Rochelle Potkar's Blog, page 50

My poetry readings at the Bangaluru poetry festival 2017: Video

Here comes the video,straight from my inbox:

My poem, ‘Ground up’ wins third place at The David Burland poetry prize 2017

[I will share the poem soon, but for now…]

 

Hello Rochelle,

We are pleased to confirm that you have been awarded  ‘Third Prize’ in the David Burland Poetry Prize 2017 for: Ground Up

 

Well done!

 

Your certificate and prize will follow during September 2017.

 

Best wishes,

Pat Carter

August

I don’t particularly have a favorite month but August is turning out to be that.

Memory takes me back to Iowa and its International Writing Program, 2015.

Oh! It’s just grown richer, sweeter like port wine – this fact – in remembrance.

Then August is the birth month of my daughter.

This August I traveled way too much to suit my feathers, forget my wings.

Bangaluru

Goa

Coimbatore

All three places received my poetry with interest, delight, and appreciation that it puzzled me.

I have grown so used to not hearing much in Mumbai – my congested city, that I have perversely gotten used to enjoying a certain, constipated quiet.

How have these other cities, and places let their systems loose? Maybe because of fresher air?

It has ruffled my feathers, knocking my heart doors open.

I remember hilariously an incident where two-three hostile women poets took to deconstructing my work rather devilishly – and mind you there was nothing about “constructive criticism” here. Plain green hostility for being selected to go to Iowa.

Their aim was to undermine confidence. It didn’t work, though.

Ulta, I took two of their saggy-braggy pieces and stripped phrases and words bare. In took me no time dismantling paper flowers.

But I did not enjoy the experience one bit.

I realized it takes little to destroy.

But tremendous joy (and catharsis) to make.

Not only do I like creating, curating, but also workshopping students as young as 12 to take to words, love them, drink them, digest them, spit them, weave them on paper. I tell them their evolutionary artist arcs are as long as they breathe and live, and work, and no one NO ONE can write them off.

On one hand creating and co-creating, I couldn’t continue the act of destruction. So I let these dissing women be. [FYI: these are not established poets – more of the emerging kinds – and need to push, elbow around to feel good.]

I gave up that revenge hobby then, leaving them to theirs, going back to what i do best: dreaming away into the melting goldenness.

 

And it hasn’t ever bothered me.

August is also for turning on a new leaf of not minding venom. If life gives you little green snakes, make venom pickle, snake mocktail, forked-tongue fry. Basically a new menu on the long list of lunch items.

And some port wine, please.

*

[Excerpt from a verse-essay I wrote:]

The other day a man called

from this ecosystem

to warn that there were shapes waiting for me to fall, to stumble.

i laughed so hard.

That after i went to Iowa and Scotland

i better not make any mistakes.

i laughed so hard.

He meant these imaginary shapes

were waiting to take away

my right to making mistakes,

of experimenting

i laughed so hard.

Do i fear stumbling, i asked myself.

No, came the answer.

i have always experimented,

in structure, style, content –

that’s how i reached iowa-scotland in the first place,

So if any shape is waiting for me to stumble

i promise you i will,

but i will get up in the very next instance.

Wait to see the whole thing, (if you must).

And forget about undermining my confidence.

[Are you seriously that daft?]

 

*

Okay now on a more practical note: My haibun book is in the offing. It will come when it comes.

There is a book of short stories on the anvil. It too will come when it comes.

There is also a poetry book (no. 2)  happening somewhere. That too will happen when it happens.

I am in no hurry. And no external pressure works on me.

Slither away, now, hostile critic, you are not THAT important.

 

 

Coimbatore for the Caesurae International Conference

This conference was a cauldron. Jayita Sengupta put together the most interesting mix of academicians, translators, scholars, researchers, musicians and poets together. It was a flabbergasting experience and I say that in residue. Now that I ponder over all the sessions that went on.

A few pics.

Of a panel of poetry readings

Of poetry and music

Of a lec/dem on haibun

Of the amazing surroundings

For more, visit  https://www.caesurae.org/. Become a member, if you so wish.

Coimbatore for the Caesurae International Conference.

This conference was a cauldron. Jayita Sengupta put together the most interesting mix of academicians, translators, scholars, researchers, musicians and poets together. It was a flabbergasting experience and I say that in residue. Now that I ponder over all the sessions that went on.

A few pics.

Of a panel of poetry readings

Of poetry and music

Of a lec/dem on haibun

Of the amazing surroundings

Goa: Carmel college: Institute of Menezes Braganza

It was an amazing experience to introduce to and urge 200 participants to write the haibun.

Carmel college. What an exuberant lot of students and participants, but also how much of effort by the faculty of Carmel college in getting this workshop going. Their efforts made the program an effortless one, an inspiring one for me.

Then we met friends. Many of them.

Then trotted to The Institute of Menezes Braganza for the Kavi Sammelan for the pre-Independence day celebration to read poetry.

It was immersive listening to Konkani, Marathi, Hindi, and English poetry.

 

Mother & daughter

Very rarely does Keya feature with me in any of my scheme of things.

She finds poetry readings extremely boring. But here were are!

Data

he concept of data in the context of computing has its roots in the work of Claude Shannon, an American mathematician known as the father of information theory. He ushered in binary digital concepts based on applying two-value Boolean logic to electronic circuits. Binary digit formats underlie the CPUs, semiconductor memories and disk drives, as well as many of the peripheral devices common in computing today. Early computer input for both control and data took the form of punch cards.

Bye

i can sense

a gush of sorrow

i can do nothing to tear

a   w    a    y . . .

 

her passing i feel

over, ahead,

beyond

 

her life was news

i swear: our paths never intersected

 

her death news too

until her poems bred wounds

in my veins, with words,

weakening my joints

 

i can sense

a wave of sorrow

now at 4:54

 

Is it her burial time?

Time for the final hi-five?

 

No one tells me anything.

& i do not wish to know

 

but this sensing is as much…

when two moons ago

I felt a hardening of hearts,

a wall of loathe

by a little, selective group . . .

 

inexplicable a feeling it was,

the wall became a wave

and reached me

 

as this sorrow comes now

 

but the wave couldn’t break me

It made me more rock  – ground to sky,

(and thank you.)

 

but this sorrow, will… break me.

 

water –

its delicate

reaching

the kernel

 

of surrendering.

 

Alvida.

Alvida.

Alvida.

 

Go have fun in heaven.

Bangaluru Poetry Festival 2017: prelude

Of pretending to understand poetry, and secret/revealed admiration.

Prelude to the Bangaluru Poetry Festival 2017.

And the answers are…

b. To the question: ‘Which poet are you excited about at the festival?’ I said: All of ’em.