Dear friends
We are ready with the upcoming event of Kritya poetry festival – Kritya 2020. Even though this is a virtual endeavor, we have successfully connected with our poets from all parts of the world and originating from all parts of society. We have a number of poets represents Dalit poetry –Anu Lagun (Santhali), Chandramohan (English), Umesh Paswan (Santhali). G Sasi and M B Manoj. P Shivalingan. Who is from the snake charmer tribe writes in his language “Irula”. We acknowledge the significance of marginalized languages that are forgotten or no longer widely used, and are inclusive of them e.g. Yolanda is a poet with a strong voice in the Galician language in Spain, Poets make the language survive by embodying it in their creations. This is the main aim of kritya from an early time.
We also have many poets that raise their voices to fight and struggle for freedom of their own identity – Tenzin Tsundue for Tibet, Hadda Sendoo for occupied Mongolia, Hussein Habasch for Kurdistan, and Agnishekhar for displaced Kashmiris.
We have many European poets from different European countries such as Spain, Turkey, France, Estonia, Italy, Scotland, Denmark, Belgium, Latvia, Hungary, and Welsh. We also have poets from Russia like Vadim Terekhin, Eldar Akhadov, etc, and from Uzbekistan Azam, etc. There are also poets from North America / Mexico. South American Countries like Columbia, Chile, Brazil, have wonderful poetry and we have poets Fernando Rendon, Oscar Saavedra Villarroel (Chile). We did not miss central America-represented by Costa Rica, El Salvador, etc. We invited poets from Nigeria and Egypt to represent the continent of Africa. We have not forgotten even Canada,
We give importance to our neighboring countries even if we are not on politically good terms with them. We want to keep and spread love and affection with them. We have poets from Bangladesh, Nepal, China, Pakistan, etc. to help spread togetherness and brotherhood.
Poets having a strong poetic background are also present among us. We have poets who are social activists as well, such as feminists like Yesim Agaoglu, Muhsine Arda from Turkey, and Chary Gumeta from Mexico.
In addition to poets from all continents, we also have many poets from India as well, spanning various languages like Kannada, Tamil, Rajasthani, Gujrati, Maithili, Karbi (Assam) and Hindi. We invited senior poet Ashok Vajpeyi who is revolutionary and leading the cultural scenario in our country and K Satchidanand who is a strong voice socially and politically.
We have poets specializing in performance poetry like Lello Voce from Italy, Philip Meersman, Augusta Laar, etc.
We have also invited a poet with an interesting background, like Barkat Hoth, who is a descendant of Prince Punnu from Balochistan famous for the love poem
We have a strong group of modern English poetry, which has grown strongly in the past few years. Certainly, they are taking Indian voice to the world.
Being Hindi, my own language, I never forget it. We have a good number of Hindi poets.
Thus Kritya is representing the voice of all continents.
We have five sessions of Kritya live, in which we asked for submission, as kritya is always in search of the poetic voice rooted to the earth. These will be live in the region of the language basically due to time differences in various regions. We are happy that we got some very experienced and some very raw voices of poetry for kritya live.
We will introduce to the world a senior poet from Rajasthan – Kanhaiya Lal Sethiya, who was a great poet, freedom fighter, social worker, reformer, philanthropist and environmentalist.
We will also have a discussion for poetry as therapy based on the book, a fist which opens, a poetry therapy from distancent past to present future. We will introduce the panel soon.
Kritya is celebrating poetry with more than 150 poets
We thank all of them for joining us and being a part of Kritya 2020.
Festival Director
Rati Saxena