World poets’ meet opens in Ballari

Poets from across the world -about 50 in all -have gathered in Ballari for an event described as the first of its kind in Karnataka.

Called Sangam, A Confluence of Poets, it got off to a lively beginning, and witnessed stormy moments when a man in the audience, offended by a poem about an unnamed ‘dictator’, started heckling the poet.

Each session had four to six speakers on stage, including a Kannada poet, a poet from an Indian language other than Kannada, and a poet from abroad. In the session after the inauguration, Wilson Kateel read out his Kannada poem ‘The dictator should have fallen in love’. It was received with applause, but as it was ending, a man in a yellow shirt interrupted the reading, and insisted the dictator be named.

When he didn’t calm down, H S Shivaprakash, well-known Kannada poet and curator of the festival, walked up to the mic and said, “Not all things can be spelt out in poetry.”

When the man continued to protest, shouting slogans in praise of Modi, many in the audience countered him with their own slogan, ‘Poetry zindabad,’ and demanded an encore from Wilson. He came back and read a few lines from the sardonic poem again. The protester was eventually escorted out.

The three-day meet was inaugurated by Chandrashekhar Kambar, chairman of the Sahitya Akademi. He had set out from Bengaluru on Thursday but had to alight from the train soon after boarding as he had felt unwell. He addressed the gathering remotely.

Diti Ronen, poet from Israel, read poems about being Jewish and making a reluctant visit to Auschwitz, while Iranian poet Maryam-Ala-Amzadi hoped a day would come when poets would 'speak fearlessly without metaphors.’

Shivaprakash explained why he had called the festival Sangam: besides referring to a confluence of poets, the name also evoked Tamil poetry of the 3rd century, and saint-poet Basavanna signature in his vachanas--’Koodalasangama deva’ or ‘lord of the meeting rivers’.

The festival, which also includes an exhibition and sale of books, is being held at the Ballari Institute of Technology and Management.

District in-charge minister B Sriramulu, who spoke on the occasion, said the Vijayanagara region was known for its love of poetry since king Krishnadevaraya’s time, and poets were truth seekers.