3QD Arts and Literature Prize. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, traveling, photography, and playing the piano.

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Joshua Muyiwa, 24, started writing because he was told, ‘it is time to stop seeming arty and pretentious and actually earn the tags by doing something'. He is queer: In Bangalore, he's either at Koshy’s drinking tea and smoking, drinking beer at Temptations Wines or at Jal Bhavan, Bannerghatta Road working as Dance Editor at TimeOut Bengaluru.

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Currently studying at Pune University, J.Rajendran has called various cities in India, Armenia and the United States home. His portfolio portrays his passion for poetry and street photography.

Rajendran is inspired by cities he describes as boundless amount of people, competing for space, struggling to live with comfort and contentment. Most recently, he has focused on capturing the daily lives of residents in Pune and Chennai. Rajendran finds his relevant ideas in the undulating curves of life - love, heartbreak, places seen, places waiting to be seen, people, and their constant need for change. He hopes his poetry will remain the people's microphone for the complexities governing life today.

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Karthika Nair is a journalist, producer and author. She has worked at various Parisian organizations like the Grande Halle de la Villette, the Cite de la Musique, the Maison des Cultures du Monde, the Centre Nationale de la Danse and, more recently, at Cite Nationale de L'histoire de L'immigration as Head of Production and Art Programming.Her poems have been published in Sahitya Akademi's journalIndian Literature, Penguin's 60 Indian Poets and the Blood axe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, and The Literary Review. HarperCollins India published B(e)arings, her first collection, in June 2009.

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At present Nongkynrih is Associate Professor in the Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. He is the recipient of the first Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National Award for literature conferred by the Government of Madhya Pradesh (2008) and also the recipient of the first North-East Poetry Award conferred by the North-East Poetry Council, Tripura (2004). 

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Menka Shivdasani is a founder member of Poetry Circle, which began in Mumbai in 1986. Her first book of poems, Nirvana at Ten Rupees, was published by XAL-Praxis in 1990, and was described by Bruce King as “one of the best first books of poetry to appear during the 1990s” (Modern Indian Poetry in English, Revised Edition, OUP, 2001.) Her second poetry collection Stet appeared in 2001. Menka is also co-translator of Freedom and Fissures, an anthology of Sindhi Partition poetry, published by the Sahitya Akademi in 1998. She has recently edited an anthology of women’s writing, which forms part of a series being brought out by SPARROW. 

Menka's poems have appeared in several publications, both in India and
in other countries. These include Poetry Review (London), Poetry
Wales, Fulcrum (USA), Many Mountains Moving (USA), ARC (Canada), and Literature Alive (New Writing from India and Britain). Her work has also appeared in collections such as An Anthology of New Indian English Poetry (Rupa and Co.) Confronting Love (Penguin India) and Fulcrum's Give the Sea Change and It Shall Change. Her poems have been included in We Speak in Changing Languages: (a Sahitya Akademi anthology), the Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, 60 Indian Poets (Penguin Books India), Both Sides of the Sky (National Book Trust) and Interior Decoration: Poems by 54 women from 10 Languages (Women Unlimited). Menka’s poems have been translated into Marathi, Malayalam and Gujarati. 

Menka is director of The Source, a content and communications company based in Mumbai. She has co-authored eight books with Raju Kane, two of which were released by the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

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Nabina Das lives two lives, shuttling between USA and India. Her first novel “Footprints in the Bajra” is available from Cedar Books, India, while her poetry, short stories and essays have been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies in North America, Asia and Australia, the very recent ones being Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi, India), Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly (US) and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong). An Associate Fellow for the prestigious Sarai-CSDS "City as Studio" Fellowship 2010 (New Delhi, India), she has worked on a project called "The Migrant City", a collection of short poems and prose poems inspired by visual artists' representations of the City as well as the philosophical notion of City as an urban domain. 

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Peter Griffin lives in New Bombay and works for Forbes India, a business magazine, where he handles a section of the magazine which has nothing to do with business, and plays with social media. He has compered live shows, sold ad space, done PR, wrote ads, done voice-overs, been a part-time RJ, hosted a TV show, wrote freelance travel and other features, produced websites, consulted on communication, and assisted NGOs. For free, he has done all of the above, plus blog, experiment with online collaboration, speak at events he was invited to and organise literature festivals (the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and the Celebrate Bandra Festival). He co-founded the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog, which became the World Wide Help group, an informal collective of volunteers for online disaster relief. He also co-founded Caferati, an international forum for writers in English (which also has a Madras chapter), and is co-moderator of their forumand joint editor of their publishing company, Caferati Creative.
He has written copious quantities of poetry, some of it intentionally bad (he is the founder and host of Godawful Poetry Fortnight). He won India's first SMS poetry contest, and has had a few poems published in newspapers, for which he got real money, of which he is inordinately proud. You can read some of his prose at http://yourchequeisinthemail.blogspot.com/ and his poetry at http://paeansandaches.blogspot.com/

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Priti Aisola

I was a student of English Literature at the Central University of Hyderabad and completed my M Phil from there in 1983. My dissertation was on Lord Byron’s Gothic Tales and Dramas.

My husband Ravi Shankar Aisola is in the Indian Foreign Service and, as a result, I have traveled a fair bit. We have lived in France, Ivory Coast, Syria and Hungary. In these countries where we were posted I taught English Language and Literature to middle and high school students at International schools. I have also taught English as a Foreign Language (EFL, also known as ESOL) to children and adults. Living in different countries and experiencing a variety of cultures has been a very fruitful and enriching experience. At the same time, it has taught me to value the home that one has left behind and to treasure actively the traditions that one never leaves behind. Moving from one country to another has tested my ability to adapt to something radically foreign, accept a new way of life and learn to create a home away from home. We are back in India now after ten years abroad, including a three and a half year stay in Paris; it was our second posting there. My husband is now a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and has been posted to Hyderabad as Head of the Branch Secretariat of MEA. It is both wonderful and challenging to be back in one’s home city after twenty years.

My first book See Paris for Me has been published by Penguin. It was released on October 15, 2009. My experiences abroad have inspired and shaped its creation. Presently, I am working on a travelogue. It is nearly complete. While it primarily speaks of my journeys to temple towns in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, it also has two chapters on my re-experience of Paris and a chapter on Saint Malo, when I returned to France in December 2007 for a fortnight’s holiday. Some of my shorter work, for example poems and travel pieces, have appeared in the following e-journals: Muse India, India Writes, and Danse Macabre. I have also participated in three Muse Meets (a meeting of writers to share their work) organized by Muse India here in Hyderabad.

See Paris for Me was launched in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai, in association with the Alliance Française in each of these cities. In the first three cities, it was a part of the Bonjour India Festival of France in India.

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Thachom Poyil Rajeevan is a Kerala-based bilingual writer. In English, he has published two poetry collections, Kannaki and He Who was Gone Thus and edited an anthology of poems Third Word: Post Socialist Poetry with the Croatian poet Lana Derkac. In Malayalam, he writes under the name T P Rajeevan and his published works include four poetry collections, Vathil, Rashtratantram, Koritharichanal and Vayalkkare Ippolilltha; an essay collection, Athe Akasham Athe Bhoomi; a travelogue, Purappettupokunna Vakku; and a novel, Paleri Manikyam: Oru Pathirakolapathakathinte Katha which was made into an award winning movie.

Rajeevan is a regular contributor to leading magazines in Malayalam and English and now writes a fortnightly column, Past Forward, in The New Sunday Express.

Rajeevan’s poems have been translated into fourteen languages including French, Italian, Polish, Macedonian, Uzbek, Croatian and Hebrew. He was awarded the International Visiting Programme Fellowship by the US Department of States. He participated in the Iowa University’s International Writing Programme (IWP) in 2004 and held a Ledig House International Residency in 2008 at Hudson, New York.

Founder editor of Yeti Books, Rajeevan now is director of its poetry imprint, Monsoon Editions.

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Rohith Sundararaman was born in Madras, India in 1984 but has lived most of his living life in Bombay, India. He began writing (short stories) at the age of 21 and turned to poetry at the age of 22. He is a graduate of Life Sciences from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. He has also done a MBA. Currently, he works for STAR India as an air-time salesman.

In his free time, Rohith also turns to photography as a mode of communication. 

Rohith's poetry and photography can be found online at The Gud Magazine, Eclectica, The Asian Cha, The Two Review, Ghoti Mag, Right Hand Pointing, Pratilipi and other places. His poem 'Clearing Up the Waterway' (first published at The Two Review) was adjudged as the best of the submissions by Poet Laureate Marvin Bell.

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Suneetha.B is a writer and independent journalist and writes and translates into two languages, English and Malayalam. She writes fiction and poetry and has three published translations to credit. Her stories are included in the Vaani anthology, the Celebrations anthology of the Asian Writer initiative, both published from the U.K. and showcasing Asian writing and Ripples, an anthology of short stories from Indian women writers. She has also published in Muse India as also in various web magazines. Her first novel is in progress. She was a writer-in-residence with the Sangam House International Writer’s Residency in 2008-09. Suneetha lives in Trivandrum.

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