Rochelle Potkar's Blog, page 52

Reading poetry at Poetry Tuesday 71, at Cafe Verve, 4th July

Will be reading poetry at Cafe Verve, Thane, on 4th July for Poetry Tuesday.

Thank you Anish – the Founder of the new and upcoming The Poetry College.

So excited to meet all friends from Thane.

Do come by if you can.

The Event page is: https://www.facebook.com/events/776431162525060/778289352339241

A poetry reading in Bandra to commemorate LGBT pride month

Organized by Smeetha Bhoumik’s WE (Women Empowered) in association with the U.S. Consulate, Mumbai.

You are invited!

23rd June, Friday, 5 pm – 7 pm, Above Tidal Waves book shop, Bandra.

At a panel discussion for ProjectEVE with Femina magazine

After models walked the ramp in the latest line of ProjectEve apparel, women-achievers from different walks of life discussed with Femina, her journey to reach where she did.

It was fascinating meeting and listening to Chef Kshama Prabhu, celebrity stylist Tanya Ghavri, actor-director-producer Divya Khosla Kumar, editor and chief community officer, Femina, Tanya Chaitanya, actor-author-producer Tisca Chopra, and RJ Archana Pania as they humanized themselves from celestial beings to breathing ones with struggle, strategy and innate passion. Beauty is facade. This heady experience could leave me either exhausted or exhilarated. No doubt, the latter.

And then a capture on Bombay Times, where these were my exact thoughts:

I imagined poetry reaching pages, after rounds of editing. 

Sometimes someone reaching a page of unread poetry, 

after years of losing and finding.

But a poet appearing on page 3, even if for an instant?

Now that gives a coy smile. A strange thought. 

An amusing intersection.

A lot of credit goes to Femina magazine.

Thank you friends for these whatsapp images.

Dainik Bhaskar invites my views on Arundati Roy

As we (at least most of the reading junta) sink teeth into Roy’s new fiction, DB asked me for my thoughts on her:

Back to Bombay with bougainvillea bangs

It was lovely meeting friends two days after landing in Mumbai. And luckily missing the British Airways IT meltdown, by a whisker.

G5A is a cozy vibrant art space, and I was beyond glad to meet so many poet-friends that it was truly a home-coming, even though half of these meetings were unplanned.

Thanks to Smeetha Bhoumik – artist, poet, curator, founder of WE (Women Empowered) for creating such events, and for being warm and inclusive.

Moods, seasons, change

Hi World!

So I am back from Scotland to Mumbai and carry window-hangovers. Like many writers, I fell in love with the window through which I gazed the mornings and passing of days, collegians over campus, and the sky – esp. the sky and its turn through different seasons, that could change the onlooker’s mood, if one watched carefully.

This has been one of the most beautiful, tranquil, peaceful phases of my life and I truly feel blessed.

 

 

 

Dear Poetry

Dear Poetry,

 

Thank you for being mine. Irrevocably.

Personally, I didn’t know you existed when I was in school more than a few pages on a textbook, or as a growing up girl. So to say you grew up in me, with every rhythm I heard from the Bollywood TV’s and screens, from Goan mandos, from hymns in the church, from hums from my mother, cannot be counted for.

Personally when I saw poets at Bombay readings, I passed them on – not my cup of tea. You were never for me. We had no connection.

Then I read you in 2009 stage (the few verses that i had written) at a festival, and I thought it can’t be – either I am an imposter or poetry is easy.

And you were non-commercial, so you see, you were nothing.

And I let you aside, for fiction that I loved like the typical older Indian women who chose sons over daughters.

My identity was that of a short story writer. Even if later that form too was not easy to sell.

But I loved plots and following character milestones.

 

But you never left me – so stubbornly, to the point of amused annoyance, when a friend would often say that ‘you are a poetess even when you blabber.’

I thought poetry belonged to the Xaverites’, or the curators who roamed like thekedaars – they knew how to contextualize you – they knew your stream of history and genesis – they had counter-points – they had magical phrases. What did I have – to know you? Nothing? Not a LIT background. No MFA.  An MBA a PG (Advt.) So for various reasons – all and every – good and bad – you couldn’t be mine.

And yet you stuck like glue to hair, gum on sole. You haunted in my dreams, deep-breathing, musings, and laughs.

Now here you are – and I cannot deny you. When people say I have got you. That I really really have got you. I can see you, feel you in my breath.

Thank you for choosing me. You didn’t have to. I wasn’t seeking you, remember.

You course through my veins, and to hell with symbols and thekedaari and curators and critics, and publishers, and acceptance letters, and shortlists, and longlists, and publications, and all motifs. Beyond all that – you are mine.

I will breathe you in spite and despite.

You will be my last breath.

You are:

Mist

Storm

Hurricane

Wind

Breeze

Earth

Wave

– the larger entity…

 

Thank you for accepting me –

a grain

 

Reading my poetry and prose at the Glasgow Women’s Library – 18th May

I will be reading at the Glasgow Women’s Library, on 18th May. So glad to be visiting such a unique library!

I am too excited.

At the Story Cafe.

A deep conversation

And this was a long-ago interview that I found today on the internet:

Rochelle Potkar – A Deep Conversation

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