All-India poetrymeet tomorrow

It will also hold a book exhibition with more than 500 titles

Sahitya Akademi will organise a day-long poetry festival at Jain University on Saturday.

It is their first offline poetry event in Bengaluru since 2020. It is being held to mark Gandhi Jayanti, and 75 years of India’s Independence.

Called All India Poetry Festival, it will host about 20 poets from across the country, including eminent Kannada poets H S Venkatesha Murthy, Chandrashekhar Kambar, and B R Lakshman Rao.

The line-up also includes younger poets like Mallengada Sudha Muthanna, Mithra Alaguvel, and Uthrisar Kungur Basumatary.

They will discuss the future of poetry, and read poems in 15 Indian languages. In a first, poetry readings will also be done in tribal languages like Kodava, and Gondi.

A book exhibition will also be held. “It will have over 500 titles. We will stock children’s literature like ‘Balala Manchi Kathalu’ in Telugu but they will be fewer,” says S P Mahalingeshwar, regional secretary, Sahitya Akademi.

Among the translated works, ‘Kannada Literature — From the eleventh century through the nineteenth century: A reader’ is a great book to look out for, he says.

All India Poetry Festival on October 2, 10 am to 5 pm, at Jain University, JC Road. Entry free.