Poetry & me

Poetry & me is an online talk show, a web series, if you will. It is deep, thoughtful conversations with practising poets about their relationship with poetry, interspersed with readings from their work and time set aside for audience questions. These conversations will later be archived online as a free public resource.

This is part of a longer project I’ve been planning towards for years — life kept getting in the way — which seeks to create a large archive of poetry in India. I can do a substantial chunk of it now via Zoom, because generous friends who wish to remain anonymous paid for a Zoom webinar package, which lets me do these as events with audiences.

I plan to start this with poets writing in English, for no other reason that that it’s the only language I’m competent in. Once I have a body of work to show, I hope to raise some funds to bring in other people who can join me and conduct interviews in other Indian languages.

Poetry & me will not be on a fixed schedule (i.e., not a fixed day of the week or time of day) because the people I want to talk to have different time tables and schedules. If you’d like to attend the recordings, I’ll be posting updates on my social media (links alongside), and, easier for you, via this Google Group and this Telegram Channel. Please subscribe to one of both of them. These will be one-way, i.e., only I can post to them, and I will only post to let subscribers know when a session is happening — you’ll get at least a couple of days notice — and when recordings are available online.

Folks who have agreed to be interviewed (so far) include: Aditi Rao, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Aruni Kashyap, Ayesha Chatterjee, Bina Ellias, Jerry Pinto, Keki Daruwalla, Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury, Michael Creighton, Monica Mody, Mustansir Dalvi, Ranjit Hoskote, Rochelle D’silva, Rochelle Potkar, Sampurna Chattarji, Sharanya Manivannan, Shikha Malaviya, Srilata K, Suhit Kelkar, Vinita Agrawal.

How you can help

• Come to the shows, of course. 

• Bring friends. Help spread the word, if you can, of the show, of the recordings when they’re up.

• Tell me which poets you would like the series to cover. Across languages, but in India or with an India connection only (for now).

• If you, or folks you know, would like to support this effort financially, get in touch.