City celebrates a Bengali poetry festival

Like every year, West Bengal Poetry Academy organised Kobita Utsav — the biggest Bengali poetry festival — in the city recently. This year, with simultaneous events going on at five different venues encompassing Rabindra Sadan, Sisir Mancha, Nandan-3, Bangla Academy Sabhagriha and Abanindra Sabhaghar for a period of four days, the festival was celebrated with much glory and grandeur.Nearly 550 participants took part in the festival.
Various poets and literary scholars came together to make the event a success. The festival witnessed several sessions of poetry recitation and readings as well as panel discussions on multiple topics revolving around the world of poetry. “With involvement of so many poets, literary thinkers and professors throughout four days and in five different venues, we can very rightly call it one of the biggest poetry festivals in the country,” said Subodh Sarkar, chairman, Bengal Poetry Academy.

One of the major highlights of the event was the Nandan gathering which included special sessions on poetic themes, genres, influences, roles, and contributions of poets like Allen Ginsberg, Buddhadeva Bose, Birendra Chattopadhyay, Subhash Mukhopadhyay and Kedarnath Singh. Dignitaries from the field of literature like Samantak Das, Chinmoy Guha, Ritam Mukherjee, Krishna Bose, Kusum Khemani and Angshuman Kar, among others,preceded over different sessions at the festival.

“This time we noticed a lot of involvement from the youth and it feels great to see them getting involved in sectors of art, like poetry and recitation. It made me feel younger and alive,” shared Urmimala Bose. Bratati Bandyopadhyay, who was also present at the event, said, “I have attended the festival every day since the inauguration. So many wonderful sessions of poetry and recitation were nothing less than a delight.”